Anahuak Language Project

in 1492, we were one of the most resourceful civilizations in the world but our development was stunted by the invasion of the Wasicu. We accomplished everything we did as a result of our keen ability to adopt our neighbor's cultural traits. Given time our ancestors surely would have discovered and adopted the great cultural achievments reached by the Maya such as the calendarical long count. As descendants of the many great civilizations of Anahuac we must take on the responsibility of continuing the attempt of our ancestors of uniting indigenous people - by using the same written language, we will be one step closer.

It is not a mystery that the Roman alphabet we use now to write Nahuatl and other Anahuaka languages is incompatible. Have your ever noticed how long Nahuatl words are when using the Latin alphabet? Chalchihuitlicue for example would only use 8 Maya characters while when written using Latin, requires 16.

I propose then that we begin to write Nahuatl and all other languages of Anahuac using the written system of the Maya. Using Mayan writing makes the most sense for many reasons. First, Mayan writing represents all of the possible combinations of Nahuatl sounds as a result of the cultural similarities shared by all people of Anahuac (conversely, European languages such as English or Spanish can not be transcribed exactly using the Mayan writing system because letters such as R, and V do not exist in the languages of Anahuac).

We should all strive to become fluent in Nahuatl, Maya, Zapoteca, Hopi, Yaqui and any as many other native Ixachilan languages as possible. But we should also strive to become literate.

Just in time for Chikonawi Tekpatl, I have successfully created a Maya font which can be used with Microsoft Word and any other word processing program. This is a font which will be installed on your computer which means you can use the font with pretty much anything you type with. I believe this new font will become a powerful tool as indigenous people all across Ixachilan will finally be able to write in a written language that was invented on our land.

**Read This Before You Get Started**

There are a few things I must mention before you get started with the Maya font. First of all, not all of the Mayan glyphs have been discovered yet. At first, this was the major reason why I did not want to create the font early on. But I realized it was better to go on with this project then to wait for archaeologists to "discover" these missing glyphs. The good thing is only 3 glyphs are missing: "so", "tze", and "wu". What I did to compensate for the missing glyphs was add one of the previous sound glyphs instead. This was possible because Mayan script has multiple glyphs for every sound. For the purposes of this font, I standardized this process by using only one sound glyph. So, the "so" glyph is actually an extra "si" glyph, the "tze" glyph is an extra "tza" glyph, and the "wu" glyph is an extra "wo" glyph. I know it is a bit confusing but read it over a few times and you will get it. Since this is Maya Font Version 1, future versions will hopefully have the real glyph when they are discovered.

The Mayan Font V. 1 was created with Nahuatl in mind. Unfortunately, the Maya did not have a "tl" sound in their language so they did not have a glyph to represent it. This was another obstacle that almost discouraged me until I discovered this article by chance: "Nahua in Ancient Mesoamerica: Evidence From Maya Inscriptions." It appears as though the Maya actually attempted to tackle this problem of a missing "tl"
sound when communicating with Mexica traders and government officials. Their solution was to ignore the "l" completely. Instead of writing Tlahuiscal, the Maya wrote it as Tahuiscal. This was very interesting to me as it proved the Maya at least tried to do something with unknown sounds from other cultures. This demonstrates the incredible inventiveness of our ancestors. In that same inventive spirit, I did what the Maya and Mexica would have probably done eventually: take a Mexica symbol/pictograph and use that for the "tl" sound in Maya. The most basic pictograph I could think of and which quickly became my logical choice was the symbol for atl.
Why atl? Well atl is the most basic Nahuatl word containing the suffix -tl.

Lastly, those of you not familiar with Maya hieroglyphs, I will give you a brief summary. Unlike languages such as Latin which utilize alphabets, Maya utilizes what is called a syllabary. Instead of each symbol representing a letter, each symbol (excluding the symbols for vowels only) represents a syllable (consonant-vowel combination). Since many Native American languages are syllabic in nature, this font has the potential to have far-reaching effects. In Nahuatl for example many words follow a syllabic format such as Kal - Li, Ze, Ome, and Ozo-Ma-Tli. The Principle of Synharmony - discovered by Yuri Knorosov states that a word ending in a consonant breaks the Consonant-Vowel order of the Mayan syllabary. Therefore what must happen is a vowel must follow the consonant to prevent two consonants from appearing successively. But you say, what if you don't need a vowel such as in the word Mokal? What you must do is write in a vowel which will cause the vowel of the last syllable to match the vowel of the syllable immediately preceding it. So in the case of Mokal, we would have to write it as Mokala when using the Maya font. According to the principle of synharmony however, the reader would know that the last "a" should not be read as it matches the preceding vowel and is thus cancels out. You will understand this more with practice. But you will eventually learn to read Mokala as Mokal(a) whereas the (a) is not spoken.

Download Maya Font V. 1 Now

Installation Instructions - 1) Download the .zip file. 2) unzip the files into a directory of your choice. 3) Read the readme.txt file. 4) Find the Maya.TTF file. 5) Double click your "my computer" icon (can be found in the start menu or on desktop) > then double click your C:// drive> then double click Windows>then double click Fonts>Drop the Maya.TTF file into this folder and you will have access to the Maya font on your computer. For some reason, your Maya font can be found under "untitled" in your font list.

Visit www.mexicauprising.net/anahuaklanguageproject.html for future versions/updates of the Maya font. Please send comments and suggestions to itztli@mexicauprising.net. Tlazokamatli, Itztli Ehecatl

The following chart will show you what the Maya glyphs look like, what they sound like, and what keystroke you have to press to get them:

The following are syllabary charts for Maya. Notice how there are multiple hieroglyphs for each syllable. These extra glyphs are eliminated in the Maya font for ease of use -

Here are all of the possible combinations: