Egyptian Language Report
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Egyptian Language Report 2010 © Caroline Seawright © Caroline Seawright LIN1NLB 2010 Egyptian Language Report http://www.thekeep.org/~kunoichi/kunoichi/themestream/LIN1NLB.html 1 Egyptian Language Report 2010 © Caroline Seawright Egyptian is an extinct Afroasiatic language which was spoken in pharaonic Egypt. The endangered Coptic language is considered to be the final phase of ancient Egyptian. Phonemic, syllabic and morphosyntactic changes divided the language into various phases including early Egyptian, late Egyptian and Coptic. Despite these historical changes and the omission of vowels from ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, there is enough information available to show that it was an accusative, fusional, Verb-Subject-Object language. It had a prepositional construction and used nouns, verbs and adjectives, but not articles. Although its pronunciation has been lost, scholars have used Coptic as the basis for reconstructing the ancient tongue. Thanks to the work of Egyptologists and linguists around the world, this fascinating language can be appreciated today. According to the Ethnologue website (2009), Egyptian is an ancient language with no living mother-tongue speakers. The Linguist List website (2010) confirms that it is an extinct language of the Afroasiatic family, belonging to the subgroup Egyptian. Allen (2010, p. 1) argues that it belonged the Afroasiatic (Hamito-Semitic) family, with links to both north African (Hamitic) language like Berber and Hausa, and Asiatic (Semitic) languages like Arabic, Ethiopic and Hebrew. Where the north African and Asiatic language connections differ, Egyptian tends to have closer links to the African languages. The important languages of the near east, bar Sumerian and Hittite, belong to the Afroasiatic family. The Egyptian language did not remain static throughout history. As Allen (2010, p. 1) argues, the language went through a number of major phases, linked to major political and religious changes. Old Egyptian was spoken during the Old Kingdom, from roughly 2600 BC until 2100 BC. The First Intermediate Period, where Egyptian rule was split between the north and the south, came between the Old and Middle Kingdom. Middle Egyptian emerged around 2100 BC, and survived as a spoken language for about five hundred years. The Second Intermediate 2 Egyptian Language Report 2010 © Caroline Seawright Period followed the Middle Kingdom. This was a time when the Hyksos ruled Egypt; the resumption of Egyptian rule marks the start of the New Kingdom. Late Egyptian became the spoken language during this period, around 1600 BC, and remained in use until about 600 BC when Egypt entered the Third Intermediate Period and the country was split by Egyptian rule in the north and Nubian rule in the south. The Late Period followed, and the Demotic phase of the Egyptian language first appeared around 650 BC, and survived as a language into the Late Period and on into the Greco-Roman period. At the end of the first century AD, the final phase of Egyptian - Coptic - appeared. It was a living language for nearly a thousand years before it became endangered. It is now almost extinct. These extensive changes were made during the period in which Egyptian was a living, spoken language. © LookLex Ltd. website 2008 As ancient Egyptian is an extinct language, it has no speakers. However, according to Egypt’s Daily Star, there are two families who speak a colloquial dialect of Coptic in everyday communication with each other (Mayton, 2005). Fishman recalls how, when he was in Egypt, he 3 Egyptian Language Report 2010 © Caroline Seawright