Join me Sunday June 28th at 1PM Eastern time as I conduct a full lecture on why the Coptic language is a totally separate language from Middle-Egyptian using the Mboli model. In 2010, Jean-Claude Mboli released a pivotal text titled _Origine des langues africaines: Essai d’application de la méthode comparative aux langues africaines anciennes et modernes_, in which he argued that Coptic was not the last stage of a language continuum, which included Old-Kingdom, Middle-Kingdom, New-Kingdom, and Demotic. But that Coptic was a separate language from a separate branch of the Negro-Egyptian language family conceived of by the great Dr. Theophile Obenga. This conclusion is controversial in Egyptological circles, and in this discussion my aim is to provide clarity to the arguments made in Mboli (2010). This is a full lecture, at least 2 hours, so I encourage everyone to take notes and have snacks ready. When the lecture is complete, I will add the time stamps for each section of the lecture so that it is easier to navigate for those catching the archives. So set your reminder, like, and share with friends and colleagues.
THE HISTORY AND LITERATURE OF THE ANCIENT EGYPTIAN AND COPTIC LANGUAGES by Dr. Boulos Ayad Ayad Department of Anthropology University of Colorado Boulder, CO September 2001
The Ancient Egyptian Language and Its Two Systems
The Spoken Language System: Some scholars hold that the ancient Egyptians had another language in addition to the written form. Father Shenouda Maher summarized the opinion of Chain concerning the popular national language of ancient Egypt, . . . in which he emphasizes that the Egyptian and Coptic languages have been together simultaneously since olden times. Chain has presented a copious and detailed study and has indicated that the Egyptian language is not a spoken language is so far as it is basically derived from Coptic, assuming that Coptic is the origin, and that the Egyptian language was used by the priests and the scribes in their written work only.
This means that the Egyptian language is the language of the Egyptian who spoke in Coptic and who used this language for scriptural purposes only. This Egyptian language was only known to scribes and totally unknown to the public.19
The two systems could be explained by assuming all Egyptian since very ancient times spoke one language, but this language took a different form when used in writing. The oral language was colloquial and used by the common people. Although the spoken language developed over time, it was not written during the rule of the pharaohs. As noted earlier, it was finally written in the third century A. D., utilizing the 31 letters from Greek and Demotic. Utilizing all of these letters allowed for the correct pronunciation of the written language, primarily because the ancient Egyptian did not include vowels.20
In any case, the Coptic language “is, at base, a dialect of Ancient Egyptian; many of the nouns and verbs found in the Hieroglyphic texts remain unchanged in Coptic, and a large number of others can, by making proper allowance for phonetic decay and dialectic differences, be identified without difficulty.
The Coptic Language Its Script, Dialects, and Literature
The importance of Coptic philologically is due to its being the only form of Egyptian in which the vowels are regularly written . . .. The vocabulary is very different from that of the older period and includes many Greek loan-words . . ..
The word order is more Greek than Egyptian . . . at all events it is extensively influenced by Greek biblical literature. The first entative efforts to transcribe the old Egyptian language into Greek letters belong to the second century A.D., and are of a pagan character (horoscopes, magical texts, and the like).22
Attempts toward Proto-Coptic: It is difficult to accept that the Egyptian language “is basically derived from Coptic, assuming that Coptic is the origin.”23 More usually, Coptic is considered a continuation of the ancient Egyptian language but written in with the Greek and Demotic alphabets in the third century A.D. There were some attempts to write the ancient Egyptian language using the Greek Alphabet before this time.
