Talk:Egyptian language/Archive 1

5AD/2AD and Cyrillic

What do all these '5AD' and '2AD' mean ? Certainly not yearly dates. --Taw 23:00, June 7, 2002‎ (UTC)

Finally, Coptic uses a modified version of the [Cyrillic Alphabet]? (Modern Greek, Russian and some Slavic languages still use this alphabet). It seems like complete misunderstanding of what does term 'Cyrillic' mean. Cyrillic means Slavic alphabets based on Greek alphabets. Probably the sentence should be "Coptic uses a modified version of the Greek Alphabet", but I don't know any Coptic, so I won't change it. --Taw 23:04, June 7, 2002‎ (UTC)

http://www.stshenouda.com/coptlang/coptalfa.htm shows the alphabet, it really looks more Greek than Cyrillic to me --JeLuF 23:22, June 7, 2002‎ (UTC)

"Cyrillic" is totally and utterly wrong. I've changed it. (Note that the date in "Arabic became the oficial Egyptian language after the Arabian invasions circa 2AD." is also totally and utterly wrong. If someone knows a correct date for that, please fix.) --Brion VIBBER 23:27, June 7, 2002‎ (UTC)

This article confuses "language" with "writing" and should be updated accordingly. --Nefertum17 11:00, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)

upon further reflection, why is all the detail on the writing system (and only one of them at that) covered here and not in Egyptian hieroglyph and hieratic --Nefertum17 11:19, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Anyone who knows about the Egyptian language in general: please come to Talk:Rosetta Stone and help rewrite the article. -- ran (talk) 01:00, July 15, 2005 (UTC)

Template?

Missing? Ksenon 05:25, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

Well, it could look something like this:

Egyptian
Region	Ancient Egypt
Extinct	developed into Demotic (until 5th century AD), and Coptic
Language family	Afro-Asiatic Egyptian
Writing system	hieroglyphic, hieratic and demotic
Language codes
ISO 639-2	egy
ISO 639-3	egy

--Gareth Hughes 13:44, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

egyptian languages

This link is self referential; it redirects to this page. Is it meant to link to a page about more general egyptian languages, or is it a mistake? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.187.106.148 (talk) 16:51, February 19, 2006‎ (UTC)

I just made it into a redirect to the more general Languages of Egypt, which I think is more sensible. Thanks for noting! — mark ✎ 08:33, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Note, however, that some links referring to the Egyptian subfamily of the Afro-asiatic languages also redirect here. I do not know if such a page actually exists. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.187.106.148 (talk) 22:50, February 21, 2006‎ (UTC)

I've changed it back. Egyptian languages (pl.) (or Copto-Egyptian) refers to both the ancient Egyptian Language and Coptic and is a sub-family of Afro-Asiatic. However Egyptian language (sing.) refers to only the ancient language. —Klompje7 11:45, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Makes sense. — mark ✎ 13:38, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Egyptian Wikipedia

Just wondering why there isn't an Egyptian Wikipedia. We have a Latin and Anglo Saxon one.--Fox Mccloud 23:18, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

It's all about the users. I'd question whether we need these Wikipedias, and especially the Anglo-Saxon Wikipedia (which can't seriously be claimed to be useful), but Anglo-Saxon has 600 articles and Latin over 4000. If you can get enough people who can write Ancient Egyptian together, it could be made. I question whether it will be as successful as Latin or AS, and whether it's really worth the time it would take.--Prosfilaes 04:57, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

I'd imagine the reason why Anglo Saxon and Gothic Language wikipedias exist is because it's fun for the people to make it in those languages, so it would be worth the time to them. Also, in this very article it says people, even now learn Egyptian.--Fox Mccloud 23:42, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

Would it have to be written in hieroglyphs, though?

Wikipedia (Wikipidia) in Egyptian hieroglyphs. - Ghelae^talk_contribs 18:08, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

It would be written in whatever script those who chose to write Egyptian would prefer.--Prosfilaes 20:20, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

transliteration

the article's consistency is generally a little bit in disarray.

We should't use ȝ (yogh) for "Aleph". Until there is a special codepoint reserved for the Egyptological symbol, we should just use 3 as is common usage. dab (�) 15:01, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

I suppose if we were looking for the 'two half rings' representation [1], we could use ˒͗ (U+02D2 U+0357), but that's not satisfactory as an encoding, nor will it likely render properly.