spent time with “a Coptic gentleman who was one of a small group that was speaking Coptic to their children.” (2007, p. 167). The few speakers of Coptic in Egypt are bilingual as they live in a country of Arabic speakers. The official languages of Egypt are Standard Arabic and Egyptian Spoken Arabic (Ethnologue website 2009), so the members of the families who speak Coptic would therefore be bilingual outside of the home out of necessity; the Coptic community in Egypt speak Arabic (Khanam 2005, p. 169). “The Copts consider themselves to be the true descendents of the pharaohs” (van Doorn-Harder 1995, p. 27). While many Copts still know some liturgical phrases, but the Coptic language itself is no longer the spoken language of the community (Brenzinger 2007, p. 130). © Coptic Cairo website © TravelPod website 2010 Phonology The ancient Egyptian writing system rarely recorded semivocalic phonemes and vowels and so, as Loprieno notes, the “reconstruction of the phonological inventory and of the phonetic values in any period of the history of Egyptian is bound to remain hypothetical” (1995, p. 28). He argues that the phonemes of the language (/x/) cannot represent all spoken realisations (his suggested realisations are marked as [x]) and so it is problematic to attempt minimal pairing of this language (1995, p. 30). Egyptologists and linguists have recreated Egyptian consonantal and vocalic phonemes at various points throughout its history. Egyptian phonemes at the beginning of the Old Kingdom: 4 Egyptian Language Report Consonants Bilabial / Labiodental 2010 Dental Palatalalveolar Palatal © Caroline Seawright Velar Uvular Pharyngeal Glottal Stops Voiceless Voiced πͺ p /p/ [p(h)] π t /t/ πΏ t /c/ π‘ k /k/ [t(h)] [c(h)] [k(h)] π b /b/ π§ d /d/ π d /Ι/ π½ g /g/ π f /f/ π΄ s /s/ π š /Κ/ [s ] [t’] [c’] π q /q/ /Κ/** [q(h)] [k’] Fricatives Voiceless π αΈ« /χ/ π αΈ₯ /Δ§/ π h /h/ π ΚΏ /Κ/ [s’] π m /m/ π n /n/ π r /r/ Trills πΏ κ’ /R/ [r] π/l/* Laterals Glides π‘ h /ç/ π z /z/ Voiced Nasals j π j /j/ π ± w /w/ (After Allen 2010, p. 14 and Loprieno 1995, p. 33) * Borbola notes the hieroglyph π was /ru/ during the Middle Kingdom, but by the time of the Ptolemys, it had come to represent /l/ (2009, p. 136) ** Loprieno suggests that /Κ/ represented both the result of the evolution of /R/ to /Κ/, and of /j/ to /Κ/ between two vowels in post-tonic position and before an unstressed vowel in initial position (1995, p. 33) Vowels Short Long Front /i/ /i:/ Central /a/ /a:/ Back /u/ /u:/ (After Loprieno 1995, p. 35) Minor changes to the consonants had occurred by the end of the New Kingdom. This included neutralisation of velar and dental voiced and voiceless phonemes; production of palatal phonemes at frontal parts of the oral cavity and acquired dental realisations; dentals /t/ and /r/ and glides /j/ and /w/ leniated to /Κ/ at the end of stressed syllables or to /ø/ at the end of words; and the uvular trill /R/ became a glottal stop /Κ/ which merged with the glottal of the former /j/ glide (Loprieno 1995, p. 38). 5 Egyptian Language Report 2010 © Caroline Seawright However, by the later period of the New Kingdom, the vowels had completely shifted: Vowels Short Long Front /e/ /i:/ Central /Ι/ /e:/ Back /a/ /o:/ (After Loprieno 1995, p. 39) By the Coptic phase, both the place and manner of articulation had changed for many consonants: Consonants Bilabial / Labiodental Palatalalveolar Dental Palatal Velar Pharyn-geal Glottal Stops Palatalised Voiceless Ο /kj/ Π /p/ [p(h)] ⲧ /t/ [t(h)] Ο« /c/ [c(h)] β² /k/ [k(h)] ⲧ /d/ [t’] Ο« /Ι/ [c’] β² /g/ [k’] Ejective [Voiced] Ο /b/ [β] β² /d/ [d] Ο₯ /f/ β²₯ /s/ /Κ/ β² /g/ [g] Fricatives Voiceless [Voiced] Nasals β² /z/ β² /m/ β²£/r/ Laterals β² /l/ (β²)ⲩ /w/ (β²)β² /j/ (After Loprieno 1995, p. 40) Coptic vowels from around 400 BC show another major vocalic shift: Vowels Unstressed Stressed Short Long <(β²)Ι> /i:/ Front <β²>, <Ø> /e/ <β²>, <Ø> /Ι/ Central <Η> /e:/ <β²> /a/ <β²> /a/ Ο© /h/ /Κ/ β² /n/ Trills Glides /x/ Ο£ /Κ/ <Ω> /o:/ 6 Egyptian Language Report 2010 © Caroline Seawright <β²> /o/ Back <β²β²©> /u:/ (After Loprieno 1995, p. 46) There were also key syllabic shifts as the language changed through time (Loprieno 1995, pp. 3749). The syllable structure at the beginning of the Old Kingdom: Syllabic structure Pretonic Tonic Posttonic Open $CV$ $’CV:$ ($CV#) * Closed $CVC$ $’CVC$ $CVC# Doubly-closed ($’CVCC#) * Long $’CV:C# (After Loprieno 1995, p. 37) * Loprieno notes the open posttonic and doubly-closed tonic syllables included in parenthesis are used only in certain circumstances. These include the endings of specific verbs or personal pronouns and certain plural forms of bisyllabic nouns (1995, p. 37) The syllable structure at the end of the New Kingdom: Syllabic structure Pretonic Tonic Posttonic Open $CV$ $’CV:$ $CV# Closed $CVC$ $’CVC$ Doubly-closed $’CVCC# Long $’CV:C# $CVC# (After Loprieno 1995, p. 40) Due to morphological changes over time, the syllable structure of the Coptic prosodic system is very different from the pharaonic prosodic system. This included the deletion of final dentals and semivocalic glides (Loprieno 1995, p. 39) and the reduction of short vowels to schwa (Loprieno 1995, p. 48). Coptic thus shows an expansion in both pretonic and tonic open, closed, doubly-closed and long syllables from earlier Egyptian. 7 Egyptian Language Report 2010 © Caroline Seawright The syllable structure of Coptic: Syllabic structure Open Closed Pretonic Tonic Posttonic $CV$ $’CV:$ $CV# #CCV$ #’CCV:$ $CVC$ $’CVC$ #CCVC$ #’CCVC$ Doubly-closed $CVC# $’CVCC# #’CCVCC$ Long $’CV:C# #’CCV:C# (After Loprieno 1995, p. 49) Morphosyntax Not only has the phonology and syllabic structure been ascertained, but the typology and morphology of the language has also been determined by scholars. Ancient Egyptian was a prepositional (National Security Agency 1981, p. 6), fusional language “with a diachronic tendency to … move toward the polysynthetic type which characterizes Coptic, its more recent phase” (Loprieno 1995, p. 51). Word classes and grammar are well known to Egyptologists. Egyptian used the major word classes of nouns, verbs and adjectives. One interesting feature of the language is that it used no articles. A noun could be translated in various ways, depending on the context of the sentence in which it is used (Gardiner 1988, p. 29): ππ rn name ‘Name’, ‘A name’, ‘The name’ 8 Egyptian Language Report 2010 © Caroline Seawright Like English nouns, Egyptian nouns were created through roots and additions, and could be modified by gender and number. The root itself could be a noun, or the noun could be made of the root plus one or more prefixes or suffixes. “Most Egyptian roots consist of two or three consonants, but some have as many as five,” (Allen 2010, p. 35). Nouns were defined or undefined with possessive pronouns and demonstratives. Unlike English, the Egyptian number system had three types (singular, plural and dual). Nouns had only two genders (masculine and feminine) as opposed to English which has three (including the neutral). The masculine gender had no special ending (-ø) on the noun, but the feminine gender was suffixed with π -t (*-at) (Allen 2010, p. 35 and Callender 1975, p. 14): In the examples below, the root is ntr: πΉπ πΉπππ ntr-ø ‘god’ ntrt ‘goddess’ One common noun, πππ αΈ«t ‘thing’, was feminine when it referred to an actual item, and meant ‘thing, property’. It became masculine when it alluded to anything non-specific and meant ‘something, anything’ (Allen 2010, p. 38 and Gardiner 1988, p. 69). Egyptian nouns are distinguished by the singular, plural and dual number: Singular Dual Plural Masculine -ø -wj (*-way) π ±π -w (*-aw) π ± Feminine -t (*-at) π -tj (*-tay) ππ -wt (*-awt) π ±π (After Allen 2010, pp. 39-40, Callender 1975, p. 14 and Gardiner 1988, p. 58) 9 Egyptian Language Report 2010 © Caroline Seawright πΉπΉ πΉππππ π πΉππͺ πΉππͺ ntrwj ‘two gods’ ntrtj ‘two goddesses’ ntrw ‘gods’ ntrwt ‘goddesses’ The Egyptian language had various pronouns, including personal, suffix, enclitic and stressed pronouns. The suffix pronouns were the most common of all; “They are always part of the word they are added to, and could not stand by themselves as separate words,” (Allen 2010, p. 50). Enclitic pronouns were used as the object of transitive verbal phrases, the subject of adjectival sentences and the object of initial particles in both types of sentences (Loprieno 1995, p. 64). Stressed pronouns “function as the subject … of a nominal sentence in the first and second person … [and] as a focalized subject of a cleft sentence” (Loprieno 1995, p. 64). Number Singular Dual Person Suffix Enclitic/proclitic -wj twj- * -kw tw- * -tm tn- * -sw sw- * -sj /-st st-* 1 ‘my’ .j 2 Masc. ‘your’ (m.) .k 2 Fem. ‘your’ (f.) .t 3 Masc. ‘his’ .f 3 Fem. ‘her’ .s 1 ‘our (two)’ .nj 2 ‘your (two)’ .tnj -tnj 3 ‘their (two)’ .snj -snj 1 0 Stressed jnk twt ntk ^ tmt ntt ^ swt ntf ^ stt nts ^ ntsnj Egyptian Language Report Plural 2010 1 ‘our’ .n 2 ‘your’ .tn 3 ‘their’ © Caroline Seawright -n twn- * -tn twtn- * .sn -sn /-st αΌ°nn nttn ntsn .w * st- * ntw * (After Allen 2010, p. 61, Callender 1975, p. 16, Gardiner 1988, p. 39, 45, 53 and Loprieno 1995, p. 67) * Later Egyptian version of the pronoun ^ Middle Kingdom version of the stressed pronoun Verbs were either transitive or intransitive and specified the relationship between the action indicated and the agent performing the action (Allen 2010, p. 151). Features included tense, mood, aspect and voice (Allen 2010, pp. 153-154). Although Gardiner states that tense, aspect and mood were not clearly expressed (1988, p. 36), Loprieno suggests that both tense and aspect were indicated through the sdm.f form (1995, p. 80): Past perfect sdm-n.f ‘he has heard’ Past perfective 3rd person absolute sdm.f ‘he heard’ Past perfective 1st person stative sdm.f ‘I heard’ Past perfective relative *sdm-t.f ‘until he hears’ Past contingent sdm-jn.f ‘he then heard’ Non-past aorist initial sdm.f/jrr.f ‘he hears!’ Non-past aorist non-initial sdm.f/jrj.f ‘that he may hear’ Non-past imperfect jw.f αΈ₯r/m sdm ‘and he hears’ Non-past prospective jw.f r sdm ‘he will hear’ Non-past contingent sdm.αΈ«r.f ‘he must hear’ 1 1 Egyptian Language Report 2010 © Caroline Seawright Egyptian has both active and passive voice, but the passive voice had an extended meaning which does not have an equivalent in English (Gardiner 1988, p. 293): π΄πππ ±πππ΄ππͺ smjw n.sn report-PlM to.Pl3 ‘(Those) reported to them’ Irregular verbs also existed in Egyptian. Most were irregular only in one form of the verb, but two particular verbs were rather unusual: rdj ‘give, put, cause’ and jwj, jj ‘come, return’. According to Allen, “dj is used in some verb forms and rdj in others – but some forms can use either base stem” (2010, p. 159): Base stems: π,π dj ππ , ππ rdj Geminated stem: ππ , ππ dd In Old Egyptian jwj and jj were two different verbs, but by Middle Egyptian they were treated as different forms of the one verb (Allen 2010, p. 159): Base stems: π»π ± π , πππ» jw j, jj Geminated stem: π»π ± rarely jw π»π ±π ± jww Adjectives