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79-590: Aaru ( / ɑː ˈ r uː / ; Ancient Egyptian : jꜣrw , lit.   ' reeds ' ), or the Field of Reeds ( sḫt-jꜣrw , sekhet-aaru ), is the name for heavenly paradise in Egyptian mythology . Ruled over by Osiris , an Egyptian god , the location has been described as the ka of the Nile Delta . Ancient Egyptians believed that the soul resided in the heart, and that each individual would therefore undergo

158-742: A literary language , and was also the language of the New Kingdom administration. Texts written wholly in Late Egyptian date to the Twentieth Dynasty of Egypt and later. Late Egyptian is represented by a large body of religious and secular literature , comprising such examples as the Story of Wenamun , the love poems of the Chester–Beatty I papyrus, and the Instruction of Any . Instructions became

237-566: A synthetic language , Egyptian by the Late Egyptian phase had become an analytic language . The relationship between Middle Egyptian and Late Egyptian has been described as being similar to that between Latin and Italian. The Late Egyptian stage is taken to have ended around the 8th century BC, giving rise to Demotic. Demotic is a later development of the Egyptian language written in the Demotic script , following Late Egyptian and preceding Coptic ,

316-474: A " Weighing of the Heart " in the afterlife; each human heart is weighed on a giant scale against an ostrich feather, which represents the concept of the goddess Maat . All souls that successfully balance the scales will be allowed to start a long and perilous journey to Aaru, where they will exist in peace and pleasure for eternity. Conversely, hearts that are heavy with evil will tumble from the scale pan and fall into

395-586: A day-to-day language. Sanskrit remains as the only liturgical link language which connects the different strains of Hinduism that are present across India . The de facto position that Sanskrit enjoyed, as the principal language of Hinduism, enabled its survival not only in India, but also in other areas, where Hinduism thrived like Southeast Asia . Old Tamil is the language of the Shaiva (Devaram) and Vaishnava ( Divya Prabhandham ) scriptures. Most of Carnatic Music

474-550: A few have survived that were written in hieratic and (later) demotic. There was also a form of cursive hieroglyphs , used for religious documents on papyrus, such as the Book of the Dead of the Twentieth Dynasty ; it was simpler to write than the hieroglyphs in stone inscriptions, but it was not as cursive as hieratic and lacked the wide use of ligatures . Additionally, there was a variety of stone-cut hieratic, known as "lapidary hieratic". In

553-622: A few rites, rituals, and ceremonies. This did not include the Roman Liturgy of the Mass. The Catholic Church , long before the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II), had accepted and promoted the use of the non-vernacular liturgical languages listed above; while vernacular (i.e. modern or native) languages were also used liturgically throughout history; usually as a special concession given to religious orders conducting missionary activity. In

632-488: A few specialists in the language. For all other purposes, the Egyptological pronunciation is used, but it often bears little resemblance to what is known of how Egyptian was pronounced. The following consonants are reconstructed for Archaic (before 2600 BC) and Old Egyptian (2686–2181 BC), with IPA equivalents in square brackets if they differ from the usual transcription scheme: / l / has no independent representation in

711-458: A nominal feminine suffix * -at , a nominal prefix m- , an adjectival suffix -ī and characteristic personal verbal affixes. Of the other Afroasiatic branches, linguists have variously suggested that the Egyptian language shares its greatest affinities with Berber and Semitic languages, particularly Arabic (which is spoken in Egypt today) and Hebrew . However, other scholars have argued that

790-442: A popular literary genre of the New Kingdom, which took the form of advice on proper behavior. Late Egyptian was also the language of New Kingdom administration. Late Egyptian is not completely distinct from Middle Egyptian, as many "classicisms" appear in historical and literary documents of this phase. However, the difference between Middle and Late Egyptian is greater than the difference between Middle and Old Egyptian. Originally

869-416: A sacred language becomes an important cultural investment, and their use of the tongue is perceived to give them access to a body of knowledge that untrained laypeople cannot (or should not) access. Because sacred languages are ascribed with virtues that the vernacular is not seen to have, these typically preserve characteristics lost in the course of language development. In some cases, the sacred language

