> Andreas Johansson wrote at 2005-06-16 00:18:22 (+0200)
> > Quoting Tim May <butsuri@...>:
> >
> > > See pages 4 & 5 of this document for a better description of what
> > > looks like basically the same system:
> > >
http://www.mesoweb.com/resources/vocabulary/Vocabulary.pdf
> >
> > An odd feature of this is that it has b' but no simple b,
> > especially as the b' sound is characterized only as a voiced labial
> > stop.
> >
>
> Yes, I noticed that, and it is rather odd. /b/ _is_ sometimes
> implosive in modern Mayan languages. And since it's the only
> contrastively voiced stop, one wonders whether it might resemble the
> glottalized series more than the plain...
>
> This page here
>
http://www.mesoweb.com/palenque/resources/rulers/essay/rulers_04002.html
> says
>
> | ...the apostrophe after the "b" indicating, by a spelling
> | convention that epigraphers have agreed to regularize, that ancient
> | Mayan speakers always pronounced b with an implosive glottal sound.
>
>
> So if you feel like pronouncing all the "b"s implosively, that'll
> probably be a closer approximation to their original pronunciation.
>
> Incidentally, is the book any good?