We could use � (U+1D7E5, "mathematical sans serif numeral three"), which will at least stand out from the numeral 3 in serif fonts, and will be more unambiguous, since the mathematical symbol is unlikely to occur together with Egyptological transliterations. But it is unlikely that it will render for many people, the only font I have that features the symbol is Code 2001. Another possibility would be ３ (U+FF13, "fullwidth digit three"). dab (�) 15:30, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

duh, I just realized that the 'yogh' transliteration is due to a suggestion by Institut Français d'Archéologie Orientale [2]. An unhappy proposition, if you asked me, but at least it is not homegrown on Wikipedia. We are under no obligation to follow this proposal, of course, and it will be short-lived anyway, since surely soon Unicode will deign to encode the character? dab (�) 16:12, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

found this discussion, [3]. I am sure Unicode will eventually provide codepoints for Egyptian alef, ayin and yodh. Not for yodh, maybe, since it is correctly encoded as an i with a combining diacritic, i͗ (ı͗). For alef, there is also ɜ, which is much closer to the real thing than yogh. dab (�) 17:13, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Ancient Egyptian and Arabic?

Why all of the comparisons between Arabic and ancient Egyptian? Arabic is a new language and there were other languages nearer to Egypt that was closer to the Egyptian language, like Beja, Berber, and Cushitic. All of these languages were contemporary with Ancient Egypt and were apart of the same family near the Nile Valley and surrounding areas, Arabic was developed else where and evolved from proto-semitic, ancient Egyptian was not a semitic language so I think it's better to compare the language with that of the Beja and Berber people. Who ever is writing this, please learn to use sources, that casts doubt on what you write on these articles when you have no sources.Taharqa 22:03, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

The inclusion of Arabic over any of the languages that you mentioned is simply because nobody (or nearly nobody) speaks those other languages. And the way you word your paragraph implies something incorrect, or at least to me. Just because Arabic is a Semitic language, it doesn't mean that they are unrelated; they're both a part of the Afro-Asiatic language family. It's like saying that because French and Spanish are unrelated, because they evolved in different places, even though they're still both Romance languages and descendant of Latin. Phsyron 00:28, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

The tradition of Spoken Coptic had once extincted or not!?

The article of The Daily Star of Egypt shows us that the existance of Coptic-speaking people is not the result of Coptic revival movement,but the result of a few people keeped using this language as their first language in the home.

The article shows that the Coptic-speaking woman named Mona Zaki learned this language from her mother.In her speach, she said "My parents passed the language down to me like their parents did before them".How is it possible if Coptic language in its spoken form had completely died in 17c!?

The article even says“Her dialect, however, differs slightly from the standard Coptic that is used for study and church services”,it means that her Coptic is not completely equal to standard,liturgical Coptic that are tried to revival,but a real survived Coptic in its Spoken form.

Please see the evidence! [[4]]YODAFON 12:54, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

It's a newspaper article and it looks dubious. Academic sources all cite Coptic as extinct. What may be happening here is that these few people know of one of the other dialects from that standardly used in church. It is also unclear from the article whether Coptic is the first language of these few, for, if it is not, then the language is most definitely extinct. There have been misunderstandings before over what is meant by an extinct language, and such misunderstandings help no one. Certainly, a newspaper article does not support the wider claims that you are making in this article. You should mention the newspaper article as a possible view, but not give it such weight as to dictate the current status of the article. — Gareth Hughes 13:09, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

I see what you would like to say.But it is a fact that there are a few people who "claim" to learned Spoken Coptic from their parents and I have another source which suggest survival of spoken Coptic.A professor of Oosaka foreingn language University named Hukuhara Nobuyoshi claims that he discovered an old woman speaking Coptic as her mother tongue(in Japanese language “エジプトでは，昨年見つけだすことが出来たコプト語話者の話を録音し，現代コプト語の基礎語彙，語彙・文法形態の基礎研究を行う).[[5]]Although it is uncertain whether Coptic has really survived as a spoken language or once extinct and revived, the existance of the theory of Coptic survival in its spoken form is a fact.

Shouldn't we write about the possibility of survived speakers of Coptic,if this theory is not widely accepted?YODAFON 13:23, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Is it their first language? The source does not say so. Therefore, the source does not actually give evidence that Coptic is not extinct. Instead there are plenty of sources, and more reliable ones, that tell that Coptic is extinct. I ask you to remove your controversial edits from the article, and then discuss how we should include the information from your flimsy source. You have not taken into account that such a source can be entirely wrong, and thus should not be accorded such weight as you give you it. As for the article's reliability, its understanding of the nature of Coptic and what constitutes language extinction is not strong at all. Remove your edits to both articles, because they overstate their material, and let us discuss how your material should be presented. It would be rather embarassing for Wikipedia to let your edits remain. — Gareth Hughes 13:37, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Ok,I agree with you.Let's discuss the article.YODAFON 13:40, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

The Japanese source is a little better, but it says that investigation could not ocurr because of health problems. I think that makes the issue on a far less solid footing than your edits to these articles are claiming. — Gareth Hughes 13:42, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Then,I'd like to ask you too.Do you agree to my claim that we should write about the possibility of Coptic survival?Though this theory is not widely accepted, there should be some description,I think.I agree to your claim that this sources may not be fully believable.YODAFON 13:53, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

It is worth mentioning it. I just came across this thread of a Coptic discussion group. There is a mixture of hope and cynicism there. The thread says that Ethnologue has covered the story, but it hasn't as far as I can see. There is talk about a member going to see Mona Zaki, but that doesn't seem to get anywhere. The most academic this has got is the Japanese source, and that is hesitant. It seems that the source of this information on the Internet is the Daily Star, and other sources are repeating it. — Gareth Hughes 14:20, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Citation for r n kmt

r in hieroglyphs

As regards what the glyph on the right represents [6], it is transliterated as r and conventionally translated as speech or language in the context of this phrase. It can mean mouth or utterance in a different context. The expression r n kmt is attested in, for example, the Story of Sinuhe; see section 13, lines 31-31 in this transcription. You can find references in the Wörterbuch der ägyptischen Sprache and Gardiner. As to how exactly it was pronounced, like much of Middle Egyptian, that's not entirely clear. It's an ideogram, so the glyph could have represented a syllabic /r/ or [er], or the word for mouth (Coptic rō). Because we don't know for sure, the word is transliterated simply as it appears. — Zerida 03:51, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Spoken language

Does anyone know how to translate words from English, French ... or any other language into Old or Middle Egyptian? Not in hieroglyphics, but the spoken language, like that at the beginning of the Stephen Sommers mummy films (although I am not entirely sure that the words spoken are correct) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.211.249.179 (talk) 15:52, February 25, 2006‎ (UTC)

Unfortunately, most mummies do not speak (if only they could!). Egyptologists have a system of transliteration of ancient Egyptian, but we are unsure how closely the letters we write correspond to spoken Egyptian of any period. For example, many of the vowels were not written, so in popular writing we add the letter e wherever we could do with an extra vowel — the Egyptian word neb, meaning 'lord', is written with a sign representing the two consonants n and b, the e just makes it pronouncable. On the other hand, you could look at Coptic, the last variety of Egyptian to become extinct, as we know quite a lot about how that is pronounced. — Gareth Hughes 21:15, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

In practice, we think we have a decent idea of how Egyptian was spoken, by comparative linguistics with other related languages, including Coptic, and by how Egyptian names were recorded in Greek and other languages. I don't know of any good modern sources for this, though.--Prosfilaes 07:04, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

See Ancient Egyptian by Antonio Loprieno (1995) and especially the references cited therein.Nabaati (talk) 16:09, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Egyptian in Egyptian

Is it known what the Ancient Egyptians called their language? We know they called their land Kmt (Kemet, Kimit, whatever) but do we know what they called their language? If we do, then why couldn't I find it on this page? Is, on the Coptic language page, met rem en kēme the name of the language or similar? - Ghelae^talk_contribs 18:14, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

The expression r n km.t is more common in earlier Egyptian. Literally, it translates as "language of Egypt". If written from left to right, it would look like this:

Coptic met rem en kēmə translates literally as "'thing' of the people of Egypt." It can be used as the noun 'Egyptian'. Crum's Coptic Dictionary also attests aspə em met rem en kēmə or "Egyptian language". The Coptic Church uses tenaspī en rem en kēmī based on liturgical Bohairic. — Zerida 23:45, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

It would make sense as

means 'mouth'. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 219.88.183.96 (talk)

How can I pronounce r n km.t? --Daniel bg 13:29, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

Based on the early Coptic /roʔ/ "mouth" and /kēmə/, it was probably *raʔ ni kúmat. The -t in the feminine ending was lost early on and u in stressed syllables became ē. TheLateDentarthurdent (talk) 19:23, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

Example text?