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948-444: A scribe jokes that his colleague's writing is incoherent like "the speech of a Delta man with a man of Elephantine ." Recently, some evidence of internal dialects has been found in pairs of similar words in Egyptian that, based on similarities with later dialects of Coptic, may be derived from northern and southern dialects of Egyptian. Written Coptic has five major dialects, which differ mainly in graphic conventions, most notably

1027-583: A series of islands covered in fields of reeds. The part where Osiris later dwelt is sometimes known as the "field of offerings" ( sḫt-ḥtpt ). Aaru was also a residence for various deities worshiped by the deceased. Therefore, the deceased live eternally in the presence and amongst the gods, ruled over by the resident god, Osiris. As a result, the deceased ate and drank the same delicacies devoured by their gods. Possessor Of The Writings of Thoth " Ancient Egyptian language The Egyptian language , or Ancient Egyptian ( r n kmt ; "speech of Egypt")

1106-496: A stressed vowel (⟨ bjn ⟩ = */ˈbaːjin/ 'bad') and as ⟨ jj ⟩ word-medially immediately before a stressed vowel ( ⟨ḫꜥjjk⟩ = */χaʕˈjak/ 'you will appear') and are unmarked word-finally (⟨ jt ⟩ = /ˈjaːtVj/ 'father'). In Middle Egyptian (2055–1650 BC), a number of consonantal shifts take place. By the beginning of the Middle Kingdom period, / z / and / s / had merged, and

1185-502: A stressed vowel in syllables that had been closed in earlier Egyptian (compare ⲛⲟⲩⲃ < */ˈnaːbaw/ 'gold' and ⲧⲁⲡ < * /dib/ 'horn'). The phonemes /d g z/ occur only in Greek loanwords, with rare exceptions triggered by a nearby /n/ : ⲁⲛⲍⲏⲃⲉ/ⲁⲛⲥⲏⲃⲉ < ꜥ.t n.t sbꜣ.w 'school'. Earlier *d ḏ g q are preserved as ejective t' c' k' k ' before vowels in Coptic. Although

1264-748: A translation of the Qur'an's message. Salah and other rituals are also conducted in Classical Arabic for this reason. Scholars of Islam must learn and interpret the Qur'an in classical Arabic. According to the four accepted Sunni schools of jurisprudence , it is a requirement for sermons ( khutbah ) to be delivered completely in classical Arabic . The core of the Hebrew Bible is written in Biblical Hebrew , referred to by some Jews as Lashon Hakodesh ( לשון הקודש , "Language of Holiness"). Hebrew (and in

1343-634: A transliteration of the corresponding Demotic "alphabetical" sign(s) in angle brackets ⟨ ⟩ . More changes occur in the 1st millennium BC and the first centuries AD, leading to Coptic (1st or 3rd – c. 19th centuries AD). In Sahidic ẖ ḫ ḥ had merged into ϣ š (most often from ḫ ) and ϩ / h / (most often ẖ ḥ ). Bohairic and Akhmimic are more conservative and have a velar fricative / x / ( ϧ in Bohairic, ⳉ in Akhmimic). Pharyngeal *ꜥ had merged into glottal / ʔ / after it had affected

1422-461: A uniliteral hieroglyph. Egyptian scholar Gamal Mokhtar noted that the inventory of hieroglyphic symbols derived from "fauna and flora used in the signs [which] are essentially African", reflecting the local wildlife of North Africa, the Levant and southern Mediterranean. In "regards to writing, we have seen that a purely Nilotic, hence [North] African origin not only is not excluded, but probably reflects

1501-629: Is a dead language , while in others, it may simply reflect archaic forms of a living language . For instance, 17th-century elements of the English language remain current in Protestant Christian worship through the use of the King James Bible from 1611, or older versions of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer . In more extreme cases, the language has changed so much from the language of

1580-490: Is a major tenet of the Catholic Traditionalist movement. Meanwhile, the numerous Eastern Catholic Churches in union with Rome each have their own respective parent-language. Eastern Orthodox churches vary in their use of liturgical languages. Koine Greek and Church Slavonic are the main sacred languages used in communion. Other languages are also permitted for liturgical worship, and each country often has

