Sites and books I've used for learning the Maya Hieroglyphics

For me personally, the Mayan script is by far the most beautiful scripts on the face of the Earth. How it is writ is just so fascinating. However, unfortunately, I started finding more about it late in life after my mind began slowing down. So, unfortunately, I have not been able to retain a lot of the information. Oh well.

http://www.famsi.org/ This is one site that I frequented a lot in the middle phase. Even tried my hand at learning Yucatec (which is quite different from Tzotzil, which I know the most).

In the early days, http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/med/, this site was the only one I knew of, and had spent a lot of time here.

Later (relatively recently) I began using the books "The New Catalog of Maya Hieroglyphics Vols I & II".

Now, again, I got old (too fast), and the mind wasn't too keen on learning new tricks. So I decided, just for fun, I'd learn to write Tzotzil with the letters. Which, as any who have studied the Maya scripts would know, that wouldn't exactly be a simple task.

The majority of known written words were in Ch'ol and Yucatec. Ch'ol is fairly similar to Tzotzil in many ways, but one thing I have had an issue with, is discerning which characters were used for which prefixes/suffixes in Ch'ol verses Yucatec. Then there are word parts that are not exactly the same as in Yucatec.

Tzotzil ch- is 'ta + x'. Not hard to do in certain circumstances, ta+xi, ta+xa. Simple, easy, can do. However, dealing with ta+x, on the other hand, not so easy. I have not been too fortunate to figure out that one. So what I did, then, is I use the letter for "yax" for the "x" sound.

Another one, is Tzotzil has 's' for the 3rd person, whereas Yucatec uses 'u'. Again, not that difficult, just equate 'u' as 's'. So, I could, in theory (again, just for fun, not to be correct), I could spell a word such as chk'opoj as "ta+yax+[u]+k'o+po+[ho/hi]" (brackets don't necessarily need to be spelled. One of the very fascinating things of the Maya scripts, for me anyway).

And I lost my train of thought.

Just a final summary.

There is a lot that I just don't know, and there is a lot that I will never be able to retain the information for, but I still play around with this idea. I do know I'd have to change some letters' sounds (which is not necessarily un-Mayan). As well as I would have to create new rules (hopefully, fingers crossed, I could find and remember the information for those rules that might be useful and correct enough) in order to make this possible.

Don't know if I'll ever succeed, but no harm in trying, I think, 😅 .

https://imgur.com/a/tq4OaMM Second experiment (Before I realized ta+x = ch).

https://imgur.com/a/npy2Qaw Third experiment.

https://i.imgur.com/Wpvxkqy.jpg "I'm not afraid of not ghosts", "Mu-xixi' ta-ch'ule[lal]" (Characters in the brackets aren't spelled). These, I believe, are pretty decently spelled.

Unfortunately, my mind is not too great, but hopefully someone finds this interesting. 😇