Creating Glyph Blocks

The Ancient Maya App converts text input as a Maya transcription written in latin letters to a glyph block transliteration. Here’s what it looks like if the user types “otoot” and presses the “Convert” button:

This process requires several steps. Below is a description of the steps followed by a specific example.

First, each input transcription word is converted into a transliteration in latin letters. For example, otoot is converted into o-to-ti. This is done using standard rules for ancient Mayan.

Next, for each sound/syllable in the transliteration we identify a list of Mayan phonetic glyphs that can be used to represent that sound. For some sounds there are both main glyphs and affix glyphs. For other sounds there are only either affix or main glyphs. In our otoot example, there are a couple of glyphs for each of the three sounds — o, to, and ti.

Finally we try to find a valid glyph block type that provides the correct reading order for the syllables while also having the right mix of main glyphs and affix glyphs. If there are multiple types of glyph blocks to pick from we select the one that was more commonly used. For example, since o, to and ti can each be represented by a main glyph we could create a valid glyph block with them. Historically, glyph blocks were rarely written with three main glyphs. Glyph blocks with three glyphs were typically written with one main glyph and two affix glyphs. Since we also have affix glyphs for both o and ti we use them along with a main glyph for to. Each individual glyph is scaled to fill its area of the glyph block, affix glyphs are also rotated.

If you want a deeper dive into each these steps, keep reading.

First we want to create the transliteration, a series of phonemes that will express how to phonetically spell the word. Ancient Mayan phonetic writing system is syllabic. It supports writing vowels and consonant/vowel pairs. So there are glyphs representing “o” and “to”, but not “ot” or “t”. Phonetically spelled Mayan words often end with a glyph representing a consonant/vowel pair where the final vowel is silent. In English, we employ the “silent e” at the end of the word to give “rid” and “ride” different pronunciations. The “silent e” tends to make the earlier vowel pronounced as a long vowel. Mayan does something fairly similar. If the vowel is pronounced “differently”, the final silent vowel does not match the pronounced vowel and we call it disharmony. If the pronounced vowel matches the silent vowel, the pronounced vowel is “normal”, aka harmony. When we write a Mayan word in latin letters we need to remember how things are pronounced. So, we use double the “o” in otoot to indicate the vowel is long. When this is converted to a latin transliteration we have to use a consonant/vowel combination with a disharmony vowel. The app turns otoot into o-to-ti. There are other rules that control how to generate an accurate transliteration. The app implements the rules in Appendix I of Kettunen & Helmke’s Introduction to Maya Hieroglyphs, below is a table that provides some rules:

Next we need to generate a list of glyphs for each sound in the transliteration. Details about which glyphs are phonetic (as opposed to logographic) and what sound(s) they make is taken from Alex Tokovinine’s Beginner’s Visual Catalog of Maya Hieroglyphs. It contains 193 phonetic glyphs. For the sound ‘o’, there are two different affix glyphs and one main glyph. For the sound ‘to’ there are no affix glyphs and two main glyphs. For the sound ‘ti’ there is one main glyph and one affix glyph. Currently the app assumes all affix glyphs are rotatable. This rotation assumtion is made with the intent to revisit it later in the developement process once we have recieved user feedback, as we know it is not historically accurate. Here’s an image showing the images and definitions in Tokovinine’s Catalog:

Finally, we have to describe how Mayan glyphs can legitimately be arranged to form a glyph block. One can’t put together, for example, a series of affix glyphs next to each other. While that works for latin characters it doesn’t for Mayan. The Unicode document titled “A Preliminary Proposal For Encoding Mayan Hieroglyphic Text In Unicode” by Carols Gayol defines 186 “quadrats”, the term it uses for a glyph block configuration arrangement. The app currently includes about the dozen most commonly used quadrats. For a glyph block that contains a single glyph, there is only one valid way to write it: it must contain one main glyph. For a glyph block that contains two glyphs, there are many valid ways to write it. One can use a main glyph and an affix glyph on one side. Notice that where you put the affix determines the order in which the phonetic glyphs are read. Alternatively, you could also create a glyph block with two main glyphs. Again, how you position them determines reading order. For glyph blocks that contain three glyphs, there are even more ways to write it. You can use a glyph block containing one, two or three main glyphs and zero to two affix glyphs. Getting back to the example, we want to create a glyph block for o-to-ti. The app prefers to use a quadrat that was commonly used in the past. So, while can might create a glyph block with three main glyphs it isn’t the preferred style and we avoid it where possible. The middle sound ‘to’ has no affix glyph so we have to at least write this sound with a main glyph. Historically, for glyph blocks with three glyphs the Mayans preferred an affix-main-affix arrangement with the first affix placed either on top or on the left side (and pronounced before the main glyph) and last affix glyph placed either on the right on on the bottom (and pronounced after the main glyph). For “o-to-ti” the app uses Unicode Preliminary quadat 3.02 and renders one of the available ‘o’ affix glyphs as a left affix glyph, one of the ‘to’ main glyphs and the ‘ti’ affix glyph as a bottom glyph. Here’s some example quadrat definitions from the Maya Unicode document: