As English-speakers, we take it for granted that one can speak of, say “four birds” or “twenty-five books,” but this kind of numerical construction is impossible in the Mayan languages—between the number and the thing counted there has to be a numerical classifier, describing the class to which the object, animal, plant, or thing belongs. We have a glimmering of this sort of construction when we talk of “two flocks of geese” or “a pride of lions,” but this is pale stuff compared to the richness of Mayan classifiers. Colonial Yucatec dictionaries list dozens of these, but only a handful are still in use in today’s Yucatán, yet even these have to be interpreted even when the number itself might be in Spanish. If I see three horses in a pasture, I would count them as ox-tul tzimin (ox, three; -tul, classifier for animate things; tzimin, “horse” or “tapir”). However, if there were three stones lying in the same pasture, I would have to say ox-p’el tunich (ox, three; -p’el, classifier for inanimate things; tunich, “stone”).