Equal, or superior, in culture, to the Aztecs were the Maya tribes.
Their chief seat was in Yucatan, but they extended thence southwardly to
the shores of the Pacific, and westward along the Gulf coast to the
River Panuco. The language numbered about sixteen dialects, none very
remote from the parent stem, which linguists identify as the Maya proper
of the Yucatecan peninsula. While there are a number of verbal
similarities between Maya and Nahuatl, the radicals of the two idioms
and their grammatical structure are widely asunder. The Nahuatl is an
excessively pliable, polysyllabic and highly synthetic tongue; the Maya
is rigid, its words short, of one or two syllables generally, and is
scarcely more synthetic than French. This contrast is carried out in the
style of their writers. Those in Nahuatl were lovers of amplification,
of flowing periods, of Ciceronian fullness; the Mayas cultivated
sententious brevity, they are elliptical, often to obscurity, and may be
compared rather to Tacitus, in his _Annals_, than to Cicero.
All the Maya tribes had strong literary tastes, but with characteristic
tenacity they clung entirely to their native tongues; and I know not a
single instance where one has left compositions in Spanish.
Pages:
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38