1659-587: Is also the longest-attested human language, with a written record spanning over 4,000 years. Its classical form, known as " Middle Egyptian ," served as the vernacular of the Middle Kingdom of Egypt and remained the literary language of Egypt until the Roman period . By the time of classical antiquity , the spoken language had evolved into Demotic , and by the Roman era , diversified into various Coptic dialects . These were eventually supplanted by Arabic after

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1738-481: Is an extinct branch of the Afro-Asiatic languages that was spoken in ancient Egypt . It is known today from a large corpus of surviving texts, which were made accessible to the modern world following the decipherment of the ancient Egyptian scripts in the early 19th century. Egyptian is one of the earliest known written languages , first recorded in the hieroglyphic script in the late 4th millennium BC . It

1817-470: Is dated from the oldest known complete sentence, including a finite verb , which has been found. Discovered in the tomb of Seth-Peribsen (dated c.  2690 BC ), the seal impression reads: Extensive texts appear from about 2600 BC. An early example is the Diary of Merer . The Pyramid Texts are the largest body of literature written in this phase of the language. One of its distinguishing characteristics

1896-705: Is derived from Sanskrit . In Thailand , Pali is transliterated into the Thai alphabet , resulting in a Thai pronunciation of the Pali language. Something similar also happens in Myanmar, where Pali is also transliterated into the Burmese alphabet , also resulting in a Burmese pronunciation of Pali. Mahayana Buddhism, now only followed by a small minority in South Asia makes little use of its original language, Sanskrit, mostly using versions of

1975-545: Is in Telugu . Amaravati Stupa . It is dated to 2nd century BCE and is probably, the name of a stonemason. Its structural and grammatical analysis played a key role in studying Indus script by Iravatham Mahadevan . Several personal names and place names traceable to Telugu roots are found in various Sanskrit and Prakrit inscriptions of 2nd and 1st centuries BCE. Many Hindu epics were also composed in Telugu. Some examples are

2054-449: Is not a contrastive feature; all obstruents are voiceless and all sonorants are voiced. Stops may be either aspirated or tenuis (unaspirated), although there is evidence that aspirates merged with their tenuis counterparts in certain environments. The following table presents the consonants of Demotic Egyptian. The reconstructed value of a phoneme is given in IPA transcription, followed by

2133-399: Is sometimes reserved for the earliest use of hieroglyphs, from the late fourth through the early third millennia BC. At the earliest stage, around 3300 BC, hieroglyphs were not a fully developed writing system , being at a transitional stage of proto-writing ; over the time leading up to the 27th century BC, grammatical features such as nisba formation can be seen to occur. Old Egyptian

2212-424: Is the best-documented variety of the language, and has attracted the most attention by far from Egyptology . While most Middle Egyptian is seen written on monuments by hieroglyphs, it was also written using a cursive variant , and the related hieratic . Middle Egyptian first became available to modern scholarship with the decipherment of hieroglyphs in the early 19th century. The first grammar of Middle Egyptian

2291-519: Is the language of the Qur'an . Muslims believe the Qur'an as divine revelation —it is a sacred and eternal document, and as such it is believed to be the direct word of God . Thus Muslims hold that the Qur'an is only truly the Qur'an if it is precisely as it was revealed—i.e., in Classical Arabic. Translations of the Qur'an into other languages are therefore not treated as the Qur'an itself; rather, they are seen as interpretive texts, which attempt to communicate

2370-406: Is the tripling of ideograms , phonograms, and determinatives to indicate the plural. Overall, it does not differ significantly from Middle Egyptian, the classical stage of the language, though it is based on a different dialect. In the period of the 3rd dynasty ( c.  2650  – c.  2575 BC ), many of the principles of hieroglyphic writing were regularized. From that time on, until

2449-438: Is used, Judith Simmer-Brown explains that a tantric Vajrayana text is often written in an obscure twilight language so that it cannot be understood by anyone without the verbal explanation of a qualified teacher . Old Tamil was used for Sangam epics of Buddhist and Jain philosophy. Christian rites, rituals, and ceremonies are not celebrated in one single sacred language. Most churches which trace their origin to

