La representación alfabética de las voces mayas yucatecas durante la Colonia

Abstract

This paper analyzes the spellings used in two vocabularies and three colonial Mayan grammars. The objective is to see if the missionaries were able to distinguish the Mayan sounds and if their representation is systematic. In order to achieve our objective, we have analyzed the vowel subsystem and its difficulties, as well as the consonant subsystem. We have been able to notice that vowel representation is difficult due to features such as pitch, while consonants are easier to identify. However, we have not recorded systematicity in the representation of either vowels (since the simple vowel can represent any type) or consonants, the latter using different representations for the sounds: digraphs <th>, geminates<pp>, simple spellings <k>; moreover, it is difficult to explain the use of the spelling <z> or <ç> for the Mayan alveolar fricative sound. Finally, we have been able to observe that in the representation we use spellings proper to the Latin alphabet and some used for the Spanish sounds <z> <ç> and <x> of the Sixteenth Century, in addition to the graphic innovation <Ↄ>, which may have its origin in the Hebrew alephate and is also found in Mateo Alemán’s Orthography (1609).