A dictionary of the Maya language
Subtitle: as spoken in Hocabá, Yucatán
By: Victoria R. Bricker, Eleuterio Poʻot Yah, Ofelia Dzul de Poʻot ; with a botanical index by Anne S. Bradburn.
Contributors: Poʻot Yah, Eleuterio.; Dzul de Poʻot, Ofelia.
Publisher: University of Utah Press
Published: 1998
Place of publication: Salt Lake City
Language: eng
Number of pages: 410
Subjects: Maya language -- Dictionaries.; Maya language -- Dialects -- Yucatán Peninsula.
Description: The Maya language of Yucatan is known as Yucatec by linguists, but its speakers refer to it as Maya. Dialectical differences are minimal across the peninsula, and the more than 750,000 speakers of Maya can be understood wherever they go. Moreover, it is not only a living language but is of great use to epigraphers working on ancient Maya glyphs.

This dictionary is the culmination of fourteen years' labor centering on the town and dialect of Hocaba. Whereas other dictionaries of Maya use Latin paradigms, this is the first to provide a comprehensive, systematic listing of the stems that can be derived from each root and that give Maya its distinctive character. The entries cover the full range of Maya speech, from simple expressions and idioms to compound stems.

Many sample sentences provide a window onto the richness of everyday communication, with its mixture of wit, epithets, insults, riddles and aphorisms, and exchanges of information.

Among the cultural domains encompassed by the dictionary are agriculture, architecture, astronomy, culinary practices and recipes, education, folklore, games, humor, medical prescriptions, ritual, toys, and weaving, many of which have roots in the Precolumbian past. In addition to the dictionary entries, this work also contains a short grammar, a botanical index, and a bibliography.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [409]-410) and index.