Egyptian language

This article is about the ancient Egyptian language. For the modern descendant of this language, see Coptic language. For the predominant language of modern Egypt, see Egyptian Arabic.
Egyptian

r n km.t
Region Ancient Egypt
Era evolved into Demotic by 600 BC, into Coptic by 200 CE, and was extinct by the 17th century or so.[1]
It survives as the liturgical language of the Christian Coptic Church.
Afro-Asiatic
  • Egyptian
hieroglyphs, cursive hieroglyphs, hieratic, demotic and Coptic (later, occasionally Arabic script in government translations)
Language codes
ISO 639-2 egy (also cop for Coptic)
ISO 639-3 egy (also cop for Coptic)
Glottolog egyp1246[2]
Linguasphere 11-AAA-a

Ebers Papyrus detailing treatment of asthma

Egyptian is the oldest known language of Egypt and a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. The earliest known complete sentence in the Egyptian language has been dated to about 2690 BC, making it one of the oldest recorded languages known, along with Sumerian.

Egyptian was spoken until the late 17th century CE in the form of Coptic. The national language of modern-day Egypt is Egyptian Arabic, which gradually replaced Coptic as the language of daily life in the centuries after the Muslim conquest of Egypt.[1]

Coptic is still used as the liturgical language of the Coptic Church. It has several hundred fluent speakers today.[3]

Classification

The Egyptian language belongs to the Afroasiatic language family.[4] Among the typological features of Egyptian that are typically Afroasiatic are: fusional morphology, consonantal lexical roots, a series of emphatic consonants, a three-vowel system /a i u/, nominal feminine suffix *-at, nominal m-, adjectival *-ī, and characteristic personal verbal affixes.[4] Of the other Afroasiatic branches, Egyptian shows its greatest affinities with Semitic, and to a lesser extent Cushitic.[5]

In Egyptian, the Proto-Afroasiatic voiced consonants */d z ð/ developed into pharyngeal ⟨ꜥ⟩ /ʕ/, e.g. Eg. ꜥr.t ‘portal’, Sem. *dalt ‘door’.[6] Afroasiatic */l/ merged with Egyptian ⟨n⟩, ⟨r⟩, ⟨ꜣ⟩, and ⟨j⟩ in the dialect on which the written language was based, while being preserved in other Egyptian varieties.[6] Original */k g ḳ/ palatalize to ⟨ṯ j ḏ⟩ in some environments and are preserved as ⟨k g q⟩ in others.[6]

Egyptian has many biradical and perhaps monoradical roots, in contrast to the Semitic preference for triradical roots.[7] Egyptian probably is more archaic in this regard, whereas Semitic likely underwent later regularizations converting roots into the triradical pattern.[7]

Although Egyptian is the oldest Afroasiatic language documented in written form, its morphological repertoire is greatly different from that of the rest of the Afroasiatic in general and Semitic in particular.[8] This suggests that Egyptian had already undergone radical changes from Proto-Afroasiatic before being recorded, that the Afroasiatic family has so far been studied with an excessively Semito-centric approach, or that Afroasiatic is a typological rather than genetic grouping of languages.[8] (The general consensus is that Afroasiatic is indeed a genetic grouping, and that Egyptian did in fact diverge greatly in its prerecorded history, although there is almost certainly a Semitic bias in Afroasiatic reconstruction.)

History

Seal impression from the tomb of Seth-Peribsen, containing the oldest known complete sentence in Egyptian

Scholars group the Egyptian language into six major chronological divisions:[9]

The earliest Egyptian glyphs date back to around 3300 BC.[10] These early texts are generally lumped together under the general term "Archaic Egyptian." They record names, titles and labels, but a few of them show morphological and syntactic features familiar from later, more complete, texts.[11]

Old Egyptian is dated from the oldest known complete sentence, found in the tomb of Seth-Peribsen and dated to around 2690 BC. Extensive texts appear from about 2600 BC.[11] Middle Egyptian was spoken from about 2000 BC for a further 700 years when Late Egyptian made its appearance; Middle Egyptian did, however, survive until the first few centuries AD as a written language, similar to the use of Latin during the Middle Ages and that of Classical Arabic today. Demotic Egyptian first appears about 650 BC and survived as a spoken language until the fifth century AD. Coptic Egyptian appeared in the fourth century AD and survived as a living language until the sixteenth century AD, when European scholars traveled to Egypt to learn it from native speakers during the Renaissance. It probably survived in the Egyptian countryside as a spoken language for several centuries after that. The Bohairic dialect of Coptic is still used by the Egyptian Christian Churches.