A short example text, with translation, would be a great addition to this article. I don't have one handy, or I'd add it myself. Anyone got one? Kwertii (talk) 21:04, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

There are so many choices. Any suggestions? — Zerida ☥ 23:00, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps a quotation from The book of the dead? I guess that E. A. Wallis Budge's book Egyptian language should be free to employ, since he died 73 years ago. It contains a number of sample hieroglyphic texts, with traditional egyptologist suggested translitterations, and literal translations into English. Of course, the book is old, and egyptology probable has advanced since then; but there might be few texts, which are both modern and copyright free, to choose from. JoergenB (talk) 11:42, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Non sequitur

The sentence,

However, we do not know what these vowels would have been, since like other Afro-Asiatic languages, Egyptian does not write vowels; hence "ankh" could represent either "life", "to live" or "living".

is a non sequitur as written. Probably information should be added about how the unwritten vowels marked the inflection or derivation of specific words from a root, but without that the sentence doesn't make sense. --Jim Henry 21:20, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

It's not possible to speak the Egyptian language, unfortunately. Without the vowels, we just have no idea how it was spoken. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 219.88.183.96 (talk) 23:59, October 9, 2006‎ (UTC)

That doesn't mean it can't be spoken - just not spoken accurately. The language is virtually complete, the only barrier to its being spoken is not knowing which vowels they used; there's nothing to stop speakers using the arbitrary vowel system that Egyptologists use for convenience.

Nuttyskin (talk) 14:26, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

---

That's not true. Coptic gives us this information thanks to a common linguistic process called internal reconstruction. There are books written on the topic of the reconstruction of Ancient Egyptian as well. We even know if the reconstructions are correct because of the many Egyptian names and words that were recorded in other languages of the time (like Assyrian for example) written in writing systems like cuneiform that *did* record vowels. Further, we know that Egyptian is closely related to the Semitic language family, so vowel reconstruction is even more secure thanks to comparisons with that language group.

The linguist consensus seems to be that Ancient Egyptian had three vowels,

• a,
• i and
• u, with long counterparts,
• ā,
• ī and
• ū, just like in Proto-Semitic. So when we see Coptic sašf meaning "seven", we know that the earlier Egyptian word was pronounced
• sáfḫaw. In the case of ȝnḫ "life", the corresponding Coptic word is ōnḫ which tells us that the first vowel in the Ancient Egyptian word was probably
• ā. --Glengordon01 04:40, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

---

By the way, Jim Henry is absolutely correct. A word like ȝnḫ had different vowels within the "consonant skeleton" depending on what it was used for, whether a noun "life" or a verb "to live", or whether it was conjugated in the present tense or the past, singular or plural. An example off the top of my head concerning vowel alternations in the language is

• nāṯaraw "god" versus plural
• naṯūraw "gods", which are both reflected in the writing with the skeleton nṯr. At least, this is according to Middle Egyptian by John B. Callender. Reconstructions may vary a little between authors.

--Glengordon01 04:52, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

---

Vocabulary

It would be nice if the article said something about vocabulary..size, number of roots, how many roots in common with Arabic, Hebrew etc. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pliny (talk • contribs) 10:44, June 1, 2006 (UTC)

Speaking it

I know how they found out what each word ment etc, but how did they know how the sounds should've sounded? Numbercattle 15:21, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

I'm an Egyptian man and i can help u learning egyptian lang. if u want just edit ur acception here ..:) —Preceding unsigned comment added by EarthForPeace (talk • contribs) 23:02, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Egyptological alef and ayin and yod

These now have Unicode code points. Should we not use them? -- Evertype·✆ 12:16, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

These now have Unicode code points. Should we not use them? -- Evertype·✆ 09:49, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

There were various transcriptions mixed together. I replaced with with Unicode, though I'm not positive I got the yod right. — kwami (talk) 15:04, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Vowels

I came to this article to find out about how the vowel system is reconstructed on the basis of Coptic and loanwords/foreign transcriptions. Nothing at all is said about this. Can someone please add such a discussion? Tibetologist (talk) 18:29, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Prepositions come before nouns

This isn't that big of a deal, but isn't it rather redundant to say that "In Egyptian, prepositions come before the noun"? If this weren't the case, we could call them postpositions, like in Japanese. Just saying... 98.64.228.117 (talk) 01:53, 27 July 2011 (UTC)Tom in Florida

Images not accessible over https

The images at wikihiero, e.g. hiero_Z1.png, are not accessible when you browse Wikipedia over https. They give a 403. On a somewhat related note, I wonder why Egyptian hieroglyphs are not rendered as text. Hieroglyphs are in Unicode since version 5.2, and font support problems could be easily overcome with a small webfont (CSS3 @font-face). --88.73.34.95 (talk) 14:23, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

desert?

the word "desert" comes from egyptian word dishert mean the same as desert. you could add it to egyptian words in english section. thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.68.19.254 (talk) 04:34, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

It's Latin for 'forsaken'. — kwami (talk) 15:06, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

I'm fairly sure I've run across arguments to the effect that the Latin must come from the Egyptian. Thanatosimii (talk) 04:08, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

That doesn't cut it. We need the sources. My sources have it coming from Latin dēserere 'to abandon, to sever', from de- plus ser-ere 'to join together, to arrange', from PIE *ser 'to line up', so unless PIE borrowed the verb ser from Egyptian (why?), it would seem unlikely. — kwami (talk) 05:05, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

Or the connection to PIE *ser is just a false cognate. Of course, we'd need sources either way if we're to add something to the article, but which is more unreasonable? That desert comes from the PIE verb ser, meaning "to line up," or that it comes from the Egyptian dSrt, meaning "desert"? Thanatosimii (talk) 19:23, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

The latter.

