Each village of a province was organized under a ruler, who was styled _halach uinic_, the true or real man. Frequently he was a junior member of the reigning family. He was assisted by a second in command, termed _ah kulel_, as a lieutenant, and various subordinate officials, whose duties will be explained in the notes to Nakuk Pech's narrative. Personal tenure of land did not exist. The town lands were divided out annually among the members of the community, as their wants required, the consumption of each adult being calculated at twenty loads (of a man) of maize each year, this being the staple food.[27-1] § 5. _Grammatical Observations._ Compared with many American languages, the Maya is simple in construction. It is analytic rather than synthetic; most of its roots are monosyllables or dissyllables, and the order of their arrangement is very similar to that in English. It has been observed that foreigners, coming to Yucatan, ignorant of both Spanish and Maya, acquire a conversational knowledge of the latter more readily than of the former.[28-1] An examination of the language explains this. Neither nouns nor adjectives undergo any change for gender, number or case. Before animate nouns the gender may be indicated by the prefixes _ah_ and _ix_, equivalent to the English _he_ and _she_ in such expressions as _he-bear_, _she-bear_. The plural particle is _ob_, which can be suffixed to animate nouns, but is in fact the third person plural of the personal pronoun. The conjugations of the verbs are four in number. All passives and neuters end in _l_, and also a certain number of active verbs; these form the first conjugation, while the remaining three are of active verbs only. The time-forms of the verb are three, the present, the aorist, and the future. Taking the verb _nacal_, to ascend, these forms are _nacal_, _naci_, _nacac_. The present indicative is:-- Nacal in cah, I ascend. Nacal á cah, thou ascendest. Nacal ú cah, he ascends. Nacal c cah, we ascend. Nacal a cah ex, you ascend. Nacal u cah ob, they ascend. When this form is analyzed, we discover that _in_, _á_, _ú_, _c_, _a-ex_, _u-ob_, are personal possessive pronouns, my, thy, his, our, your, their; and that _nacal_ and _cah_ are in fact verbal nouns standing in apposition. _Cah_, which is the sign of the present tense, means the doing, making, being occupied or busy at something. Hence _nacal in cah_, I ascend, is literally "the ascent, my being occupied with." The imperfect tense is merely the present with the additional verbal noun _cuchi_ added, as-- Nacal in cah cuchi, I was ascending. Nacal á cah cuchi, Thou wast ascending. etc. _Cuchi_ means carrying on, bearing along, and the imperfect may thus be rendered:-- "The ascent, my being occupied with, carrying on."