3rd-century Coptic inscription

Old, Middle, and Late Egyptian were all written using hieroglyphs and hieratic. Demotic was written using a script derived from hieratic; its appearance is vaguely similar to modern Arabic script and is also written from right to left (although the two hardly hold any relation). Coptic is written using the Coptic alphabet, a modified form of the Greek alphabet with a number of symbols borrowed from Demotic for sounds that did not occur in contemporary Greek.

Arabic became the language of Egypt's political administration soon after the Arab conquest in the seventh century AD, and gradually replaced Coptic as the language spoken by the populace. Today, Coptic survives as the liturgical language of the Coptic Orthodox Church and the Coptic Catholic Church.

The Bible contains some words, terms and names thought by scholars to be Egyptian in origin. An example of this is Zaphnath-Paaneah, the Egyptian name given to Joseph.

Dialects

Pre-Coptic Egyptian does not show great dialectal differences in the written language due to the centralized nature of Egyptian society.[12][13] However, they must have existed in speech; this is evidenced by a letter from c. 1200 BCE complaining that the language of a correspondent is as unintelligible as the speech of a northern Egyptian to a southerner.[12][13] Recently, some evidence of internal dialects has been found in pairs of similar words in Egyptian, which, based on similarities with later dialects of Coptic, may be derived from Northern and Southern dialects of Egyptian.[14] Written Coptic has five major dialects which differ mainly in graphic conventions, most notably the southern Saidic dialect which was the main classical dialect and the northern Bohairic dialect which is currently used in Coptic Church services.[12][13]

Orthography
sẖꜣ n mdw nṯr
in hieroglyphs
Some uniliteral signs and their transliterations[15]
Symbol Transliteration
Eur. trad. comp.
ꜣ ꜣ A
j ı͗ i
y y ii
ꜥ ꜥ a

Most surviving texts in the Egyptian language are primarily written on stone in the hieroglyphic script. However, in antiquity, the majority of texts were written on perishable papyrus in hieratic and (later) demotic, which are now lost. There was also a form of cursive hieroglyphic script used for religious documents on papyrus, such as the Book of the Dead in the Ramesside Period; this script was simpler to write than the hieroglyphs in stone inscriptions, but was not as cursive as hieratic, lacking the wide use of ligatures. Additionally, there was a variety of stone-cut hieratic known as lapidary hieratic. In the language's final stage of development, the Coptic alphabet replaced the older writing system. The native name for Egyptian hieroglyphic writing is sẖꜣ n mdw nṯr or "writing of the words of god". Hieroglyphs are employed in two ways in Egyptian texts: as ideograms that represent the idea depicted by the pictures; and more commonly as phonograms denoting their phonetic value.

Due to the fact that the phonetic realization of Egyptian cannot be known with certainty, Egyptologists use a system of transliteration to denote each sound which could be represented by a uniliteral hieroglyph.[16] The two systems which are still in common use are the traditional system and the European system; in addition a third system is used for computer input.[16]

Phonology

While the consonantal phonology of the Egyptian language may be reconstructed, its exact phonetics are unknown, and there are varying opinions on how to classify the individual phonemes. In addition, because Egyptian is also recorded over a full two millennia, the Archaic and Late stages being separated by the amount of time that separates Old Latin from modern Italian, it must be assumed that significant phonetic changes would have occurred over that time.

