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102-411: The Arabic name of the village contains Coptic : ⲉⲛⲧⲏⲣ , lit.   'gods'. The ancient site of Avaris is located around 2 kilometers (1.2 mi) south of Qantir. This was the older city in this area. Later on, Avaris was absorbed by Pi-Ramesses. 30°48′N 31°50′E  /  30.800°N 31.833°E  / 30.800; 31.833 This geography of Egypt article

204-425: A W or Y as the last root consonant, which is often reflected in paradigms with an extra final vowel in the stem (e.g. ráma/yírmi "throw" from R-M-Y); meanwhile, hollow verbs have a W or Y as the middle root consonant, and the stems of such verbs appear to have only two consonants (e.g. gá:b/yigí:b "bring" from G-Y-B). Strong verbs are those that have no "weakness" (e.g. W or Y) in the root consonants. Each verb has

306-517: A distinct literary genre. Amongst certain groups within Egypt's elite, Egyptian Arabic enjoyed a brief period of rich literary output. That dwindled with the rise of Pan-Arabism , which had gained popularity in Egypt by the second half of the twentieth century, as demonstrated by Egypt's involvement in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War under King Farouk of Egypt . The Egyptian revolution of 1952 , led by Mohammed Naguib and Gamal Abdel Nasser , further enhanced

408-408: A given vowel pattern for Past (a or i) and Present (a or i or u). Combinations of each exist. Form I verbs have a given vowel pattern for past ( a or i ) and present ( a , i or u ). Combinations of each exist: Example: kátab/yíktib "write" Note that, in general, the present indicative is formed from the subjunctive by the addition of bi- ( bi-a- is elided to ba- ). Similarly, the future

510-732: A modernist, secular approach and disagreed with the assumption that Arabic was an immutable language because of its association with the Qur'an . The first modern Egyptian novel in which the dialogue was written in the vernacular was Muhammad Husayn Haykal 's Zaynab in 1913. It was only in 1966 that Mustafa Musharafa 's Kantara Who Disbelieved was released, the first novel to be written entirely in Egyptian Arabic. Other notable novelists, such as Ihsan Abdel Quddous and Yusuf Idris , and poets, such as Salah Jahin , Abdel Rahman el-Abnudi and Ahmed Fouad Negm , helped solidify vernacular literature as

612-616: A phonology that differs significantly from that of other varieties of Arabic, and has its own inventory of consonants and vowels. In contrast to CA and MSA, but like all modern colloquial varieties of Arabic , Egyptian Arabic nouns are not inflected for case and lack nunation (with the exception of certain fixed phrases in the accusative case, such as شكراً [ˈʃokɾɑn] , "thank you"). As all nouns take their pausal forms, singular words and broken plurals simply lose their case endings. In sound plurals and dual forms, where, in MSA, difference in case

714-420: A preference for using Modern Standard Arabic in his public speeches, his successor, Gamal Abdel Nasser was renowned for using the vernacular and for punctuating his speeches with traditional Egyptian words and expressions. Conversely, Modern Standard Arabic was the norm for state news outlets, including newspapers, magazines, television, and radio. That was especially true of Egypt's national broadcasting company,

816-402: A sentence, as the object of a verb, or with a preposition. Dependent pronouns are a series of prefixes and suffixes that can attach to verbs and other nouns. Coptic verbs can therefore be said to inflect for the person, number and gender of the subject and the object: a pronominal prefix marks the subject, and a pronominal suffix marks the object, e.g. "I I'have'it the ball." When (as in this case)

918-665: A special inflectional pattern, as shown in the table. Only a small number of common colors inflect this way: ʔaḥmaṛ "red"; ʔazraʔ "blue"; ʔaxḍaṛ "green"; ʔaṣfaṛ "yellow"; ʔabyaḍ "white"; ʔiswid "black"; ʔasmaṛ "brown-skinned, brunette"; ʔaʃʔaṛ "blond(e)". The remaining colors are invariable, and mostly so-called nisba adjectives derived from colored objects: bunni "brown" (< bunn "coffee powder"); ṛamaadi "gray" (< ṛamaad "ashes"); banafsigi "purple" (< banafsig "violet"); burtuʔaani "orange" (< burtuʔaan "oranges"); zibiibi "maroon" (< zibiib "raisins"); etc., or of foreign origin: beeع "beige" from