• Lat. dēsertus is morphologically complex, and analysable, and a member of a family of words with similar morphological compositions. For a loan to have chanced on such a form would be a coincidence (folk etymological reshaping notwithstanding).
• Latin words being inherited from PIE is the entirely normal state of affairs. On the other hand Latin had very little direct contact with Egyptian; the uncontroversial examples of borrowings listed in this article passed through Greek. What do you imagine the chain of transmission of dSr to have been?
• Semantic change happens; deal with it. It's not honest of you to set the sense of the PIE root against the sense of your contender; we should expect semantic shifts between PIE and Latin, not to mention that there are derivational operations here which are explicitly changing the sense. Indeed the basal sense of Egyptian dSr was "red", but that's not evidence in either direction either.

You'd do well to read something like [7], I think.

If you want sources for the Latin derivation, here's the OED, for one. 4pq1injbok (talk) 16:10, 26 June 2011 (UTC)

It's not my argument, so I'm not going to be called on to defend it. But it exists, and if someone finds a source, belongs in the article. There is no source, so no one's suggesting it be included at present, so I don't see why the students of PIE have gotten themselves in such a tiff over it. Dissenters exist, and you have better things to do than try to set them straight on a talk page. Thanatosimii (talk) 19:37, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

Date formats

In case there is dispute, I for one favour the recent change made by an IP to use BCE/CE formatting. -- Evertype·✆ 01:47, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

Hieroglyph(ic)s and Alphbet

Did (or do) the Egyptians have an alphabet? If they did (or do), was/is it integrated with the hieroglyphs (hieroglyphics, as I have almost always heard them called)? Allen (talk) 02:46, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

They did: the Egyptian uniliteral signs. But they were not a separate system, and were mostly used for grammatical endings, for sounding out other hieroglyphs, or for writing foreign names which did not have hieroglyphs. That is, they could have dumbed down their writing system and written alphabetically if they'd wanted to, but they didn't. — kwami (talk) 03:39, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

How can modern documents, books, etc. be translated into Egyptian, hieroglyphs or non? Allen (talk) 12:44, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

Old studies of Egyptian language

http://archive.org/search.php?query=subject%3A%22Egyptian%20language%22

Rajmaan (talk) 17:26, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

pronunciation of "h", "kh" and "th"?

The article says almost nothing about the pronunciation of "kh", except when it gives the example of tutankhamun. In the supposed 'authentic' solution given it seems that the "k" is not pronounced seperatly; so "kh" together becomes "ch" (like german). That's also like jan assman pronounces the "kh" in "akh" (blessed soul); he makes no distiction between "h" in "neheh" and "kh" in "serekh"; both sound like german "ch". so the pronounciation "akch" (german way) would be wrong... and how about ikhemu-sek ("the indestructibles" or circumpolar stars) in the scientific discourse? What are the correct and what would still be permissable solutions? (I'd prefer "akch" to distinguish the "kh" from the simple "h"... like an egyptologist in a movie did not pronounce hathor with an english "th" in the middle, but like [german] "hathoor" [oo meaning a long, guttural o] close to "hatchoor"...)

And how about "th", especially in "thoth"? The english scientists use their "th"; germans say "tot" with a short "o"...

Thank you! --HilmarHansWerner (talk) 19:08, 11 January 2017 (UTC)

Phonology and Vocalization Sources

While it is (in my humble oppinion) a wonderful work, and more readily available to the general public, Loprieno's "Ancient Egyptian - A Linguistic Introduction" ought not be the sole source referenced on questions of phonology or on the reconstruction of (hypothetical) vocalizations. James Lyman (talk) 18:17, 14 March 2017 (UTC)James Lyman

Definitely. Allen's 2013 Ancient Egyptian differs considerably in quite a few ways from the Loprieno version, and he takes Loprieno's arguments (RE: things like ejectives) into consideration. I'll work on including those interpretations. TheLateDentarthurdent (talk) 19:13, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

Egyptian pre-2700 B.C. ?