Phonologically, Egyptian contrasted labial, alveolar, palatal, velar, uvular, pharyngeal, and glottal consonants, in a distribution rather similar to that of Arabic. It also contrasted voiceless and emphatic consonants, as with other Afroasiatic languages, although exactly how the emphatic consonants were realized is not precisely known. Early research had assumed opposition in stops was one of voicing, but is now thought to either be one of tenuis and emphatic stops, as in many of the Semitic languages, or one of aspirated and ejective stops, as in many of the Cushitic languages.[17]

Since vowels were not written, reconstructions of the Egyptian vowel system are much more uncertain, relying mainly on the evidence from Coptic and foreign transcriptions of Egyptian personal and place names. The vocalization of Egyptian is partially known, largely on the basis of reconstruction from Coptic, in which the vowels are written. Recordings of Egyptian words in other languages provide an additional source of evidence. Scribal errors provide evidence of changes in pronunciation over time. The actual pronunciations reconstructed by such means are used only by a few specialists in the language. For all other purposes the Egyptological pronunciation is used, which is, of course, artificial and often bears little resemblance to what is known of how Egyptian was spoken.

Consonants

The following consonant system is posited for Archaic (before 2600 BC) and Old Egyptian (2686–2181 BC), with IPA equivalents in square brackets where they differ from the usual transcription scheme:

Early Egyptian consonants[18]
Labial Dental Post-
alveolar		 Palatal Velar Uvular Pharyn-
geal		 Glottal
Nasal m n
Stop voiceless p t ṯ [c] k q* ʔ
voiced b d* ḏ* [ɟ] ɡ*
Fricative voiceless f s š [ʃ] ẖ [ç] ḫ [χ] ḥ [ħ] h
voiced z* ꜣ (3) [ʁ] ꜥ (ʻ) ʕ
Approximant w l j
Trill r

*possibly unvoiced ejectives

The phoneme /l/ did not have an independent representation in the hieroglyphic orthography, and was frequently written with the sign for /n/ or /r/.[18] The probable explanation is that the standard for written Egyptian was based on a dialect in which former /l/ had merged with other sonorants.[6] /ʔ/ was rare and also not indicated orthographically.[18] The phoneme /j/ was written as ⟨j⟩ in initial position (⟨jt⟩ = */ˈjaːtVj/ 'father') and immediately after a stressed vowel (⟨bjn⟩ = */ˈbaːjin/ 'bad'), as ⟨jj⟩ word-medially immediately before a stressed vowel (⟨ḫꜥjjk⟩ = */χaʕˈjak/ 'you will appear'), and as null word-finally (⟨jt⟩ = /ˈjaːtvj/ 'father').[18]

In Middle Egyptian (2055–1650 BC), a number of consonantal shifts took place. By the beginning of the Middle Kingdom period, /z/ and /s/ had merged, and the graphemes ⟨s⟩ and ⟨z⟩ were used interchangeably.[19] In addition, /j/ had become /ʔ/ word-initially in an unstressed syllable (e.g. ⟨jwn⟩ /jaˈwin/ > */ʔaˈwin/ 'color) and following a stressed vowel (e.g. ⟨ḥjpw⟩ */ˈħujpvw/ > /ˈħeʔp(vw)/ '[the god] Apis').[20]

In Late Egyptian (1069–700 BC), the following changes are present: the phonemes d ḏ g gradually merge with their counterparts t ṯ k (⟨dbn⟩ */ˈdiːban/ > Akkadian transcription ti-ba-an 'dbn-weight'); ṯ ḏ often become /t d/, though they are retained in many lexemes; ꜣ becomes /ʔ/; and /t r j w/ become /ʔ/ at the end of a stressed syllable and eventually null word-finally (e.g. ⟨pḏ.t⟩ */ˈpiːɟat/ > Akk. transcription -pi-ta 'bow').[21]