1020-700: A spoken language until the 17th century by peasant women in Upper Egypt . Coptic is still the liturgical language of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria and the Coptic Catholic Church . Egyptian Arabic has no official status and is not officially recognized as a language. Standard Arabic is the official language of the state as per constitutional law with the name اللغة العربية al-luġa al-ʿarabiyyah , lit. "the Arabic language". Interest in

1122-568: A step further and provided for his Standard Arabic plays versions in colloquial Arabic for the performances. Mahmud Taymur has published some of his plays in two versions, one in Standard, one in colloquial Arabic, among them: Kidb fi Kidb ( Arabic : كذب في كذب , lit.   'All lies', 1951 or ca. 1952) and Al-Muzayyifun ( Arabic : المزيفون , romanized :  Al-Muzayyifūn , lit.   'The Forgers', ca. 1953). The writers of stage plays in Egyptian Arabic after

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1224-498: A study of three Egyptian newspapers ( Al-Ahram , Al-Masry Al-Youm , and Al-Dustour ) Zeinab Ibrahim concluded that the total number of headlines in Egyptian Arabic in each newspaper varied. Al-Ahram did not include any. Al-Masry Al-Youm had an average of 5% of headlines in Egyptian, while Al-Dustour averaged 11%. As the status of Egyptian Arabic as opposed to Classical Arabic can have such political and religious implications in Egypt,

1326-408: A supralinear stroke ⟨◌̄⟩, or the stroke may have tied letters together in one word, since Coptic texts did not otherwise indicate word divisions. Some scribal traditions use a diaeresis over the letters ⲓ and ⲩ at the beginning of a word or to mark a diphthong. Bohairic uses a superposed point or small stroke known as ϫⲓⲛⲕⲓⲙ ( jinkim , "movement"). When jinkim is placed over a vowel it

1428-593: A tenuis-aspirate distinction to voiced-tenuis is only attested from the alveolars, the only place that Arabic has such a contrast. Earlier phases of Egyptian may have contrasted voiceless and voiced bilabial plosives, but the distinction seems to have been lost. Late Egyptian, Demotic and Coptic all interchangeably use their respective graphemes to indicate either sound; for example, Coptic for 'iron' appears alternately as ⲡⲉⲛⲓⲡⲉ , ⲃⲉⲛⲓⲡⲉ and ⲃⲓⲛⲓⲃⲉ . That probably reflects dialect variation. Both letters were interchanged with ⲫ and ϥ to indicate / f / , and ⲃ

1530-501: A testament to the increasing cultural contact between Egyptians and Greeks even before Alexander the Great 's conquest of Egypt. Coptic itself, or Old Coptic , takes root in the first century. The transition from the older Egyptian scripts to the newly adapted Coptic alphabet was in part due to the decline of the traditional role played by the priestly class of ancient Egyptian religion , who, unlike most ordinary Egyptians, were literate in

1632-534: A vowel's grapheme but mostly unwritten. A few early manuscripts have a letter ⳋ or ⳃ ç where Sahidic and Bohairic have ϣ š . and Akhmimic has ⳉ x . This sound seems to have been lost early on. Coptic is agglutinative with subject–verb–object word order but can be verb–subject–object with the correct preposition in front of the subject. Number, gender, tense, and mood are indicated by prefixes that come from Late Egyptian. The earlier phases of Egyptian did this through suffixation. Some vestiges of

1734-569: Is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Coptic language Coptic (Bohairic Coptic: ϯⲙⲉⲧⲣⲉⲙⲛ̀ⲭⲏⲙⲓ , Timetremənkhēmi ) is an Afroasiatic extinct language . It is a group of closely related Egyptian dialects , representing the most recent developments of the Egyptian language , and historically spoken by the Copts , starting from the third century AD in Roman Egypt . Coptic