Any new theories of where Egyptian was first spoken along the Nile? Was it a southern-Egypt geography that migrated north, or vise-versa (replacing the local dialects)? Have any single words or group of words been found that allow linguists to give a more confident feeling about when the Old Egyptian language had been more or less 'finalized' and spoken? These - even if speculative - would be good points to add to the article, if papers or books have been published. 104.169.43.46 (talk) 02:42, 27 January 2019 (UTC)

Peribsen seal

Apparently, we are not giving the full reconstruction of Peribsen's seal. Kahl (2007:46), citing Kaplony Inschriften III fig. 368)

?

"The Golden One, he united the Two Lands for his son, the nsw-bit-king Per-ibsen" --dab (𒁳) 13:58, 24 November 2017 (UTC)

Indeed, the reconstruction in the article is not the entire thing. There’s a full transcription and translation (based on Kaplony 1964 and Kahl’s Frühägyptisches Wörterbuch, 2002) at wikt:User:Vorziblix/Old_Kingdom_inscriptions#Part_of_a_jar-seal_of_dull_grey_clay_with_a_seal-impression_of_Peribsen. Vorziblix (talk) 06:36, 27 January 2019 (UTC)

Self-appellation?

The infobox currently gives a "native name", transliterated as "r n km.t" (plus its rendering in hieroglyphs). This needs a source please. Where and how is such a self-appellation attested? Fut.Perf. ☼ 15:15, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

It’s a very rare term, attested in only one place: the Middle Egyptian Story of Sinuhe. The sole sentence containing it, found on lines 31–32 of the Papyrus Berlin 3022 version, runs ḏd.f n.j nfr tw ḥnꜥ.j sḏm.k r n kmt — ‘He said to me, “You will be happy with me; you’ll hear the language of Egypt.”’ For sources see the Wörterbuch der ägyptischen Sprache, vol. V, p. 127.15 and the corresponding slips in the Zettelarchiv, as well as lemma number 92900 in the Thesaurus Linguae Aegyptiae for attestation. In Late Egyptian different terms are used to refer to the language instead, namely mdwt kmt or mdwt rmṯ kmt. —Vorziblix (talk) 07:07, 27 January 2019 (UTC)

Page removal

Since Coptic and Demotic are distinguished from Egyptian the page should be renamed as Egyptian languages. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.74.66.56 (talk) 22:08, 28 September 2019 (UTC)

Not really. Demotic and Coptic are later forms of the Egyptian language. As a point of comparison, Old English and Middle English are past forms of the English language, but they are all "English". Having a different name doesn't make Demotic and Coptic somehow not Egyptian; Old English, for instance, is also known as Anglo-Saxon. A. Parrot (talk) 23:53, 28 September 2019 (UTC)

Parts unreadable due to font

Some parts of the text appear to require some (unspecified) special Egyptological or Coptic fonts to be installed for the signs to be displayed correctly - otherwise, empty squares are shown instead of the signs. In many cases, forms are given in Coptic script or in Egyptological transliteration without being accompanied by alternative romanisations or IPA transcriptions that would be displayed correctly on most modern computers. Since somebody who has such specialised fonts installed on his system is probably already familiar with Egyptian phonology, most readers trying to acquire information from this article are unlikely to already have these fonts.--77.85.55.14 (talk) 04:07, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

It's Unicode, from the codes used: Coptic (Unicode block), you can see the mapping here. It doesn't show up on my browser either, which is a shame since you'd think that a browser would come with all Unicode blocks already installed.--Bob not snob (talk) 07:51, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

Thanks! This does give me an idea of how I, personally, have to proceed if I want to expend the effort and disc space. Still, it would be better if readers in general weren't forced to do such a thing in the first place, considering that none of the major browsers seems to come with hieroglyphics installed in advance. I suppose that developers don't consider it sensible to encumber people's computers with all sorts of rare and exotic glyphs that they would hardly ever need to view.--77.85.55.14 (talk) 21:46, 9 April 2020 (UTC)

The alternative would be create images for each and every place these are used. I imagine this would make editing cumbersome.--Bob not snob (talk) 06:18, 16 April 2020 (UTC)

I added a box that informs of unicode supported needed.[8] Other pages use this too to inform.--Bob not snob (talk) 08:58, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

Better source on how long Egyptian survived?

The current source for the claim (under 'Era') that Egyptian is still colloquially spoken is a 2005 article by Joseph Mayton, which claims to refer to an interview he had with a Coptic speaker. However, Joseph Mayton is known for (and has been fired from the Guardian for) fabricating interviews, and I'm fairly sure the article is fake.

Are there any good alternative sources for when/if Egyptian stopped being spoken as a native language?

