Maya
By Morgan W.
What do the Maya writing symbols mean, and what stories the they tell?
I’ve learned that there are many ways to translate Mayan writing. There are different ways to draw the letters of the alphabet, and many different symbols for sky, or road. The stories they tell are mostly religion based stories. I’ve seen this in textbooks and in web articles.
Citation: Ager, Simon. "Maya Script." Omniglot. Simon Ager, 1998. Web. 27 Aug. 2015. <http://www.omniglot.com/writing/mayan.htm>
2)
The Maya used one or more syllables to make a word. They would make the syllables come together to form some type of picture thingy. I found that the Maya used these to write hieroglyphics to use for stories in a couple articles.
Citation: Stone, Mark V. "Dr. Mark Van Stone." Youtube. Mark Van Stone, 5 Sept. 2010. Web. 27 Aug. 2015. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=630e2bFLbfY>.3)
The Maya symbols are called hieroglyphs. The hieroglyphs are what they used to write and tell stories with. The letters d,f,g,q,r,v and z do not exist in the alphabet.
Citation: Duyer, Jim. "Maya Translator." Tools for the Translation of Ancient and Modern Languages and Mayan Numbers. James M. Duyer, 2013. Web. 27 Aug. 2015. <www.paleoaliens.com/event/mayan_glyphs>.
Picture 1
This image is one of the tables for the Maya alphabet. The Maya alphabet is strange in the way that it does not have the letters d,f,g,q,r,v and z. There is another website for the full broken alphabet but the picture won't post.
Picture 2
This picture is found on the same website. It shows some examples of the syllables, the way they were pronounced, and the translation. Some others are "pakal" which means shield. "tun" which means stone. These 2 examples and more translations are from a website with the url http://nativeamericanencyclopedia.com/mayan-symbols-and-meanings/ . The only downside is, the website has been shutdown. I don't know why, but someone must've gotten the image from the website before it shutdown.
Picture 3
Lo., Lawrence. "Maya." Ancient Scripts. 1996. Web. 31 Aug. 2015. <http://www.ancientscripts.com/maya.html>.
This image is also from the same website, Ancient Scripts. This is an image of an Maya hieroglyph tablet from the American Museum of Natural History. The hieroglyphs look as if one little square is one syllable, but really, its not. One little square contains 1-5 little syllables. Amazing, right?!