1836-577: Is a standardized language based on the language of the Qur'an , i.e. Classical Arabic . The Egyptian vernacular is almost universally written in the Arabic alphabet for local consumption, although it is commonly transcribed into Latin letters or in the International Phonetic Alphabet in linguistics text and textbooks aimed at teaching non-native learners. Egyptian Arabic's phonetics, grammatical structure, and vocabulary are influenced by

1938-490: Is also better known than that of the Classical phase of the language because of a greater number of sources indicating Egyptian sounds, including cuneiform letters containing transcriptions of Egyptian words and phrases, and Egyptian renderings of Northwest Semitic names. Coptic sounds, in addition, are known from a variety of Coptic-Arabic papyri in which Arabic letters were used to transcribe Coptic and vice versa. They date to

2040-511: Is difficult to explain ⟨ ⲏ ⟩ . However, it generally became / æ / in stressed monosyllables, / ɪ / in unstressed monosyllables, and in polysyllables, / æ / when followed by / i / , and / ɪ / when not. There were no doubled orthographic vowels in Mesokemic. Some representative correspondences with Sahidic are: It is not clear if these correspondences reflect distinct pronunciations in Mesokemic, or if they are an imitation of

2142-413: Is expressed with a series of possessive articles which are prefixed to the noun. These articles agree with the person , number , and gender of the possessor and the number and gender of the possessed noun. The forms of the possessive article vary according to dialect. Coptic pronouns are of two kinds, dependent and independent. Independent pronouns are used when the pronoun is acting as the subject of

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2244-442: Is formed from the subjunctive by the addition of ḥa- ( ḥa-a- is elided to ḥa- ). The i in bi- or in the following prefix will be deleted according to the regular rules of vowel syncope: Example: kátab/yíktib "write": non-finite forms Example: fíhim/yífham "understand" Boldfaced forms fíhm-it and fíhm-u differ from the corresponding forms of katab ( kátab-it and kátab-u due to vowel syncope). Note also

2346-707: Is likely because the majority of Coptic religious texts are direct translations of Greek works. What invariably attracts the attention of the reader of a Coptic text, especially if it is written in the Sa'idic dialect, is the very liberal use which is made of Greek loan words, of which so few, indeed, are to be found in the Ancient Egyptian language. There Greek loan words occur everywhere in Coptic literature, be it Biblical, liturgical, theological, or non-literary, i.e. legal documents and personal letters. Though nouns and verbs predominate,

2448-425: Is not sufficient to demonstrate that these are distinct vowels, and if they are, the difference has a very low functional load . For dialects that use orthographic ⟨ ⲉⲓ ⟩ for a single vowel, there appears to be no phonetic difference from ⟨ ⲓ ⟩ . Double orthographic vowels are presumed here to be long, as that makes the morphology more straightforward. (Another common interpretation

2550-636: Is part of the Afro-Asiatic language family , and originated in the Nile Delta in Lower Egypt . The estimated 100 million Egyptians speak a continuum of dialects , among which Cairene is the most prominent. It is also understood across most of the Arabic-speaking countries due to broad Egyptian influence in the region, including through Egyptian cinema and Egyptian music . These factors help to make it

2652-720: Is possible that in addition there was a glottal stop , ʔ , that was not consistently written. Coptic does not seem to have had a glottal stop at the beginning of orthographically vowel-initial words. It is possible that vowels written double were an attempt to indicate glottal stop, rather than a long vowel, in the middle of a word. However, there is little evidence for this (e.g., Arabic words with short vowels and glottal stop are not written with double vowels in Coptic, and Coptic words with double orthographic vowels are transcribed with long vowels rather than hamza in Arabic.) In Late Coptic (ca. 14th century), Bohairic sounds that did not occur in Egyptian Arabic were lost. A possible shift from

2754-410: Is present even in pausal forms, the genitive/accusative form is the one preserved. Fixed expressions in the construct state beginning in abu , often geographic names, retain their -u in all cases. Nouns take either a sound plural or broken plural . The sound plural is formed by adding endings, and can be considered part of the declension. For the broken plural, however, a different pattern for

