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 definition of 'a [unmarried] woman who sleeps [in a room] with a man' as, 'prostitute/concubine', is a reflection of European/Catholic bias against contact period Maya culture, in which formal ritual sanction for a love relationship is entirely irrelevant. (Indeed, Diego de Landa devotes considerable space in his 'Relacion' to complaints that the Maya couple and uncouple based on sentiment alone, rather than upon the binding legal contracts which European/Abrahamic traditions required). The primary, root, meaning of the word Uay, is 'companion', whether physical or spiritual, human or nonhuman. The relationship between the Uay and the person is one of love, not one of 'malevolent magic' or of 'interchangeable shapes', (see, expanded discussion on Nagual). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 169.229.207.140 (talk) 19:15, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

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 from the contact period? No instructor, above the junior high school level, would or should accept a paper as derivitive of a single source as is this article. (James B Porter BA, MA, PhD.) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 169.229.207.139 (talk) 02:22, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

Hi. Wikipedia actually prefers secondary sources over primary sources (see Wikipedia:No original research#Primary, secondary and tertiary sources. Freidel is cited in various standard works on the Maya and Mesoamerica, such as Sharer & Traxler The Ancient Maya, 6th ed.; Michael Coe The Maya, 6th ed.; Martin & Grube Chronicle of the Maya Kings and Queens; Read & Gonzalez Handbook of Mesoamerican Mythology; Miller The Art of Mesoamerica; Miller Maya Art and Architecture; as well as more specialist volumes such as Braswell (ed.) The Maya and Teotihuacan: Reinterpreting Early Classic Interaction; Scarborough & Wilcox (eds.) The Mesoamerican Ballgame; Andrews & Fash (eds.) Copán: The History of a Maya Kingdom...the list goes on and is nowhere near exhaustive, in fact I could probably list nearly every work on the Maya in my collection. The fact that Freidel is so widely cited by respected Mesoamericanists/Mayanists hardly indicates a "highly controversial" source, and in fact establishes reliability in terms of Wikipedia. Best regards, Simon Burchell (talk) 19:47, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

If your scholarly library only contain works which cite Freidel et al., your library is inadequate to debate issues pertaining to the Maya. There is an extensive body (the vast majority) of good, solid research on the Maya which does not cite Freidell et al.

I notice that wikipedia cites the Oxford English Dictionary as a reliable source for English. Is your rejection of the Diccionario Maya Cordemex, with its comparable etemologies and tracking of words, their sources and meanings from the first citation to the present, another reflection of ethnocentrism on the part of your authors and editors? I can in no way condone a preference for secondary (and inherently speculative) sources over primary sources. Also, argument by consensus is equally inherently unscientific. Further, the number of citations for a speculative work does not in any way demonstrates its utility to science! For extensive, and devastating, criticism of the unscientific methods and argumentation employed by 'scholars' such as Freidel, Schele, Coe, Grube Houston, Stuart and others, see the published critiques of my own mentor, John Allen Graham. (James, I am not ashamed of my name, Porter). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 169.229.207.140 (talk) 18:59, 25 February 2010 (UTC)