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2528-613: The Bhagavatam , the Upanishads , the epics like Ramayana and Mahabharata , and various other liturgical texts such as the Sahasranama , Chamakam , and Rudram . Sanskrit is also the tongue of Hindu rituals. It also has secular literature along with its religious canon. Most Hindu theologians of later centuries continued to prefer to write in Sanskrit even when it was no longer spoken as

2607-551: The Coptic Catholic Church . Most hieroglyphic Egyptian texts are written in a literary prestige register rather than the vernacular speech variety of their author. As a result, dialectical differences are not apparent in written Egyptian until the adoption of the Coptic alphabet . Nevertheless, it is clear that these differences existed before the Coptic period. In one Late Egyptian letter (dated c.  1200 BC ),

2686-566: The Muslim conquest of Egypt , although Bohairic Coptic remains in use as the liturgical language of the Coptic Church . The Egyptian language branch belongs to the Afroasiatic language family . Among the typological features of Egyptian that are typically Afroasiatic are its fusional morphology, nonconcatenative morphology , a series of emphatic consonants , a three-vowel system /a i u/ ,

2765-562: The Reformation in England , when the Protestant authorities banned the use of Latin liturgy, various schools obtained a dispensation to continue to use Latin, for educational purposes. From the end of the 16th century, in coastal Croatia , the local vernacular language began to replace Church Slavonic as the liturgical language. This change occurred because Church Slavonic, which had been used in

2844-442: The cross in three different languages, thereby sanctifying them as the first languages to proclaim Christ's divinity. These are: Liturgical languages are those which hold precedence within liturgy due to tradition and dispensation. Many of these languages have evolved from languages which were at one point vernacular, while some are intentional constructions by ecclesial authorities. These include: The extensive use of Greek in

2923-656: The glagolitic liturgical books published in Rome , was becoming increasingly difficult to understand. This difficulty arose from linguistic reforms that adapted the Church Slavonic of Croatian recension used in Croatia to the norms of Church Slavonic used in Russia. For example, the vernacular was used to ask the bride and groom if they accepted their marriage vows. Jesuit missionaries to China initially obtained permission to translate

3002-573: The hieroglyphic and hieratic scripts. Demotic is the name of the script derived from the hieratic beginning in the 7th century BC. The Coptic alphabet was derived from the Greek alphabet , with adaptations for Egyptian phonology. It was first developed in the Ptolemaic period , and gradually replaced the Demotic script in about the 4th to 5th centuries of the Christian era. The term "Archaic Egyptian"

3081-653: The sacred texts that the liturgy is barely comprehensible without special training. For example, the liturgy of the Roman Catholic Church remained in Latin after the Council of Tours in 813 ordered preaching in local Romance or German, because Latin was no longer understood. Similarly, Old Church Slavonic is incomprehensible to speakers of modern Slavic languages , unless they study it. Sacred languages are distinct from divine languages , which are languages ascribed to

3160-519: The 20th century, Vatican II set out to protect the use of Latin as a liturgical language. To a large degree, its prescription was disregarded and the vernacular not only became standard, but was generally used exclusively in the liturgy. Latin, which remains the chief language of the Latin liturgical rites and of Catholic canon law , but the use of liturgical Latin is now discouraged. The use of vernacular language in liturgical practice after 1964 created controversy, and opposition to liturgical vernacular

3239-574: The Amukthamalayada, Basava Purana, Andhra Mahabharatam, and the Ranganatha Ramayanamu. Apart from Sanskrit, several Hindu spiritual works were composed in the various regional languages of India such as Hindi , Assamese , Awadhi , Bhojpuri , Bengali , Odia , Maithili , Punjabi , Gujarati , Kannada , Malayalam , Marathi , Tulu , as well as Old Javanese , and Balinese of Southeast Asia . Classical Arabic , or Qur'anic Arabic,

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3318-589: The Apostles continue to use the standard languages of the first few centuries AD. Many Christian churches make a distinction between a sacred language, a liturgical language, and a vernacular language. The three most important languages in the early Christian era were Latin , Greek , and Syriac (a dialect of Aramaic ). The phrase " Jesus, King of the Jews " is reported in the Gospel of John as having been inscribed upon

