scholarly journals On preserved and lost Ancient Maya books

Author(s):  
Boguchwała Tuszyńska

One of the greatest achievements of the Ancient Maya was a logo-syllabic writing system. The Maya left many glyphic inscriptions carved, incised or painted on different media. Unfortunately, from that rich scribal tradition only four manuscripts, known as codices, survived. They are painted on bark paper and contain, above all, almanacs with auguries. However, by looking at reports prepared by chroniclers during Colonial times, and documents transcribed in Mayan languages using the Latin alphabet, one can see that a variety of subjects could have been raised in lost codices.

1984 ◽  
Vol 49 (4) ◽  
pp. 790-805 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen D. Houston

This report demonstrates recourse to homophony in ancient Maya script, illustrating the generalization of signs on the basis of their phonetic values, apart from their primary semantic values. It focuses on substitutions, in eight glyphic contexts, of signs for “sky,” the number “four,” and “snake,” the words for which are homophonous or nearly homophonous in most Mayan languages. A final, unique glyphic context exhibits the use of homophony in a spelling of Kukulcan's name from the classic period.


Iraq ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 67 (2) ◽  
pp. 31-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philippe Quenet

The invention of writing in southern Mesopotamia at the end of the fourth millennium BC had many and long-lasting consequences. As far as the Early Bronze Age is concerned, one of the most remarkable of these consequences is that the cuneiform writing system that gradually emerged in southern Iraq during the first part of the Early Dynastic period spread to northern Syria around the mid-third millennium BC. A flourishing scribal tradition was already firmly established throughout the Syrian Jezirah and inner Syria by the advent of the Akkadian period.It is difficult to establish the reasons and mechanisms that led the elites of northern Syria to borrow the practice of writing from their counterparts in southern Iraq. The steps in this process are even more unclear. Hence the aim of this paper is to gather material evidence that may help us shed light on those questions. As an archaeologist, I will not discuss here the content of epigraphical finds, but only their context and chronological attribution according to the chronological divisions in northern and southern Mesopotamia respectively.


Author(s):  
Sandra Godinho ◽  
Margarida V. Garrido ◽  
Oleksandr V. Horchak

Abstract. Words whose articulation resembles ingestion movements are preferred to words mimicking expectoration movements. This so-called in-out effect, suggesting that the oral movements caused by consonantal articulation automatically activate concordant motivational states, was already replicated in languages belonging to Germanic (e.g., German and English) and Italic (e.g., Portuguese) branches of the Indo-European family. However, it remains unknown whether such preference extends to the Indo-European branches whose writing system is based on the Cyrillic rather than Latin alphabet (e.g., Ukrainian), or whether it occurs in languages not belonging to the Indo-European family (e.g., Turkish). We replicated the in-out effect in two high-powered experiments ( N = 274), with Ukrainian and Turkish native speakers, further supporting an embodied explanation for this intriguing preference.


Author(s):  
Norhazlina Husin ◽  
Nuranisah Tan Abdullah ◽  
Aini Aziz

Abstract The teaching of Japanese language as third language to foreign students has its own issues and challenges. It does not merely involve only teaching the four language skills. Japanese language has its own unique values. These unique values also tend to differentiate the teaching of Japanese language as a third language from other third language acquisitions. The teaching of Japanese language as third language to foreign students also involves the teaching of its writing system. This makes the teaching of Japanese language rather complicated because Japanese language has three forms of writings, namely: Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji. Students are required to fully understand the Hiragana system of writing first before proceeding to learn the other two forms of writings. The main challenge in the teaching of Japanese writing systems is the time allocated that can be considered as very limited as other language aspects need to be taught too. This, which relates directly to students’ factor very much contribute to the challenges foreseen. Students are likely to face problems in understanding and using the writings as they simultaneously need to adhere to the findings teaching and learning schedules. This article discusses on the analysis conducted in terms of the learning of the Hiragana and Katagana systems of writing among foreign students. The discussion in this article is based on the teaching of Japanese language to students of Universiti Teknologi MARA(UiTM), Shah Alam. Keywords: Third language, Hiragana, Katakana, Kanji


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