were also used in Egyptian. They could be used to modify the noun and had to be put in a specific order (Allen 2010, p. 62). They could be comparative (ntr nmαΈ« r ntr nb ‘a god beneficent with respect to every god’), superlative (wr n wrw ‘the great one of great ones’) or indicate possession (nb ΚΏκ’w ‘owner of donkeys’). One interesting aspect of Egyptian adjectives is that they could be used as a noun in a sentence (Allen 2010, p. 62). Like nouns, adjectives could 1 2 Egyptian Language Report 2010 © Caroline Seawright also be used in adjectival sentences. One common example is a phrase in which the adjective is the first noun of a direct or indirect genitive (Allen 2010, p. 63): π€π· nfr hr good face ‘Good of face’ Being a Verb-Subject-Object language, the typical ancient Egyptian verb phrase occurred as verb, subject, object and adverb or adverbial phrase (Gardiner 1988, p. 34): π ±πππ³πππ³π πͺππ― wbn rΚΏ m pt rise sun in sky ‘The sun rises in the sky’ As Egyptian did not have an expressed copula, there are a number of cases in which there were no proper verbs in a sentence at all (Gardiner 1988, p. 34): πππ³π πͺππ― rΚΏ m pt in sky sun ‘The sun is in the sky’ The Egyptians used noun phrases which were created by apposition, connection and possession (Allen 2010, p. 42). In Egyptian, apposition, connection and possession were indicated in different ways. Apposition usually consists of a proper noun and a regular noun next to one another: π ¬π€ππ‘ππ·ππ zκ’.k αΈ₯rw son.Sg2M Horus ‘Your son, Horus’ 1 3 Egyptian Language Report 2010 © Caroline Seawright Despite having had no word for ‘and’, the Egyptians occasionally used other connective words, including αΈ₯nΚΏ ‘together with’ and αΈ₯r ‘upon’. The norm, however, was simply one noun following another (Allen 2010, p. 42). πππππ ππππ£ππππ₯πΏπ πππ‘π·π€πππππ t αΈ₯nqt bread beer ‘Bread and beer’ αΈ₯κ’tj dΚΏ αΈ₯r αΈ₯i:t storm upon rain ‘Storm and rain’ zmκ’ heart together with lungs ‘The heart and the lungs’ αΈ₯nΚΏ Disjunction was also usually expressed by putting one noun after the other, although the phrase r-pw ‘whichever’ was occasionally used after the second noun (2010, p. 42): πππ€πππππ€πͺπ ± z zt man woman ‘A man or a woman’ r-pw whichever Possession was a little more complex. There were direct genitive and indirect genitive ways of expressing ownership. In the direct genitive, the possessor noun is always after the possessee noun (Allen 2010, p. 42): π ¬π€ππππ€ zκ’ zj son man ‘A man’s son/Son of a man’ Thus in Egyptian the relationships between nouns in noun phrases were based on apposition, connection and possession. “[T]he nouns and their contexts almost always rule out but one relationship – which is presumably why Egyptian[s] usually did not feel the need to add additional words” (Allen 2010, p. 43). 1 4 Egyptian Language Report 2010 © Caroline Seawright Although a sentence did not always use verb, it still contained both a subject and a predicate; Ancient Egyptian, therefore, had adjectival sentences. These follow the predicate-subject pattern (Allen 2010, p. 70): π€πππππππ nfr αΈ«jmt beautiful woman ‘This woman is beautiful’ tn this The question of the syntactic type of language has been argued by scholars. There has been some suggestion that there may be traces of ergativity in the early language, but the common consensus today is that Egyptian is accusative language (Loprieno 2010, pers. comm. 4th Oct), although “there is no firm evidence it ever had case” (Allen 2010, pers. comm. 4 th Oct). As Egyptian is an extinct language, this contributes to the difficulty in determining its syntactic type. Conclusion Egyptian is a language that has changed greatly from its beginning in the dynastic