3397-603: The Egyptian language shared closer linguistic ties with northeastern African regions. There are two theories that seek to establish the cognate sets between Egyptian and Afroasiatic, the traditional theory and the neuere Komparatistik , founded by Semiticist Otto Rössler. According to the neuere Komparatistik , in Egyptian, the Proto-Afroasiatic voiced consonants */d z ð/ developed into pharyngeal ⟨ꜥ⟩ /ʕ/ : Egyptian ꜥr.t 'portal', Semitic dalt 'door'. The traditional theory instead disputes

3476-567: The Roman Missal into Classical Chinese , a scholarly form of the language. However, this permission was later revoked amid the Chinese Rites controversy . In contrast, among the Algonquin and Iroquois peoples, missionaries were allowed to translate certain parts of the Mass into their native languages. In the 20th century, Pope Pius XII granted permission for a few vernaculars to be used in

3555-536: The Roman Liturgy has continued, in theory; it was used extensively on a regular basis during the Papal Mass , which has not been celebrated for some time. By the reign of Pope Damasus I , the continuous use of Greek in the Roman Liturgy had come to be replaced in part by Latin. Gradually, the Roman Liturgy took on more and more Latin until, generally, only a few words of Hebrew (e.g. Dominus Deus sabaoth ) and Greek (e.g. Kyrie eleison ) remained. The adoption of Latin

3634-592: The Semitic preference for triradical roots. Egyptian is probably more conservative, and Semitic likely underwent later regularizations converting roots into the triradical pattern. Although Egyptian is the oldest Afroasiatic language documented in written form, its morphological repertoire is very different from that of the rest of the Afroasiatic languages in general, and Semitic languages in particular. There are multiple possibilities: perhaps Egyptian had already undergone radical changes from Proto-Afroasiatic before it

3713-670: The case of a few texts such as the Kaddish , Aramaic ) remains the traditional language of Jewish religious services . Rabbinic Hebrew and Aramaic are used extensively by the Orthodox for writing religious texts. Among the Sephardim , Ladino was used for translations such as the Ferrara Bible . It was also used during the Sephardi liturgy. Ladino is also often referred to as Judeo-Spanish , as it

3792-526: The crocodilian jaws of the goddess Ammit . Any souls that are subject to Ammit's "second death" are doomed to restlessness in the Duat . Qualifying souls undergo a long journey and face many perils before finally reaching Aaru. Once they arrive, they enter through a series of gates—the exact number of gates varies across sources, with given figures alternating between 15 gates and 21 gates. They are uniformly described as being guarded by deities and evil demons , and if

3871-554: The deceased passed through these final gates, they would be rowed across the water to the shores of the Field of Reeds. Aaru was usually placed in the east, where the Sun rises, and has been described as comprising boundless reed fields, like those of the Nile Delta. Consequently, this ideal hunting and farming ground enabled qualified souls to live for eternity; more precisely, Aaru was envisaged as

3950-649: The definite article ⲡ is unaspirated when the next word begins with a glottal stop: Bohairic ⲡ + ⲱⲡ > ⲡⲱⲡ 'the account'. The consonant system of Coptic is as follows: Here is the vowel system reconstructed for earlier Egyptian: Vowels are always short in unstressed syllables ( ⟨tpj⟩ = */taˈpij/ 'first') and long in open stressed syllables ( ⟨rmṯ⟩ = */ˈraːmac/ 'man'), but they can be either short or long in closed stressed syllables ( ⟨jnn⟩ = */jaˈnan/ 'we', ⟨mn⟩ = */maːn/ 'to stay'). Liturgical language Some religions, or parts of them, regard

4029-569: The divine (i.e. God or gods) and may not necessarily be natural languages. The concept, as expressed by the name of a script, for example in Dēvanāgarī , the name of a script that roughly means "[script] of the city of gods ", and is used to write many Indian languages . When the Buddha 's sutras were first written down, probably in Pali , there were around 20 schools, each with their own version derived from