More consonantal changes occurred in the first millennium BCE and the first centuries CE, leading to the Coptic language (1st–17th century AD). In Sahidic ẖ ḫ ḥ merged into ϣ š (most often from ḫ) and ϩ /h/ (most often ẖ ḥ).[22] Bohairic and Akhmimic are more conservative, having also a velar fricative /x/ (ϧ in Bohairic, ⳉ in Akhmimic).[22] Pharyngeal *ꜥ merged into glottal /ʔ/, after having affected the quality of surrounding vowels.[23] /ʔ/ is only indicated orthographically when following a stressed vowel, in which case it is marked by doubling the vowel letter (except in Bohairic), e.g. Akhmimic ⳉⲟⲟⲡ /xoʔp/, Sahidic & Lycopolitan ϣⲟⲟⲡ šoʔp, Bohairic ϣⲟⲡ šoʔp 'to be' < ḫpr.w */ˈχapraw/ 'has become'.[22][nb 1] The phoneme ⲃ /b/ probably was pronounced as a fricative [β], and became ⲡ /p/ after a stressed vowel in syllables which were closed in earlier Egyptian (compare ⲛⲟⲩⲃ < */ˈnaːbaw/ 'gold' and ⲧⲁⲡ < */dib/ 'horn').[22] The phonemes /d g z/ are only found in Greek borrowings, with rare exceptions triggered by a proximate /n/ (e.g. ⲁⲛⲍⲏⲃⲉ/ⲁⲛⲥⲏⲃⲉ < ꜥ.t n.t sbꜣ.w 'school').[22]

Earlier *d ḏ g q were preserved as ejective t' c' k' k' in prevocalic position in Coptic.[24] Despite the fact that these were written using the same graphemes as for the pulmonic stops (⟨ⲧ ϫ ⲕ⟩), their existence may be inferred based on the following evidence: The stops ⟨ⲡ ⲧ ϫ ⲕ⟩ /p t c k/ were allophonically aspirated [pʰ tʰ cʰ kʰ] before stressed vowels and sonorant consonants.[24] In Bohairic these allophones were written with the special graphemes ⟨ⲫ ⲑ ϭ ⲭ⟩, while other dialects did not mark aspiration, thus Sahidic ⲡⲣⲏ vs. Bohairic ⲫⲣⲏ 'the sun'.[24][nb 2] It then may be observed that Bohairic does not mark aspiration for reflexes of older *d ḏ g q, e.g. Sahidic & Bohairic ⲧⲁⲡ */dib/ 'horn'.[24] Similarly, the definite article ⲡ is unaspirated when a word beginning with a glottal stop follows, e.g. Bohairic ⲡ + ⲱⲡ > ⲡⲱⲡ 'the account'.[25]

The consonant system of Coptic is as follows:

Coptic consonants[26]
Labial Alveolar Palatal Velar Glottal
Nasal ⲙ
m		 ⲛ
n
Stop voiceless ⲡ (ⲫ)
p (pʰ)		 ⲧ (ⲑ)
t (tʰ)		 ϫ (ϭ)
dʒ (kʲ~tʃ)		 ⲕ (ⲭ)
k (kʰ)		 *
h
ejective ⲧ
tʼ		 ϫ
cʼ		 ⲕ
kʼ
voiced ⲇ
d		 ⲅ
ɡ
Fricative voiceless ϥ
f		 ⲥ
s		 ϣ
ʃ		 (ϧ, ⳉ)
(x)		 ϩ
ħ
voiced ⲃ
ʲ		 ⲍ
z
Approximant (ⲟ)ⲩ
w		 ⲗ
l		 (ⲉ)ⲓ
j
Trill ⲣ
r

*various orthographic representations; see above

Vowels

The following is the vowel system posited for earlier Egyptian:

Earlier Egyptian vowel system[20]
Front Back
Close i iː u uː
Open a aː

Vowels were always short in unstressed syllables (e.g. ⟨tpj⟩ = */taˈpij/ 'first'), long in open stressed syllables (e.g. ⟨rmṯ⟩ = */ˈraːmac/ 'man'), and either short or long in closed stressed syllables (e.g. ⟨jnn⟩ = */jaˈnan/ 'we' vs. ⟨mn⟩ = */maːn/ 'to stay').[27]