period through to the Coptic used in Coptic Christian church services today. Most of the language has been lost, frustrating both Egyptologists and linguists alike, although the basics of the language such as syllable structure, prosody, morphological typology, word classes and syntax are understood. This enjoyable study has assisted with my own personal understanding of the language, especially in relation to pronoun affixes and my ability to detect them within the hieroglyphic script. However, it is a language of the distant past for which translation has been given a higher priority than linguistic study, leaving many questions unanswered. Yet this attitude is beginning to change. Much linguistic information has been pieced together by academics such as James Allen of Brown University and Antonio Loprieno of the University of Basel, giving both myself and others the opportunity to understand the fascinating language of ancient Egypt. 1 5 Egyptian Language Report 2010 © Caroline Seawright References Allen, JP. 2010, Middle Egyptian: An Introduction to the Language and Culture of Hieroglyphs, Cambridge University Press, New York. Borbola, J. 2009, ‘Introduction to the Hungarian Interpretation of the Egyptian Hieroglyphs’, Journal of Eurasian Studies, vol. 1, no. 3, July-September, pp. 122-154. Brenzinger, M. 2007, Language diversity endangered, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin. Callender, JB. 1975, Middle Egyptian: Volume 2 of Afroasiatic dialects: Afroasiatic dialects: Ancient Egyptian, Undena Publications, Malibu. Coptic Cairo, Customs and Traditions, viewed 4 October 2010, <http://www.coptic- cairo.com/culture/tradition/tradition.html>. Ethnologue 2009, Ethnologue: Languages of the World, 16th edn, SIL International, Dallas, ed P.M. Lewis, viewed 4 October 2010, <http://www.ethnologue.com/show_country.asp?name=EG>. Fishman, J. (rev) 2007, ‘Maintaining Languages: What Works? What Doesn’t?’, Stabilizing Indigenous Languages, ed G Cantoni, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, pp. 165-175. Gardiner, A. 1988, Egyptian Grammar: Being an introduction to the study of hieroglyphs, 3rd edn revised, Griffith Institute, Oxford. Hare, T. 1999, ReMembering Osiris: number, gender, and the word in ancient Egyptian representational systems, Stanford University Press, Stanford. Khanam, R. 2005, Encyclopaedic ethnography of Middle-East and Central Asia: A-I, Volume 1, Global Vision Publishing Ho, Delhi. Linguist List 2010, The Linguist List: International Linguistic Community Online, viewed 4 October 2010, <http://linguistlist.org/forms/langs/LLDescription.cfm?code=egy>. LookLex Ltd. 2008, viewed 4 October 2010, <http://i-cias.com/e.o/atlas/h- egypt_ancient_imperial.htm>. Loprieno, A. 1995, Ancient Egyptian: a linguistic introduction, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. 1 6 Egyptian Language Report 2010 © Caroline Seawright Mayton, J. 2005, ‘Coptic Language’s Last Survivors’, Daily Star, 10 December 2005, viewed 4 October 2010, <http://www.dailystaregypt.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=106>. National Security Agency 1981, ‘Foreign Language Learning: A Comparative Analysis of Relative Difficulty’, Cryptologic Spectrum Articles, vol. 11, no. 1, Winter, viewed 4 October 2010, <http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/_files/cryptologic_spectrum/foreign_language.pdf>. TravelPod 2010, Coptic Family, viewed 4 October 2010, <http://www.travelpod.com/travelphoto/lcwegypt/egypt_2005/1119786240/coptic_church_family.jpg/tpod.html>. van Doorn-Harder, P. 1995, Contemporary Coptic Nuns: Studies in comparative religion, University of South Carolina Press, Columbia, South Carolina. 1 7