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4108-637: The emphatic consonants were realised is unknown. 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 . Since vowels were not written until Coptic, reconstructions of the Egyptian vowel system are much more uncertain and rely mainly on evidence from Coptic and records of Egyptian words, especially proper nouns, in other languages/writing systems. The actual pronunciations reconstructed by such means are used only by

4187-439: The end of a stressed syllable and eventually null word-finally: ⟨pḏ.t⟩ */ˈpiːɟat/ > Akkadian transcription -pi-ta 'bow'. The most important source of information about Demotic phonology is Coptic. The consonant inventory of Demotic can be reconstructed on the basis of evidence from the Coptic dialects. Demotic orthography is relatively opaque . The Demotic "alphabetical" signs are mostly inherited from

4266-532: The first known Coptic text, still pagan ( Old Coptic ), from the 1st century AD. Coptic survived into the medieval period, but by the 16th century was dwindling rapidly due to the persecution of Coptic Christians under the Mamluks . It probably survived in the Egyptian countryside as a spoken language for several centuries after that. Coptic survives as the liturgical language of the Coptic Orthodox Church and

4345-655: The graphemes ⟨s⟩ and ⟨z⟩ are used interchangeably. In addition, / j / had become / ʔ / word-initially in an unstressed syllable (⟨ jwn ⟩ /jaˈwin/ > */ʔaˈwin/ "colour") and after a stressed vowel ( ⟨ḥjpw⟩ */ˈħujpVw/ > /ˈħeʔp(Vw)/ '[the god] Apis'). In Late Egyptian (1069–700 BC), the phonemes d ḏ g gradually merge with their counterparts t ṯ k ( ⟨dbn⟩ */ˈdiːban/ > Akkadian transcription ti-ba-an 'dbn-weight'). Also, ṯ ḏ often become /t d/ , but they are retained in many lexemes ; ꜣ becomes / ʔ / ; and /t r j w/ become / ʔ / at

4424-435: The hieroglyphic orthography, and it is frequently written as if it were / n / or / r / . That is probably because the standard for written Egyptian is based on a dialect in which / l / had merged with other sonorants. Also, the rare cases of / ʔ / occurring are not represented. The phoneme / j / is written as ⟨ j ⟩ in the initial position (⟨ jt ⟩ = */ˈjaːtVj/ 'father') and immediately after

4503-519: The hieroglyphic script, and due to historical sound changes they do not always map neatly onto Demotic phonemes . However, the Demotic script does feature certain orthographic innovations, such as the use of the sign h̭ for / ç /, which allow it to represent sounds that were not present in earlier forms of Egyptian. The Demotic consonants can be divided into two primary classes: obstruents ( stops , affricates and fricatives ) and sonorants ( approximants , nasals , and semivowels ). Voice

4582-603: The language of their sacred texts as in itself sacred. These include Hebrew in Judaism , Arabic in Islam and Sanskrit in Hinduism , and Punjabi in Sikhism . By contrast Christianity and Buddhism do not generally regard their sacred languages as sacred in themselves. Akkadian was a long used liturgical language. A sacred language is often the language which was spoken and written in

4661-408: The language of worship that they would not give to their native tongues. In the case of sacred texts, there is a fear of losing authenticity and accuracy by a translation or re-translation, and difficulties in achieving acceptance for a new version of a text. A sacred language is typically vested with a solemnity and dignity that the vernacular lacks. Consequently, the training of clergy in the use of

4740-464: The language's final stage of development, the Coptic alphabet replaced the older writing system. Hieroglyphs are employed in two ways in Egyptian texts: as ideograms to represent the idea depicted by the pictures and, more commonly, as phonograms to represent their phonetic value. As the phonetic realization of Egyptian cannot be known with certainty, Egyptologists use a system of transliteration to denote each sound that could be represented by

4819-406: The latter of which it shares much with. In the earlier stages of Demotic, such as those texts written in the early Demotic script, it probably represented the spoken idiom of the time. However, as its use became increasingly confined to literary and religious purposes, the written language diverged more and more from the spoken form, leading to significant diglossia between the late Demotic texts and