Late New Kingdom, after Ramses II i.e. c. 1200 BC: */ˈaː/ > */ˈoː/ (parallel to Canaanite vowel shift), e.g. ⟨ḥrw⟩ '(the god) Horus' */ħaːruw/ > */ħoːrə/ (Akkadian transcription: -ḫuru).[21] This provoked */uː/ > */eː/, e.g. ⟨šnj⟩ 'tree' */ʃuːn(?)j/ > */ʃeːnə/ (Akkadian transcription: -sini).[21]

Early New Kingdom: short stressed */ˈi/ > */ˈe/, e.g. ⟨mnj⟩ 'Menes' */maˈnij/ > */maˈneʔ/ (Akkadian transcription: ma-né-e).[21] Later, probably circa 1000–800 BC, short stressed */ˈu/ > */ˈe/, e.g. ⟨ḏꜥn.t⟩ 'Tanis' */ˈɟuʕnat/ was borrowed into Hebrew as *ṣuʕn but later transcribed as ⟨ṣe-e'-nu/ṣa-a'-nu⟩ in the Neo-Assyrian period.[28]

Unstressed vowels, especially after the stress, became */ə/, e.g. ⟨nfr⟩ 'good' */ˈnaːfir/ > */ˈnaːfə/ (Akkadian transcription -na-a-pa).[28] */iː/ > */eː/ next to /ʕ/ and /j/, e.g. ⟨wꜥw⟩ 'soldier' */wiːʕiw/ > */weːʕə/ (earlier Akkadian transcription: ú-i-ú, later: ú-e-eḫ).[28]

Egyptian vowel system circa 1000 BC[28]
Front Central Back
Close iː
Mid e eː ə oː
Open a

In Sahidic and Bohairic Coptic, Late Egyptian stressed */ˈa/ becomes */ˈo/ and */ˈe/ becomes /ˈa/, while in the other dialects these are preserved, e.g. ⟨sn⟩ */san/ 'brother' > SB ⟨son⟩, ALF ⟨san⟩; ⟨rn⟩ 'name' */rin/ > */ren/ > SB ⟨ran⟩, ALF ⟨ren⟩.[23] However, SB preserve */ˈa/ and Fayyumic renders it as ⟨e⟩ in the presence of guttural fricatives, e.g. ⟨ḏbꜥ⟩ '10000' */ˈbaʕ/ > SAL ⟨tba⟩, B ⟨tʰba⟩, F ⟨tbe⟩.[29] In Akhmimic and Lycopolitan, */ˈa/ becomes /ˈo/ before etymological /ʕ, ʔ/, e.g. ⟨jtrw⟩ 'river' */ˈjatraw/ >

Old */aː/ surfaces as /uː/ after nasals and occasionally other consonants, e.g. ⟨nṯr⟩ 'god' */ˈnaːcar/ > /ˈnuːte/ ⟨noute⟩ [30] /uː/ has acquired phonemic status, as evidenced by minimal pairs like 'to approach' ⟨hôn⟩ /hoːn/ < */ˈçaːnan/ ẖnn vs. 'inside' ⟨houn⟩ /huːn/ < */ˈçaːnaw/ ẖnw.[31] Etymological */uː/ > */eː/ often surfaces as /iː/ next to /r/ and after etymological pharyngeals, e.g. SL ⟨hir⟩ < */χuːr/ 'street' (Semitic loan).[31]

Most Coptic dialects have two phonemic vowels in unstressed position.[31] Unstressed vowels generally became /ə/, written as ⟨e⟩ or null (⟨i⟩ in Bohairic and Fayyumic word-finally), but pretonic unstressed /a/ occurs as a reflex of earlier unstressed */e/ in proximity to an etymological pharyngeal, velar, or sonant (e.g. 'to become many' ⟨ašai⟩ < ꜥšꜣ */ʕiˈʃiʀ/), or unstressed */a/.[31] Pretonic [i] is underlyingly /əj/, e.g. S 'ibis' ⟨hibôi⟩ < h(j)bj.w */hijˈbaːj?w/.[31]

Thus the following is the Sahidic vowel system c. 400 AD:

