Talk:Wayob

"Derivation"

The recent changes about the 'derivation' of way (or uay) need some clarification. ATM we have:

• Uay actually derives from the Maya word for a medium-sized grey wild cat with a light-coloured head (the jaguarundi), and the word for an inner chamber or room

The edits also sought to rule out an association with the concepts of "sleep" or "dream".

The Cordemex is given as a cite for the first part, but it's unclear whether the Cordemex's definitions/derivations include the jaguarundi one, as well as the inner chamber or room one. I don't have ready access to it, maybe someone who does can confirm/amend as appte.

AFAIK there are multiple meanings of way/uay given by various primary Mayan lang. sources, & notable secondary ones. "Chamber/[bed-]room", "here", "corrosive", "brujo", "familiar [nagual]", "evil/malevolent", "prostitute/concubine"—are some given in Bolles' concordance at FAMSI. Prob there are others. And as well as Friedel, other contemporary sources like Gronemeyer & Sachse also note and accept the association with "sleep"/"dream". Perhaps most importantly in the context of Classic Maya glyphs, in their orig 1989 paper on the reading of the WAY-glyph, Houston & Stuart remark:

Uniformly, the root is "sleep," with various semantic and grammatical extensions, including "dream," "witchcraft," "nagual," "animal transformation," and, most important of all, "other spirit," or co-essence, as in the Chol phrase, kame xiba abi i way jini x'ixik, "because [the] devil was the other spirit of the woman" (p.6)

So given the preceding, it doesn't seem appte to say [categorically] that it 'derives' from words for jaguar or room (and not, from sleep/dream). If there's been any subsequent revision, or there's a published source that doubts an etymological link to sleep/dream, then let's mention it; but without a cited source it will look like original research.--cjllw ʘ TALK 06:06, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Do not currently have acess to my library, but am confident the Diccionario Maya Cordemex citations, which clearly distinguish uay/way 'companion' etc. from uen/wen 'sleep' etc. should be adequate to show the speculative and unfounded nature of Freidel et al. The creation of a proto-mayan root form from 'dream' follows their assertion that the word derives from 'dream'.

In the article the word uay/way is specifically given as the Yucatec Maya form. Many of the glosses for uay/way as 'sleep' etc. given in Bolles' concordance come from different Maya linguistic stocks and have little relevance to the definition of the Yucatec Maya term uay/way. The Diccionario is the acknowledged authority on Yucatec Maya words, Freidel et al. are not.

The article is almost exclusively derived from a single secondary (popular) source, Freidel et al., which is itself highly controversial within the field of Maya studies. Why are there no citations of primary sources? See expanded discussion on related issue of nagual, (James B Porter BA, MA, PhD.) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 169.229.207.139 (talk) 02:22, 13 February 2010 (UTC)