This fascinating info was taken from this blog post! (courtesy of LanguageJones.com).
In college, I studied how to read/interpret the symbols in the Codex Zouche-Nuttall, a Mixteca document. Among other things I learned, one of the more important facts was that the languages of Pre-Columbus Mesoamerica were incredibly diverse, and that most of the written systems are still only partially deciphered. For a lot of it, we have incomplete guesswork. I learned about the specific languages used in that specific document, but by no means can I read Mayan or Aztec.
It's also important to note that Mayan and Aztec are NOT the same thing. The word "Chipotle" comes from the Nahuatl language, which is basically the Aztec language spoken in central Mexico at the time the Europeans came over. Mayan languages, on the other hand, come from Guatemala and the Yucatan peninsula. The symbols in this photo, taken at a Chipotle restaurant, are Mayan.
You might think that shows just how inauthentic the art actually is, but in a fascinating twist, they're actually pretty accurate tributes to Palenque's Temple 18, with some artistic license. An expert even translated the blocks, which appear to have been slapped in random order. Here's the cut & pasted Mayan translated, just keep in mind each block is like a chunk of a sentence taken out of context:
In college, I studied how to read/interpret the symbols in the Codex Zouche-Nuttall, a Mixteca document. Among other things I learned, one of the more important facts was that the languages of Pre-Columbus Mesoamerica were incredibly diverse, and that most of the written systems are still only partially deciphered. For a lot of it, we have incomplete guesswork. I learned about the specific languages used in that specific document, but by no means can I read Mayan or Aztec.
It's also important to note that Mayan and Aztec are NOT the same thing. The word "Chipotle" comes from the Nahuatl language, which is basically the Aztec language spoken in central Mexico at the time the Europeans came over. Mayan languages, on the other hand, come from Guatemala and the Yucatan peninsula. The symbols in this photo, taken at a Chipotle restaurant, are Mayan.
You might think that shows just how inauthentic the art actually is, but in a fascinating twist, they're actually pretty accurate tributes to Palenque's Temple 18, with some artistic license. An expert even translated the blocks, which appear to have been slapped in random order. Here's the cut & pasted Mayan translated, just keep in mind each block is like a chunk of a sentence taken out of context:
- u-K'AM-ma-K'AJAN?-ch'o-ko "the youth's rope-taking" (a ceremony)
- u-TZ'AK-AJ "its count" (calendric information)
- WAX-YAX-SIHOOM-ma "6 Yax" (part of a date)
- chu-lu-ku-? (Chuluk was a pre-accession name of the king)
- i-K'A'-yi "his ... stopped" (a death verb, here referring to the king's father)
- TIWOL Chan Mat (the father of the king)
- mu-ka-ja "he was buried" (again referring to the father)
- u?-na-ta-lal "the first"? (ordinal title?)
- MO'-na-bi (part of the name of the king)
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