2856-501: Is pronounced independently, and when it is placed over a consonant a short ⲉ precedes it. The oldest Coptic writings date to the pre-Christian era (Old Coptic), though Coptic literature consists mostly of texts written by prominent saints of the Coptic Church such as Anthony the Great, Pachomius the Great and Shenoute. Shenoute helped fully standardise the Coptic language through his many sermons, treatises and homilies, which formed

2958-439: Is safe to assume that the everyday speech of the native population retained, to a greater extent, its indigenous Egyptian character, which is sometimes reflected in Coptic nonecclesiastical documents such as letters and contracts. Coptic provides the clearest indication of Later Egyptian phonology from its writing system, which fully indicates vowel sounds and occasionally stress patterns. The phonological system of Later Egyptian

3060-506: Is that Coptic articles are prefixes. Masculine nouns are marked with the article /pə, peː/ and feminine nouns with the article /tə, teː/ in the Sahidic dialect and /pi, əp/ and /ti, ət/ in the Bohairic dialect. The definite and indefinite articles also indicate number ; however, only definite articles mark gender. Coptic has a number of broken plurals , a vestige of Older Egyptian, but in

3162-405: Is that these represented glottal stop.) There is no length distinction in final stressed position, but only those vowels that occur long appear there: ⟨ (ⲉ)ⲓ, ⲉ, ⲁ, ⲟ~ⲱ, ⲟⲩ ⟩ . In Sahidic, the letter ⲉ was used for short / e / before back fricatives, and also for unstressed schwa / ə / . It's possible there was also a distinction between short / ɛ / and / a / , but if so

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3264-479: Is the case with Parisian French , Cairene Arabic is by far the most prevalent dialect in the country. Egyptian Arabic has become widely understood in the Arabic-speaking world primarily for two reasons: The proliferation and popularity of Egyptian films and other media in the region since the early 20th century as well as the great number of Egyptian teachers and professors who were instrumental in setting up

3366-424: Is used to specify grammatical concepts such as causative , intensive , passive , or reflexive , and involves varying the stem form. For example, from the root K-T-B "write" is derived form I kátab/yíktib "write", form II káttib/yikáttib "cause to write", form III ká:tib/yiká:tib "correspond", etc. The other axis is determined by the particular consonants making up the root. For example, defective verbs have

3468-462: Is usually the result of consonant voicing in proximity to / n / . Though there is no clear evidence that Coptic had a glottal stop , different orthographic means have been posited for indicating one by those who believe that it did: with ⲁ word-initially, with ⲓ word-finally in monosyllabic words in northern dialects and ⲉ in monosyllabic words in Akhmimic and Assiutic, by reduplication of

3570-522: The Arab Radio and Television Union , which was established with the intent of providing content for the entire Arab world , not merely Egypt, hence the need to broadcast in the standard, rather than the vernacular, language. The Voice of the Arabs radio station, in particular, had an audience from across the region, and the use of anything other than Modern Standard Arabic was viewed as eminently incongruous. In

3672-542: The Coptic language ; its rich vocabulary is also influenced by Turkish and by European languages such as French , Italian , Greek , and English . Speakers of Egyptian Arabic generally call their vernacular 'Arabic ' ( عربى , [ˈʕɑrɑbi] ) when juxtaposed with non-Arabic languages; " Colloquial Egyptian " ( العاميه المصريه , [el.ʕæmˈmejjæ l.mɑsˤˈɾejjɑ] ) or simply " Aamiyya " ( عاميه , colloquial ) when juxtaposed with Modern Standard Arabic and

3774-794: The Egyptian Revolution of 1952 include No'man Ashour , Alfred Farag , Saad Eddin Wahba  [ ar ] , Rashad Roushdy , and Yusuf Idris . Thereafter the use of colloquial Egyptian Arabic in theater is stable and common. Later writers of plays in colloquial Egyptian include Ali Salem , and Naguib Surur . Novels in Egyptian Arabic after the 1940s and before the 1990s are rare. There are by Mustafa Musharrafah  [ ar ] Qantarah Alladhi Kafar ([قنطرة الذي كفر ] Error: {{Langx}}: invalid parameter: |lable= ( help ) , Cairo, 1965) and Uthman Sabri's ( Arabic : عثمان صبري , romanized :  ʻUthmān Ṣabrī ; 1896–1986) Journey on

