These refinements of analysis have, of course, nothing to do with the convenience of the language for practical purposes. As it has no dual, no inclusive and exclusive plurals, no articles nor substantive verb, no transitions, and few irregular verbs, its forms are quickly learned. It is not polysynthetic, at any rate, not more so than French, and its words undergo no such alteration by agglutination as in Aztec and Algonkin. Syncopated forms are indeed common, but to no greater extent than in colloquial English. The unit of the tongue remains the word, not the sentence, and we find no immeasurable words, expressing in themselves a whole paragraph, such as grammarians like to quote from the Eskimo, Aztec, Qquichua and other highly synthetic languages. The position of words in a sentence is not dissimilar from that in English. The adjective precedes the noun it qualifies, and sentences usually follow the formula, subject--verbal--object. Thus:-- _Hemac cu yacuntic Diose, utz uinic._ He who loves God, [is] good man. But transposition is allowable, as-- _Taachili u tzicic u yum uinic._ Generally obeys his father, a man. As shown in this last example, the genitive relation is indicated by the possessive pronoun, as it sometimes was in English, "John, his book;" but the Maya is "his book John," _u huun Juan_. Another method which is used for indicating the genitive and ablative relations is the termination _il_. This is called "the determinative ending," and denotes whose is the object named, or of what. It is occasionally varied to _al_ and _el_, to correspond to the last preceding vowel, but this "vocalic echo" is not common in Maya. While it denotes use, it does not convey the idea of ownership. Thus, _u cħeen in yum_, my father's well, means the well that belongs to my father; but _cħenel in yum_, my father's well, means the well from which he obtains water, but in which he has no proprietorship. Material used is indicated by this ending, as _xanil na_, a house of straw (_xan_, straw, _na_, house). Compound words are frequent, but except occasional syncope, the members of the compound undergo no change. There is little resembling the incapsulation (_emboitement_) that one sees in most American languages. Thus, midnight, _chumucakab_, is merely a union of _chumuc_, middle, and _akab_, night; dawn, _ahalcab_, is _ahal_, to awaken, _cab_, the world. While from the above brief sketch it will be seen that the Maya is free from many of the difficulties which present themselves in most American tongues, it is by no means devoid of others. In its _phonetics_, it possesses six elements which to the Spaniards were new. They are represented by the signs: cħ, k, pp, tħ, tz, ɔ.