Apocalypto: ersatz Gibson again.

I for one am looking forward to Mel Gibson's new film the Mayan epic ‘Apocalypto’. As
was the case with The Passion… Gibson has inexplicably tried to shoot it in an ersatz
approximation of what he assumes was the original language of the time. It was made in
Mexico with local actors speaking Yucatec Maya. Yucateco, or maya yucateco, is the
Spanish term for Yucatec, or Yucatec Maya, a language spoken by about a million people
in Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula (with some additional speakers in Belize and northern
Guatemala). It's the most obvious candidate for a Mayan-language historical drama set in
pre-Conquest Mexico, since modern Yucatec is still widely spoken and is a direct
descendant of Classic Maya. Despite the fact that modern Yucatec has retained many
features of Classic Maya, its "ancientness," like that of any living language, is highly
disputable. This could mean, however, that the translators hired by Gibson have
attempted to render the dialogue in a reconstruction of Classic Maya as spoken six
centuries ago, with Yucatec Maya as the nearest modern approximation.

On Languagehat.com James Terry takes issue with the use of Yucatec Maya: it is not a
direct descendent of Classic Maya, nor is it the modern Maya language most closely
related to Classic Maya (often referred to as Ch'olan). The Yucatecan languages (Yucatec,
Itza, Lacandon) are part of a northern branch that split off about 3000 years ago from the
lines that formed the southern Mayan languages.

Gibson himself explains that "Apocalypto means 'a new beginning, The 'new beginning'
interpretation might have something to do with New Age mysticism, adherents of which
take great stock in the notion that the Mayan calendar — and therefore the world — is
supposed to end on December 21, 2012. As Gibson intones in commercials,
"Unfortunately, to have a new beginning, something else has to end." ("Like your career,"
one wag responded.)

Linguists at Languagehat.com ridicule Gibson's gloss, pointing out that the Greek word
apokalypto (?p??a??pt?) is actually a verb meaning 'uncover; disclose, reveal'.

Gibson's "translation" of the Greek word ?p??a??pt? as "new beginning" is ridiculous. As

you can see from the Liddell-Scott link, it's a verb meaning 'uncover; disclose, reveal'; the
last book of the New Testament is called ?p???????? ??????? 'John's revelation,' and this
gave rise to the modern meaning of apocalyptic.

Just as Gibson's use of Aramaic in The Passion of Christ sparked a burst of interest in that
language, some Maya are hoping Apocalypto will do the same for their tongue.

However, in The Passion, the use of Latin was not authentic. By that time, Latin,
originally the language of the area surrounding Rome, was spoken throughout Italy,
though even there it had not entirely replaced the indigenous languages. In Pompeii,
destroyed in 79 C.E., many of the street signs and graffiti are in Oscan, a language related
to Latin but quite distinct from it. Latin had also spread to some areas colonized by
Rome. However, in the Eastern Roman Empire, then as later, the lingua franca was not
Latin but Greek. Greek was widely used throughout the Mediterranean area before Rome
rose to power, and was extensively used in Rome itself. The upper classes were educated
by Greek-speaking slaves and often spoke Greek among themselves. Other people often
knew Greek through trade or by virtue of their contact with slaves, many of whom were
Greek-speaking. As Rome spread eastward, the Roman army enlisted soldiers for whom
Greek was the lingua franca. Thus, Greek was widely known in Israel and the
surrounding area and was also the dominant language of the occupying Roman army. It is
not an accident that most of the New Testament was written in Greek and that for the first
few centuries most Christians read the Hebrew Bible in Greek. A high-ranking Roman
like Pontius Pilate, educated in Rome, undoubtedly spoke both Latin and Greek, but very
few of the local people spoke Latin.

[ this was a slice-and dice of numerous articles on the film! MH.]