Sahidic vowel system circa 400 AD[23]
Stressed Unstressed
Front Back Central
Close iː uː
Mid e eː o oː ə
Open a

Phonotactics

Earlier Egyptian had syllable structure CV(:)(C), where V was long in open, stressed syllables and short elsewhere.[27] In addition, syllables of the type CV:C or CVCC could occur in word-final, stressed position.[27] However CV:C only occurred in the infinitive of biconsonantal verbal roots, and CVCC only in some plurals.[27][28] In later Egyptian stressed CV:C, CVCC, and CV became much more common because of the loss of final dentals and glides.[28]

Stress

Earlier Egyptian: penultimate or ultimate.[32] According to some scholars this is a development from a stage in proto-Egyptian where the antepenult could be stressed; this was lost as open posttonic syllables lost their vowels, e.g. */ˈχupiraw/ > */ˈχupraw/ 'transformation'.[32]

Egyptological pronunciation

As a convention, Egyptologists make use of an "Egyptological pronunciation" in English, in which the consonants are given fixed values and vowels are inserted in accordance with essentially arbitrary rules. Two consonants, alef and the ayin, are generally pronounced /ɑː/. The yodh is pronounced /iː/, and w /uː/. Between other consonants, /ɛ/ is then inserted. Thus, for example, the Egyptian king whose name is most accurately transliterated as Rꜥ-ms-sw is transcribed as "Ramesses", meaning "Ra has Fashioned (lit., "Borne") Him". In transcription, ⟨a⟩, ⟨i⟩, and ⟨u⟩ all represent consonants; for example, the name Tutankhamen (1341–1323 BC) was written in Egyptian twt-ꜥnḫ-ı͗mn. Experts have assigned generic sounds to these values as a matter of convenience, but this artificial pronunciation should not be mistaken for how Egyptian was actually pronounced at any point in time. For example, twt-ꜥnḫ-ı͗mn is conventionally pronounced /tuːtən.ˈkɑːmən/ in English, but in his time was likely realized as something like *[taˈwaːt ˈʕaːnxu ʔaˈmaːn].[33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40]

Grammar

Morphology

Egyptian is a fairly typical Afroasiatic language. At the heart of Egyptian vocabulary is a root of three consonants. Sometimes there were only two, for example rꜥ [riːʕa] "sun" (where the [ʕ] is thought to have been something like a voiced pharyngeal fricative), but larger roots are also common, some being as large as five: sḫdḫd "be upside-down". Vowels and other consonants were then inserted into the consonantal skeleton in order to derive different meanings, in the same way as Arabic, Hebrew, and other Afroasiatic languages do today. However, because vowels (and sometimes glides) were not written in any Egyptian script except Coptic, it can be difficult to reconstruct the actual forms of words; hence orthographic ⟨stp⟩ "to choose", for example, could represent the stative (as the stative endings can be left unexpressed) or imperfective verb forms or even a verbal noun (i. e., "a choosing").

Nouns

Egyptian nouns can be either masculine or feminine (indicated as with other Afroasiatic languages by adding a -t), and singular, plural (-w / -wt), or dual (-wy / -ty).

Articles (both definite and indefinite) did not develop until Late Egyptian, but are used widely thereafter.

Pronouns

Egyptian has three different types of personal pronouns: suffix, enclitic (called "dependent" by Egyptologists) and independent pronouns. It also has a number of verbal endings added to the infinitive to form the stative, which are regarded by some linguists[41] as a "fourth" set of personal pronouns. They bear close resemblance to their Semitic counterparts. The three main sets of personal pronouns are as follows:

Suffix Dependent Independent
1st s. -ı͗ wı͗ ı͗nk
2nd s.m. -k tw ntk
2nd s.f. -t tn ntt
3rd s.m. -f sw ntf
3rd s.f. -s sy nts
1st p. -n n ı͗nn
2nd p. -tn tn nttn
3rd p. -sn sn ntsn

It also has demonstrative pronouns (this, that, these and those), in masculine, feminine, and common plural:

