Mayan <j> / <x>

[Xephyr]

Hey, if back in the day both <j> and <x> stood for /S/, which later became /x/ and the spelling standardized to <j>, then how come in the Mayan languages' orthographies, <j> stands for /x/ (as in the new Spanish spelling) and <x> stands for /S/ (as in the old)? At no time did those two letters with those two pronunciations coexist in Spanish, to my knowledge, so when and how exactly did the Mayan spelling get that way?

[Aurora Rossa]

I suspect those orthographies took shape at a later date. People knew that <x> once sounded like /S/ but contemporary Spanish had /x/ for <j>. They simply combined these two letters without considering history.

[Přemysl]

My understanding is in the 15th century <x> being /S/ but <j> become /h/ which is what it is used for in some Mayan languages. Again as far as my understanding goes some of them have /h/ with [x], thus <j> for [x]. I researched all of this back in late June/early July when I was starting my latest conlang, unfortunatly when I had what I needed I forgot most of it. So don't treat my word as reliable but it might not be a bad place to start.

[Xephyr]

My understanding is in the 15th century <x> being /S/ but <j> become /h/ which is what it is used for in some Mayan languages. Again as far as my understanding goes some of them have /h/ with [x], thus <j> for [x]. I researched all of this back in late June/early July when I was starting my latest conlang, unfortunatly when I had what I needed I forgot most of it. So don't treat my word as reliable but it might not be a bad place to start.

Why would <j> back but not <x> if they represented the same phoneme? That doesn't make any sense.

[Aurora Rossa]

Why would <j> back but not <x> if they represented the same phoneme? That doesn't make any sense.

Who said orthographies have to make sense? That seems like a pretty minor problem compared to the kinds of orthographic anomalies that regularly crop up elsewhere.

[nebula wind phone]

In K'ichee', at least, the colonial orthography had <x> for /S/ but <h> for /x/. The letter <j> wasn't used at all — or if it was, it was just as an alternate form of <i>. The written record in K'ichee' sort of peters out in the mid-19th century, but the colonial orthography was used up until then.

The first K'ichee' orthography I'm aware of that used <j> for /x/ was introduced by the SIL in the 1940s. The design goal of the SIL orthography was to stick as close as possible to modern Spanish spelling rules whenever possible — and in given that, <j> for /x/ makes perfect sense. (Meanwhile, I'd speculate they kept <x> for /S/ because there was no better alternative. Guatemalan Spanish has no /S/ except in indigenous loanwords, and those had always been written with an <x> anyway.)

The current standard orthography makes some changes from the SIL one, but it's kept both <x> and <j>.

(Anecdotally, I saw a fair number of K'ichee' signs and whatnot when I was in small-town Guatemala this summer that still had <h> for /x/, regardless of what the standard says. Hell, I saw a decent number of handwritten signs that did that in Spanish. <hale> on doors, for jale, "pull," was really common. I doubt there's a connection, but you never know.)

[Xephyr]

I didn't know it used to be spelled <h>. That makes sense, then. Thanks nebula.

Why would <j> back but not <x> if they represented the same phoneme? That doesn't make any sense.

Who said orthographies have to make sense? That seems like a pretty minor problem compared to the kinds of orthographic anomalies that regularly crop up elsewhere.

*facepalm*

Eddy, they were spelled like that BEFORE the sound change.

[Radagast]

The j orthography is from the late 1990'es severaL centuries after colonial spanish S became x. As Nebula says colonial orthographies did not use j for x. The reason x is used for S in the modern orthography is because it is the only letter that has traditionally been used for S in spanish based orthographies - and because it isn't used for anything else. The modern Mayan orthographies were basically developed by Terrence Kaufman when he was leader of the Proyecto Francisco Marroquín in the seventies - after the end of the civil war in 1995 the Academia de Lenguas Mayas de Guatemala adopted the Kaufman's orthographies as the official standard.

[Ser]

Hell, I saw a decent number of handwritten signs that did that in Spanish. <hale> on doors, for jale, "pull," was really common. I doubt there's a connection, but you never know.)

Jalar and halar coexist, and using <hale> is actually more appropriate as jalar is deemed to lower registers. (If you check the entry for jalar at the RAE's site, you can see all usages are rather tagged as regional and colloquial.)

[Radagast]

I've never seen the h- version in Mexico, and I've certainly never heard anything other than [xalar] - in high or low registers.

[nebula wind phone]

The entry for halar in the RAE dictionary is interesting. It looks like it's a specialized maritime term ("haul on a line," "haul on an oar") most places, and it only gets general use outside that context in a few areas: Andalucia, Cuba, and the stretch of land from Honduras to Venezuela. Like Radagast, I'm most familiar with Mexican Spanish — which might explain why I hadn't run across it before.

