Teaching materials

Mayan scripts

When it comes to spelling, Maya scribes enjoyed a lot of freedom: purely logographic, purely syllabic or most often – mixed, combining elegant logographs with phonetic clues. And they enjoyed varying spellings to contribute to the general artistic result. This variety of spelling options made it possible to decipher Maya glyphs: logographic spellings may help to understand the meaning by offering visual clues, phonetic spellings – to pin down the pronunciation, mixed spellings assist a bit with both. The glyphs that remain undeciphered until today are usually very rare signs which don’t have enough contexts to compare and analyse.