Mas. Fem. Plu.
pn tn nn "this, that, these, those"
pf tf nf "that, those"
pw tw nw "this, that, these, those" (archaic)
pꜣ tꜣ nꜣ "this, that, these, those" (colloquial [earlier] and Late Egyptian)

Finally there are interrogative pronouns (what, who, etc.).They also bear close resemblance to their Semitic and Berber counterparts

mı͗ "who? what?" (dependent)
ptr "who? what?" (independent)
iḫ "what?" (dependent)
ı͗šst "what?" (independent)
zı͗ "which?" (independent and dependent)

Verbs

The verbal morphology Egyptian can be divided into finite and non-finite forms. Finite verbs convey person, tense/aspect, mood, and voice. Each is indicated by a set of affixal morphemes attached to the verb: the basic conjugation is sḏm.f 'he hears'. The non-finite forms occur without a subject and they are the infinitive, the participles and the negative infinitive, which Gardiner calls "negatival complement". There are two main tenses/aspects in Egyptian: past and temporally unmarked imperfective and aorist forms. The latter are determined from their syntactic context.

Adjectives

Adjectives agree in gender and number with their nouns, for example: s nfr "(the) good man" and st nfrt "(the) good woman".

Attributive adjectives used in phrases fall after the noun they are modifying, such as in "(the) great god" (nṯr ꜥꜣ). However, when used independently as a predicate in an adjectival phrase, such as "(the) god (is) great" (ꜥꜣ nṯr) (lit., "great (is the) god"), the adjective precedes the noun.

Prepositions

Egyptian adpositions come before the noun.

m "in, as, with, from"
n "to, for"
r "to, at"
ı͗n "by"
ḥnꜥ "with"
mı͗ "like"
ḥr "on, upon"
ḥꜣ "behind, around"
ẖr "under"
tp "atop"
ḏr "since"

Adverbs

Adverbs are words such as "here" or "where?". In Egyptian, they come at the end of a sentence, e.g., zı͗.n nṯr ı͗m "the god went there", "there" (ı͗m) is the adverb.

Some common Egyptian adverbs:

ꜥꜣ "here"
ı͗m "there"
ṯnı͗ "where"
zy-nw "when" (lit. "what moment")
mı͗-ı͗ḫ "how" (lit. "like-what")
r-mı͗ "why" (lit. "for what")
ḫnt "before"

Syntax

Classical Egyptian's basic word order is verb–subject–object; this pattern holds true for Old Egyptian and Middle Egyptian. However, it is not true for the later stages of the language's development, including Late Egyptian, Demotic and Coptic. The equivalent to "the man opens the door", would be a sentence corresponding to "opens the man the door" (wn s ꜥꜣ). It uses the so-called status constructus to combine two or more nouns to express the genitive, similar to Semitic and Berber languages. The early stages of Egyptian possessed no articles (no words for "the" or "a"), but later forms used the words pꜣ, tꜣ and nꜣ. Like other Afroasiatic languages, Egyptian uses two grammatical genders, masculine and feminine. It also uses three grammatical numbers, contrasting singular, dual, and plural forms, but there is a tendency for the loss of the dual as a productive form in later Egyptian.

Vocabulary

While Egyptian culture is one of the influences of Western civilization, few words of Egyptian origin are found in English. Even those associated with ancient Egypt were usually transmitted in Greek forms. Some examples of Egyptian words that have survived in English include ebony (Egyptian hbny, via Greek and then Latin), ivory (Egyptian abw / abu, literally 'ivory; elephant'), pharaoh (Egyptian pr-ꜥꜣ, literally "great house"; transmitted through Greek), as well as the proper names Phinehas (Egyptian, pꜣ-nḥsy, used as a generic term for Nubian foreigners) and Susan (Egyptian, sšn, literally "lily flower"; probably transmitted first from Egyptian into Hebrew Shoshanah).[42]

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ There is still evidence that Bohairic had a phonemic glottal stop, see Loprieno (1995:44).
  2. ↑ In the other dialects these graphemes were designated only for clusters of stop+/h/ and thus were not used for aspirates, see Loprieno (1995:248).