The RAE doesn't seem to think halar has a non-nautical meaning in Guatemala. But then, they probably have Guatemala City Spanish in mind — and the Spanish spoken (especially by Maya) out in the countryside is very different from what's spoken in the capital. I don't think I heard hale for "pull" in the town where I was staying, but then I wasn't really listening for it. So who knows?

[Ser]

Yup, remember than in any case I talk from a Salvadorian perspective. We say "jalar" /xa.la4/ but we write "halar" /a.la4/ (and say it as well where a higher register is being used). I'm personally sceptic that they use <Jale> in doors in Mexico, but oh well.

FWIW Last year I remember some friend sending me several pictures taken in El Salvador containing orthographic mistakes and other things (which were supposed to be funny). One of them was, yes, a picture of a door with "Jale" on the front.



To put you into perspective, here's two more pictures from the same album:


("Kelloggs con leche")


("Finca la Esperanza
Horario - de trabajo
de 7 a.m. a 12 p.m. y de 1 a 4 p.m.
Ebrios no presentarse")

[prickly pear]

Yup, remember than in any case I talk from a Salvadorian perspective. We say "jalar" /xa.la4/ but we write "halar" /a.la4/ (and say it as well where a higher register is being used). I'm personally sceptic that they use <Jale> in doors in Mexico, but oh well.

Almost all signage here in California is written in English and Spanish. I've almost exclusively seen <jale> used on doors.

[linguoboy]

I suspect those orthographies took shape at a later date. People knew that <x> once sounded like /S/ but contemporary Spanish had /x/ for <j>. They simply combined these two letters without considering history.

What are you talking about? In Old Spanish, j represented /Z/ and x /S/. Despite the merger of these phonemes during the 16th century due to a general devoicing of Spanish sibilants in the prestige varieties, the spelling wasn't rationalised until the 19th century. So at the time of contact, j and x were both pronounced /S/. It would've made no sense to assign j the value /x/ (particularly since Andalusian varieties already had /x/, spelled h).

[nebula wind phone]

(particularly since Andalusian varieties already had /x/, spelled h).

Aha! So for (many of) the colonists, h really was a perfect match for the Mayan velar fricatives, and not just a near-match.

(Note to self: Learn things about Old Spanish.)

And, yeah, it's consistently written "jale" here in Central Texas too. Me, though, I'll admit that I think of "jalar" as the norm mainly because it's the form we learned in school when I was a kid back in Michigan. And who knows what that means — Gringo Textbook Spanish is a strange beast, and I doubt it matches the way anyone actually speaks.

[linguoboy]

(particularly since Andalusian varieties already had /x/, spelled h).

Aha! So for (many of) the colonists, h really was a perfect match for the Mayan velar fricatives, and not just a near-match.

I believe so. I'm unclear on when exactly [h] becomes the dominant realisation of /x/ in southern Spain, but I believe it was after the shift of /S/ to /x/.

[nebula wind phone]

Wait, now I'm confused again. Are you saying 16th-century Andalusians had /x/ in words like hambre and hasta? Or that they had /x/ in words like jefe and bajar and just spelled it with an h, writing hefe and bahar instead?

(Note to self: Definitely learn more about Old Spanish.)

[linguoboy]

Wait, now I'm confused again. Are you saying 16th-century Andalusians had /x/ in words like hambre and hasta? Or that they had /x/ in words like jefe and bajar and just spelled it with an h, writing hefe and bahar instead?

Hambre [< VL *FAMINE(M)], but not hasta since the h there is unetymological.

[nebula wind phone]

Ah. Forget hasta, then. But thanks, that's what I wanted to know.

[Travis B.]

Wait, now I'm confused again. Are you saying 16th-century Andalusians had /x/ in words like hambre and hasta? Or that they had /x/ in words like jefe and bajar and just spelled it with an h, writing hefe and bahar instead?

Hambre [< VL *FAMINE(M)], but not hasta since the h there is unetymological.

There are Spanish dialects that do preserve /h/ for VL /f/ where most Spanish dialects have turned it to ∅, but Spanish as a whole certainly does not preserve CL /h/.

[linguoboy]

There are Spanish dialects that do preserve /h/ for VL /f/ where most Spanish dialects have turned it to ∅, but Spanish as a whole certainly does not preserve CL /h/.

I'm not sure why you felt a need to point that out when no one claimed that it did.

[Travis B.]

There are Spanish dialects that do preserve /h/ for VL /f/ where most Spanish dialects have turned it to ∅, but Spanish as a whole certainly does not preserve CL /h/.

I'm not sure why you felt a need to point that out when no one claimed that it did.

I was just pointing out that Spanish dialects could very well have /h/ in words like hambre, unlike most places where the present-day Spanish orthography has h, regardless of whether that h is etymological or not.