Yaldi5 (talk) 19:25, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing this out, Yaldi5. (For any other editors, I looked it up and found the Guardian's announcement about Mayton's fabrications.) Mayton isn't the only source, and I don't have time at the moment to look into each of the sources, but it's a surprisingly perennial problem around here. Reports of Coptic's survival keep cropping up, but the sourcing is never as solid as one would like for such a claim. I may look at it in more detail this evening. A. Parrot (talk) 20:24, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

Aside from Mayton and another source that didn't really address the use of Coptic outside church contexts, there were these three sources:

• https://www.egypttoday.com/Article/4/16207/Coptic-Ancient-language-still-spoken-today

• https://www.tellerreport.com/news/2019-09-09---%22zinnia%22----the-last-village-speaks-the-language-of-the-people-of-ancient-egypt-.HkZ-spq7IB.html

• https://cambridgelibrarycollection.wordpress.com/2011/01/24/coptic-%E2%80%93-living-or-dead/

I don't know how reliable any of them are. The closest thing to a scholarly source is the blog of the Cambridge Library, which points out that revival efforts seem to be muddying the waters over whether there are any truly native speakers of Coptic. It's also a ten-year-old blog post, and its only support for the number of revival speakers (about 300) is a now-dead link. I get the impression that the current use of Coptic a politically charged issue because of Egypt's pride in its past, much as, from what I understand, some people in India claim to be native speakers of Sanskrit. On the principle that it's better to omit possibly accurate information than to include inaccurate information, I've removed these sources and the text they support. I hope more solid sourcing can be found on this question. A. Parrot (talk) 01:05, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for removing the claim from the article! The issue was discussed on this reddit post. Someone brought up "Worrell’s 1937 Popular Traditions of the Coptic Language" as a reliable source for Coptic surviving at least into the 20th century. And AFAICT, the paper is referring to every-day native speakers, not just liturgical use. For example, Worrell describes a 'peasant' Coptic speaker Bistauros being embarrassed by his non-liturgical pronunciations, such as pronouncing [bāi] for what would more 'properly' be [ɛb'āi]. However, he also says that Coptic use at the time is 'more or less artificial'.

As for it surviving today, you're right that the sources do seem to be a bit more doubtful. The first of your three is from the same website as Mayton's article, which makes me a bit sceptical (although on the other hand, I wouldn't dismiss every Guardian article just because of Mayton having created some..). Yaldi5 (talk) 02:54, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

@Yaldi5: @A. Parrot: Much relevant information, including various quotations from contemporary accounts of the language shift can be found in the article Greek, Coptic and the ‘language of the Hijra’: the rise and decline of the Coptic language in late antique and medieval Egypt by Egyptologist/Coptologist Tonio Sebastian Richter.

On written Coptic:

• “...late Coptic letters, lists and accounts stop occurring after the eleventh century.”
• “The most long-lived genres of Coptic texts, composed until the thirteenth and even fourteenth century in the Upper Egyptian dialect, are scribal colophons, inscriptions and graffiti.”

On spoken Coptic:

• Pseudo-Samuel of Qalamun, 11th? century: “They are abandoning their beautiful Coptic language, in which the Holy Spirit has spoken many times through the mouths of the holy spiritual fathers, and they are teaching their children from infancy to speak the language of the Arabs ... Even the priests and monks - they as well - dare to speak in Arabic... and that within the sanctuary!... O my beloved children, what shall I say in these times, when readers in the Church do not understand what they are reading, or what they are saying, because they have forgotten their language?”
• Athanasius of Qus, 14th century: “Athanasius writes, the Egyptians ‘have forgotten their language...and it is very difficult for them to learn it’.”

The latest account of a native Coptic speaker that is widely taken to be credible comes from Jean Michel Vansleb writing in 1673:

• “A few days after, I craved acquaintance with the bishop of the city, called Amba Joannes; he is a very honest man, of a good life. He made me know a certain Coptie, named Muallim Athanasius, the only man of all the Upper Egypt that understood his natural tongue, that is, the Copties; but I could not benefit myself much by him, because he was deaf, and about fourscore years of age: nevertheless I had the satisfaction to behold that man, with whom the Copties language will be utterly lost.” Rhemmiel (talk) 06:31, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

Richter seems to be writing about the general course Coptic took toward extinction, which is fairly well established; I summarized it in Note 2 in the article on the decipherment of ancient Egyptian scripts. But the idea that native speakers of Coptic still live in remote parts of Upper Egypt, despite the obvious extinction of the language across most of the country, has been recurring for a long time, including in RSes. Thus, in writing the note I had to incorporate it (with some appropriate hedging). Erik Iversen in The Myth of Egypt and Its Hieroglyphs in European Tradition (1961, reprinted seemingly unchanged except a brief preface in 1993), says on page 90 that Vansleb's account "is undoubtedly exaggerated, as we have evidence that the language remained alive in certain Upper Egyptian communities almost to the present day." Iversen then has a footnote to Lehrbuch der Koptischen Grammatik (1951) by the eminent Egyptologist Georg Steindorff. I don't have that book and don't know what evidence Steindorff was using, or what exactly he said, and of course it wouldn't tell us about any developments since 1951.