References

  1. 1 2 The language may have survived in isolated pockets in Upper Egypt into the 19th century according to James Edward Quibell, "When did Coptic become extinct?" in Zeitschrift für ägyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde, 39 (1901), p. 87.
  2. ↑ Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Egyptian (Ancient)". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
  3. ↑ "Coptic language’s last survivors". Daily Star Egypt, December 10, 2005 (archived)
  4. 1 2 Loprieno (1995:1)
  5. ↑ Loprieno (1995:5)
  6. 1 2 3 4 Loprieno (1995:31)
  7. 1 2 Loprieno (1995:52)
  8. 1 2 Loprieno (1995:51)
  9. ↑ Bard, Kathryn A.; Steven Blake Shubert (1999). Encyclopedia of the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt. Routledge. p. 325. ISBN 0-415-18589-0.
  10. ↑ Richard Mattessich (2002). "The oldest writings, and inventory tags of Egypt". Accounting Historians Journal 29 (1): 195–208. JSTOR 40698264.
  11. 1 2 Allen, James P. (2003). The Ancient Egyptian Language. Cambridge University Press. pp. 2–3. ISBN 978-1-107-66467-8.
  12. 1 2 3 Allen (2000:2)
  13. 1 2 3 Loprieno (1995:8)
  14. ↑ Satzinger (in press:10)
  15. ↑ Allen (2000:14–15)
  16. 1 2 Allen (2000:13)
  17. ↑ see Egyptian Phonology by Carsten Peust for a review of the history of thinking on the subject. Note that his reconstructions of words are non-standard.
  18. 1 2 3 4 Loprieno (1995:33)
  19. ↑ Loprieno (1995:34)
  20. 1 2 Loprieno (1995:35)
  21. 1 2 3 4 Loprieno (1995:38)
  22. 1 2 3 4 5 Loprieno (1995:41)
  23. 1 2 3 Loprieno (1995:46)
  24. 1 2 3 4 Loprieno (1995:42)
  25. ↑ Loprieno (1995:43)
  26. ↑ Loprieno (1995:40–42)
  27. 1 2 3 4 Loprieno (1995:36)
  28. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Loprieno (1995:39)
  29. 1 2 3 4 5 Loprieno (1995:47)
  30. ↑ Loprieno (1995:47–48)
  31. 1 2 3 4 5 Loprieno (1995:48)
  32. 1 2 Loprieno (1995:37)
  33. ↑ Vycichl, W. Dictionnaire Étymologique de la Langue Copte, Leuven 1983, pp. 10, 224, 250
  34. ↑ Vycichl, W. La vocalisation de la langue égyptienne, IFAO, Le Caire (Cairo) (1990), p. 215
  35. ↑ Fecht, G. Wortakzent und Silbenstruktur - Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der ägyptischen Sprache, Glückstadt-Hamburg-New York (1960), §§ 112 A. 194, 254 A. 395
  36. ↑ Osing, J. Die Nominalbildung des Ägyptischen. Deutsches archäologisches Institut, Abteilung Kairo (1976)
  37. ↑ Schenkel, W. "Zur Rekonstruktion deverbalen Nominalbildung des Ägyptischen", Harrasowitz, Wiesbaden. 1983, pp. 212, 214,247
  38. ↑ Vergote, Jozef. "Grammaire Copte". Louvain : Peters, 1973-1983
  39. ↑ Loprieno, A. Ancient Egyptian - A Linguistic Introduction, Cambridge University Press (1995)
  40. ↑ Allen, J. The Ancient Egyptian Language: An Historical Study, Cambridge (2013)
  41. ↑ Loprieno 1995, p. 65
  42. ↑ EGYPTIAN LOAN-WORDS IN ENGLISH

Bibliography

Literature

Overviews

Grammars

Dictionaries

Online dictionaries

Important Note: the old grammars and dictionaries of E. A. Wallis Budge have long been considered obsolete by Egyptologists, even though these books are still available for purchase.

More book information is available at Glyphs and Grammars

External links

Egyptian language repository of Wikisource, the free library
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