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4898-649: The liturgical services in their own language. This has led to a wide variety of languages used for liturgical worship, but there is still uniformity in the liturgical worship itself. Liturgical languages used in the Eastern Orthodox Church include (but are not limited to): Koine Greek , Church Slavonic , Romanian , Georgian , Arabic , Ukrainian , Bulgarian , Serbian , English , German , Spanish , French , Polish , Portuguese , Italian , Albanian , Finnish , Swedish , Chinese , Estonian , Korean , Japanese , and multiple African languages. Oriental Orthodox churches outside their ancestral lands regularly pray in

4977-666: The local language. In East Asia , Classical Chinese is mainly used. In Japan, texts are written in Chinese characters and read out or recited with the Japanese pronunciations of their constituent characters. In Vajrayana Buddhism, Tibetan Buddhism is the main surviving school, and Classical Tibetan is the main language used for study, although the Tibetan Buddhist canon was also translated into other languages, such as Mongolian and Manchu . Many items of Sanskrit Buddhist literature have been preserved because they were exported to Tibet, with copies of unknown ancient Sanskrit texts surfacing in Tibet as recently as 2003. Sanskrit

5056-437: The local vernacular, but some clergymen and communities prefer to retain their traditional language or use a combination of languages. Many Anabaptist groups, such as the Amish , use High German in their worship despite not speaking it amongst themselves. Hinduism is traditionally considered to have Sanskrit as its primary liturgical language. Sanskrit is the language of the Vedas , Bhagavad Gita , Puranas like

5135-400: The original. The present Pāli Canon originates from the Tamrashatiya school . The Chinese and Tibetan canons mainly derive from the Sarvastivada , originally written in Sanskrit , of which fragments remain. The texts were translated into Chinese and Tibetan . Theravada Buddhism uses Pali as its main liturgical language and prefers that scripture be studied in the original Pali. Pali

5214-441: The quality of the surrounding vowels. / ʔ / is not indicated orthographically unless it follows a stressed vowel; then, it is marked by doubling the vowel letter (except in Bohairic): Akhmimic ⳉⲟⲟⲡ /xoʔp/ , Sahidic and Lycopolitan ϣⲟⲟⲡ šoʔp , Bohairic ϣⲟⲡ šoʔp 'to be' < ḫpr.w * /ˈχapraw/ 'has become'. The phoneme ⲃ / b / was probably pronounced as a fricative [ β ] , becoming ⲡ / p / after

5293-762: The reality" that the geographical location of Egypt is, of course, in Africa. While the consonantal phonology of the Egyptian language may be reconstructed, the exact phonetics is unknown, and there are varying opinions on how to classify the individual phonemes. In addition, because Egyptian is recorded over a full 2,000 years, the Archaic and Late stages being separated by the amount of time that separates Old Latin from Modern Italian , significant phonetic changes must have occurred during that lengthy time frame. Phonologically, Egyptian contrasted labial, alveolar, palatal, velar, uvular, pharyngeal, and glottal consonants. Egyptian also contrasted voiceless and emphatic consonants, as with other Afroasiatic languages, but exactly how

5372-599: The same graphemes are used for the pulmonic stops ( ⟨ ⲧ ϫ ⲕ ⟩ ), the existence of the former may be inferred because the stops ⟨ ⲡ ⲧ ϫ ⲕ ⟩ /p t c k/ are allophonically aspirated [pʰ tʰ cʰ kʰ] before stressed vowels and sonorant consonants. In Bohairic, the allophones are written with the special graphemes ⟨ ⲫ ⲑ ϭ ⲭ ⟩ , but other dialects did not mark aspiration: Sahidic ⲡⲣⲏ , Bohairic ⲫⲣⲏ 'the sun'. Thus, Bohairic does not mark aspiration for reflexes of older *d ḏ g q : Sahidic and Bohairic ⲧⲁⲡ */dib/ 'horn'. Also,

5451-433: The script was supplanted by an early version of Coptic (about the third and fourth centuries), the system remained virtually unchanged. Even the number of signs used remained constant at about 700 for more than 2,000 years. Middle Egyptian was spoken for about 700 years, beginning around 2000 BC, during the Middle Kingdom and the subsequent Second Intermediate Period . As the classical variant of Egyptian, Middle Egyptian