My guess is that whatever Coptic speakers there may now be are either people who've picked up some of the language from the church or are a product of the small and artificial revival movement. The Cambridge Library blog post says "only a tiny number, estimated on this website at under 300, actually speak the language as their day-to-day vernacular (probably a lesser number than the scholars worldwide who study it), and the same website seems to indicate that this revival is artificial to the extent that its proponent had to learn Coptic himself before teaching it to his family and descendants." As for Steindorff's assertion about Coptic's survival into the 20th century, I wouldn't even guess about its accuracy without seeing exactly what he said and why. A. Parrot (talk) 07:33, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

Regarding the opposition in stops

We have "Early research had assumed that the opposition in stops was one of voicing, but it is now thought to be either one of tenuis and emphatic consonants, as in many Semitic languages, or one of aspirated and ejective consonants, as in many Cushitic languages" in the article, but despite that we use the traditional voicing opposition in the phonological table (and in other articles as well). I noticed it when tried to make any sense from Egyptian-Greek correspondencies (failed miserably, for example b, p and f seem to distribute themselves randomly between β, π/1st half of ψ, and φ). Could we do anything about this? Ain92 (talk) 11:52, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

Is Mesokemic the same as Middle Egyptian?

According to

https://cairo.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.5743/cairo/9789774166631.001.0001/upso-9789774166631-chapter-4

and

https://www.schoyencollection.com/bible-collection-foreword/coptic-bible/codex-schoyen-ms-2650

it is.

They call it the Coptic dialect of Oxyrhynchos/Oxyrhynchus or, Oxyrhynchite dialect of Coptic, or, simply Mesokemic.

Can anyone corroborate and update accordingly, please?

George Rodney Maruri Game (talk) 06:16, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

@George Rodney Maruri Game: Mesokemic, or Oxyrhynchite, is so named because it was spoken in Middle Egypt, a geographic region. Middle Egyptian is a stage of the Egyptian language from pharaonic times, so named because it was originally used during the Middle Kingdom of Egypt. It's an ancestor of Coptic, not a form of Coptic. A. Parrot (talk) 07:05, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply! So, to clarify things up... What you tell me is:

1. Mesokemic or, Oxyrhynchite, is a dialect of Coptic that was spoken in Middle Egypt BUT, it MUST NOT be called Middle Egyptian (which Frank Feder did in his book). Coptic is a descendant of Egyptian.

2. Middle Egyptian IS NOT the same as Coptic.

If so, would you, please, tell if Coptic was spoken during the same period Middle Egyptian was spoken. And, what is the form of Egyptian from which Coptic come? Archaic, Old or Middle Egyptian?

George Rodney Maruri Game (talk) 19:13, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

No, Coptic was not spoken at the same time as Middle Egyptian. Coptic came into use in the fourth century AD, whereas Middle Egyptian ceased to be spoken in about the fourteenth century BC, if not earlier. Coptic is descended from the Demotic stage of the Egyptian language, which is descended from Late Egyptian, which is descended from Middle Egyptian.

The issue gets a little complicated because people continued to write texts in Middle Egyptian for centuries after they had stopped speaking it, in much the same way that people in the Middle Ages continued to write texts in Medieval Latin, even though in everyday speech Latin had been replaced by its own descendants (Italian, Spanish, French, et cetera). But this artificial written form of Middle Egyptian was only used for texts in the hieroglyphic, hieratic, and sometimes demotic script, whereas the Coptic language emerged at the same time as the Coptic alphabet came into use, replacing the older scripts. I'm guessing that is why some authors feel comfortable calling the Coptic dialect from Middle Egypt "Middle Egyptian": the Mesokemic Coptic dialect and its far older Middle Egyptian ancestor were never in use at the same time, so there's less likelihood that they will be confused with each other. A. Parrot (talk) 23:43, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

Question about font

For some reason, after installing the recommended font, I can see hieroglyphs in these articles (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ptolemy_(name) and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_hieroglyphs) but not in this one. Does this article use a different font? Viciouspiggy (talk) 18:57, 28 July 2022 (UTC)