De Landa alphabet facts for kids
The de Landa alphabet is a list of Spanish letters and glyphs (symbols) from the ancient Maya script. A Spanish bishop named Diego de Landa wrote it down in the 1500s. He was trying to understand the Maya civilization's writing system. Even though his "alphabet" wasn't completely right, it later became super important. In the mid-1900s, a Soviet expert named Yuri Knorozov used de Landa's notes. This helped him finally start to figure out how to read the Maya script.
How the De Landa Alphabet Was Made
Diego de Landa wanted to understand the Maya writing. He got help from two Maya people who knew the script. He tried to create an "A, B, C" for the Maya writing system. He hoped this would be a key to translate it.
This "alphabet" was a small part of de Landa's book. The book was called Relación de las cosas de Yucatán. This title means "Account of the matters of Yucatán." In his book, de Landa also wrote about the culture and traditions of the Maya peoples. He saw and learned about these things when he lived among them in the Yucatán Peninsula.
De Landa wrote his book after he went back to Spain. He was facing a trial there. He wrote the book to explain his actions and defend his work. After he wrote it, his book was mostly forgotten for a long time.
Sadly, during this time, many ancient Maya books and writings were destroyed. Spanish leaders wanted to replace the Maya religion with Christianity. Because of this, most Maya texts were lost.
How It Was Found Again
For many centuries, no one knew about de Landa's book. Then, in the 1800s, a French scholar named Brasseur de Bourbourg found a shorter copy of Relación de las cosas de Yucatán.
After it was found, many people tried to use de Landa's "alphabet" to read the Maya script. But they didn't succeed. This was because de Landa thought Maya writing was an alphabet, like Spanish. However, Maya writing is actually logosyllabic. This means it uses symbols for whole words and also symbols for sounds (syllables).
William H. Stiebing explained that Maya writing is a mix of "ideographs" (signs for words) and "syllabic signs" (signs for sounds). Because of this misunderstanding, some people even thought Maya writings talked about lost cities like Atlantis!
De Landa's ideas about the Maya "alphabet" were later shown to be incorrect. Some experts think de Landa might have accidentally created a fake writing system. This happened because he didn't fully understand how logosyllabic writing works. He also didn't have very good sources of information.
It wasn't until the early 1950s that real progress was made. That's when Yuri Knorozov published his important work. He looked at de Landa's notes and other Maya writings in a new way. This helped unlock the secrets of the Maya script.
See also
In Spanish: Alfabeto de Landa para niños
