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Was ancient egyptian more related to Cushitic or was it more related to another Afrasian language like chadic, Semitic, omotic.?
Posts: 33 | From: U.S. | Registered: Jun 2010
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The Egyptian language is a northern Afro-Asiatic language closely related to the Berber and Semitic languages. Ancient Egyptian has 25 consonants similar to those of other Afro-Asiatic languages.
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^ Yes phonetically Egyptian does form a northern tier with Berber and Semitic called "Boreafrasian" by linguists like Carleton Hodge, while Chadic, Omotic, and Cushitic form their own southern or "Austrafrasian" tier. However such a division is simplistic and fails to take into account other affinities the same way the Centum or western division and Satem or eastern division of Indo-European fail to take into account minute relations that surpass such divisions. For example while Egyptian is phonetically closer to Berber, there is vocabulary shared with Chadic languages and grammar shared with Cushitic etc. Also, linguists have noticed that the To-Bedawi language of the Beja while previously classified as 'Cushitic', shows more affinities with Egyptian than with Agau and other northern Cushitic languages to which it was previously grouped.
Posts: 26307 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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^By no means is that even a consensus. People like Ehret still more closely associate Berber and Chadic than either with Egyptian, equating its speakers with the Capsians. On the other hand, Egyptian is older than both Berber and Semitic and thus, it shouldn't be necessary to play defense whenever somebody brings that up anyways. All roads lead to the Horn of Africa. Posts: 4021 | From: Bay Area, CA | Registered: Mar 2007
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^ My mistake. I was thinking of Chris Ehret when I wrote my post and confused Egyptian for Berber. You're right, it was between Berber and Chadic.
But the point is that one should not make broad generalizations on language relations based on one or two features like phonetics. Again, the same can be said about Indo-European where Greek is considered part of the centum or western division closer to Latin in terms of phonetics, yet its grammar and vocabulary has more in common with languages of the satem or eastern divion, namely Old Persian and Sanskrit. Due to similarities in historical significance I like to compare Egyptian of the Afrisian phylum to Greek of the Indo-European phylum, though the former and its phylum is much older than the latter.
Another problem with Egyptian is that just like Greek, it seems to be the only remaining member of its branch or subfamily. This leads many scholars to believe other sister tongues were lost or subsumed by the now dominant tongue, this may included languages spoken in the eastern and/or western deserts of Egypt let alone the unknown tongues spoken by the various 'Nubians' in the south. Without such languages, Egypt's exact relation cannot be placed with any entire certainty.
Posts: 26307 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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