·    No glyphs given in K&Hhttps:/​/​www.mesoweb.com/​resources/​handbook/​IMH2020.pdf Introduction to Maya Hieroglyphs (Kettunen & Helmke; 17th revised edition, 2020).

·    Variants (4):

o A. Full form:

§ Top:

·      Boulder with blunt ended crescent / bold-U (short sides) in the middle

·      Crescent points upwards

·      Crescent is optionally cross-hatched (perhaps to represent the greyness / darkness of a storm-cloud).

For further clarity, there may be a HA’ = “water” infixed/conflated into the boulder outline (again, perhaps representing the mass of water held in a storm-cloud).

§ Bottom: three triangular elements (optionally slightly rounded), each one either:

·      With parallel horizontal lines at an even distance from one another, or

·      Consisting of separate, stacked, (slightly curved) rectangles, decreasing in width as they go downwards, creating a triangular effect.

o B. Reduced form 1

§  In the appropriate context (e.g. in the name Yax Ha’al Chaak), just the HA’ can already write ha’al = “rain” (perhaps with the help of a la, but even without it):

§ This is, strictly speaking, not an actual logogram to write the word ha’al = “rain”. Instead, it’s really HA’ used to write ha’al with an optional la. The distinction between ha’ = “water” and ha’al = “rain” might be related to noun vs. adjective with ha’al being a substantivized adjective.

§ Perhaps the distinction between the two is more a product of categorization within European languages than their being intrinsically that different anyway.

o C. Reduced form 2:

§ The three triangular bottom elements of the full form, probably representing raindrops falling from a cloud.

o D. Reduced form 3:

§ A (mostly codical) form resembling three two-pronged forks, pointing upwards, and at a slight angle to the vertical.

§ “D” is clearly a “slim” version of “C” – groups of raindrops forming more a line than a triangle.

§ This can already be seen in the difference between MHD.XE3.1 (raindrops forming a triangular element (three elements in this case)) vs. MHD.XE3.3 (raindrops forming a single line element (two elements in this case)). I.e., MHD.XE3.3 is simply a “slim” version of MHD.XE3.1, but with two lots of raindrops instead of three.

§ It’s interesting to speculate that the Maya deliberately portrayed the drops as not falling straight downwards, to indicate the strong winds which are often associated with rainstorms, causing the raindrops to fall “at an angle”.