One of the oldest attempts to write verbal Egyptian (Proto-Coptic) with Greek script is the Heidelberg Papyrus no. 414 which goes back to the middle of the third century B.C. It contains a list of Coptic terms written with Greek script and a Greek-Coptic glossary, which is written by a Greek . . .. text, however, is a collection of Inscriptions at Abidos (Abydos) (the western side of Balyana), which is dated to the second century.24
Old Coptic: Father Shenouda continues his study concerning the development of the pronunciation system of the ancient Egyptian vocabulary, noting that “during the Roman period . . . an increasing number of Greek characters mixed with words derived from Demotic, most particularly in the cases where the accurate pronunciation of certain Egyptian terms is mostly needed.”25
As an example, Father Shenouda writes about the Munich Papyrus, the Egyptian Pagan Papyri dated from the second Century A.D., the London and Leiden Magical Papyrus dated in the third century A. D., and other magical papyri dated in the first three centuries A.D. Why are all these papyri written in Greek scripts with Demotic characters? Father Shenouda answers,
Writing in Greek script with Demotic characters is a safeguard in these magical papyri against mispronunciation of certain terms related to magic and the devils . . .. It becomes evident then that the above papyri which are known as Old Coptic and to which we refer in the Coptic dictionaries with this sign O evolved out of necessity among pagan groups before the appearance of Christianity in Egypt.26
The Dialects of the Coptic Language: The Coptic language was divided into different dialects according to the regions of Egypt and the length of the Nile Valley. Egyptians lived in varied places — around the marshes, close to the banks of the Nile, in oases, in cities, while many worked in agriculture and dwelt in villages. For this reason, we can trace the dialects in Egypt from the earliest time of the ancient Egyptian language until it appeared clearly and was written in the Greco-Roman era. From studying the early manuscripts and inscriptions onward, philologists have divided the Coptic language into Boheiric, and the Upper Egyptian dialects of Sahidic, Faiyumic, and Akhmimic, as well as secondary dialects that follow.Posts: 42921 | From: , | Registered: Jan 2010
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It does make one wonder why Coptic wasn't written in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, Phoenician, Canaan, Punic or the Lachish script?
quote: Abstract
This paper sketches the integration of Greek-origin loan verbs into the valency and transitivity patterns of Coptic (Afroasiatic, Egypt), arguing that transitivities are language-specific descriptive categories, and the comparison of donor-language transitivity with target-language transitivity reveals fine-grained degrees of loan-verb integration. Based on a comparison of Coptic Transitivity and Greek Transitivity, it is shown that Greek-origin loanwords are only partially integrated into the transitivity patterns of Coptic. Specifically, while Greek-origin loan verbs have the same coding properties as native verbs in terms of the A domain, i.e., Differential Subject Marking (dsm), they differ in important respects in terms of the P domain, i.e., Differential Object Marking (dom) and Differential Object Indexing (doi). A main result of this study is that language contact – specifically, massive lexical borrowing – can induce significant transitivity splits in a language’s lexicon and grammar. Furthermore, the findings of this study cast doubt on the usefulness of an overarching cross-linguistic category of transitivity.
~Eitan Grossman Language-Specific Transitivities in Contact: The Case of Coptic
quote: The Coptic language represents the last phase of the Ancient Egyptian phylum of the Afro-Asiatic language family, forming part of the longest con- tinuously documented human language on Earth. Despite its high value for historical, comparative and typological linguistics, as well as its cultural importance as the heritage language of Copts in Egypt and in the diaspora, digital resources for the study of Coptic have only recently become avail- able, while syntactically annotated data did not ex- ist until the beginning of the present project. This paper presents the first treebank of Coptic, con- structed within the UD framework and currently encompassing over 20,000 tokens. I
quote: The Coptic language is the final stage of the ancient Egyptian language, but it is written in the Greek alphabet, except for seven letters. The majority of Coptic words are taken from the ancient Egyptian language, with only two thousand words borrowed from Greek.
posted
Hey Asar have you published an ancient Egyptian dictionary? Also what do you make of ancient Egyptian linguistic diversity during dynastic times?
-------------------- Mahirap gisingin ang nagtutulog-tulugan. Posts: 26243 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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-------------------- It's not my burden to disabuse the ignorant of their wrong opinions Posts: 2699 | From: New York | Registered: Jun 2015
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