5530-411: The society in which a religion's sacred texts were first set down; these texts thereafter become fixed and holy, remaining frozen and immune to later linguistic developments. (An exception to this is Lucumí , a ritual lexicon of the Cuban strain of the Santería religion, with no standardized form .) Once a language becomes associated with religious worship, its believers may ascribe virtues to

5609-417: The southern Saidic dialect, the main classical dialect, and the northern Bohairic dialect, currently used in Coptic Church services. Most surviving texts in the Egyptian language are written on stone in hieroglyphs . The native name for Egyptian hieroglyphic writing is zẖꜣ n mdw-nṯr ("writing of the gods' words"). In antiquity, most texts were written on the quite perishable medium of papyrus though

5688-601: The spoken language of the time, similar to the use of classical Middle Egyptian during the Ptolemaic Period. Coptic is the name given to the late Egyptian vernacular when it was written in a Greek-based alphabet, the Coptic alphabet; it flourished from the time of Early Christianity (c. 31/33–324) , but Egyptian phrases written in the Greek alphabet first appeared during the Hellenistic period c.  3rd century BC , with

5767-644: The values given to those consonants by the neuere Komparatistik , instead connecting ⟨ꜥ⟩ with Semitic /ʕ/ and /ɣ/ . Both schools agree that Afroasiatic */l/ merged with Egyptian ⟨n⟩ , ⟨r⟩ , ⟨ꜣ⟩ , and ⟨j⟩ in the dialect on which the written language was based, but it was preserved in other Egyptian varieties. They also agree that original */k g ḳ/ palatalise to ⟨ṯ j ḏ⟩ in some environments and are preserved as ⟨k g q⟩ in others. The Egyptian language has many biradical and perhaps monoradical roots, in contrast to

5846-559: Was further fostered when the Vetus Latina (old Latin) version of the Bible was edited and parts retranslated from the original Hebrew and Greek by Saint Jerome in his Vulgate . Latin continued as the western Church's language of liturgy and communication. In the mid-16th century the Council of Trent rejected a proposal to introduce national languages as this was seen, among other reasons, as potentially divisive to Catholic unity. During

5925-428: Was published by Adolf Erman in 1894, surpassed in 1927 by Alan Gardiner 's work. Middle Egyptian has been well-understood since then, although certain points of the verbal inflection remained open to revision until the mid-20th century, notably due to the contributions of Hans Jakob Polotsky . The Middle Egyptian stage is taken to have ended around the 14th century BC, giving rise to Late Egyptian. This transition

6004-473: Was recorded; or the Afroasiatic family has so far been studied with an excessively Semitocentric approach; or, as G. W. Tsereteli suggests, Afroasiatic is a sprachbund , rather than a true genetic language family. The Egyptian language can be grouped thus: The Egyptian language is conventionally grouped into six major chronological divisions: Old, Middle, and Late Egyptian were all written using both

6083-515: Was taking place in the later period of the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt (known as the Amarna Period ). Original Old Egyptian and Middle Egyptian texts were still used after the 14th century BCE. And an emulation of predominately Middle Egyptian, but also with characteristics of Old Egyptian, Late Egyptian and Demotic, called " Égyptien de tradition " or "Neo-Middle Egyptian" by scholars,

6162-592: Was used as a literary language for new texts since the later New Kingdom in official and religious hieroglyphic and hieratic texts in preference to Late Egyptian or Demotic. Égyptien de tradition as a religious language survived until the Christianisation of Roman Egypt in the 4th century. Late Egyptian was spoken for about 650 years, beginning around 1350 BC, during the New Kingdom of Egypt . Late Egyptian succeeded but did not fully supplant Middle Egyptian as

6241-674: Was valued in Tibet as the elegant language of the gods. Although in Tibetan Buddhist deity yoga the rest of the sadhana is generally recited in Tibetan, the mantra portion of the practice is usually retained in its original Sanskrit. In Nepal , the Newar Buddhist form of Vajrayana is a storehouse of ancient Sanskrit Buddhist texts , many of which are now only extant in Nepal . Whatever language

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