Re: NATLANG: Maya pronunciation guide

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?

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