3876-433: The Egyptian dialect ( اللهجه المصريه , [elˈlæhɡæ l.mɑsˤˈɾejjɑ] ) or simply Masri ( مَصرى , [ˈmɑsˤɾi] , Egyptian ) when juxtaposed with other vernacular Arabic dialects . The term Egyptian Arabic is usually used synonymously with Cairene Arabic , which is technically a dialect of Egyptian Arabic. The country's native name, مصر Maṣr , is often used locally to refer to Cairo itself. As

3978-672: The Greek language ; some of the words were later lent to various European languages — such as barge , from Coptic baare ( ⲃⲁⲁⲣⲉ , "small boat"). However, most words of Egyptian origin that entered into Greek and subsequently into other European languages came directly from Ancient Egyptian, often Demotic . An example is the Greek oasis ( ὄασις ), which comes directly from Egyptian wḥꜣt or Demotic wḥj . However, Coptic reborrowed some words of Ancient Egyptian origin into its lexicon, via Greek. For example, both Sahidic and Bohairic use

4080-577: The Middle Ages . Coptic belongs to the Later Egyptian phase, which started to be written in the New Kingdom of Egypt . Later Egyptian represented colloquial speech of the later periods. It had analytic features like definite and indefinite articles and periphrastic verb conjugation. Coptic, therefore, is a reference to both the most recent stage of Egyptian after Demotic and the new writing system that

4182-1330: The Nile Mission Press . By 1932 the whole New Testament and some books of the Old Testament had been published in Egyptian Arabic in Arabic script. The dialogs in the following novels are partly in Egyptian Arabic, partly in Standard Arabic: Mahmud Tahir Haqqi 's Adhra' Dinshuway ( Arabic : عذراء دنشواي ; 1906), Yaqub Sarruf 's Fatat Misr ( Arabic : فتاة مصر , romanized :  Fatāt Miṣr ; first published in Al-Muqtataf 1905–1906), and Mohammed Hussein Heikal 's Zaynab (1914). Early stage plays written in Egyptian Arabic were translated from or influenced by European playwrights. Muhammad 'Uthman Jalal translated plays by Molière , Jean Racine and Carlo Goldoni to Egyptian Arabic and adapted them as well as ten fables by Jean de La Fontaine . Yaqub Sanu translated to and wrote plays on himself in Egyptian Arabic. Many plays were written in Standard Arabic, but performed in colloquial Arabic. Tawfiq al-Hakim took this

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4284-456: The spread of Islam in the seventh century. At the turn of the eighth century, Caliph Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan decreed that Arabic replace Koine Greek as the sole administrative language . Literary Coptic gradually declined, and within a few hundred years, Egyptian bishop Severus ibn al-Muqaffa found it necessary to write his History of the Patriarchs in Arabic. However, ecclesiastically

4386-480: The 13th century, though it seems to have survived as a spoken language until the 17th century and in some localities even longer. From the medieval period, there is one known example of tarsh -printed Coptic. The fragmentary amulet A.Ch. 12.145, now in the Austrian National Library , contains a frame of Coptic text around an Arabic main text. In the early 20th century, some Copts tried to revive

4488-493: The 21st century the number of books published in Egyptian Arabic has increased a lot. Many of them are by female authors, for example I Want to Get Married! ( عايزه أتجوز , ʻĀyzah atgawwiz , 2008) by Ghada Abdel Aal and She Must Have Travelled ( شكلها سافرت , Shaklahā sāfarit , 2016) by Soha Elfeqy. Sa'īdi Arabic is a different variety than Egyptian Arabic in Ethnologue.com and ISO 639-3 and in other sources, and

4590-612: The Bird';; 1994), Baha' Awwad's ( Arabic : بهاء عواد , romanized :  Bahāʾ ʿAwwād ) Shams il-Asil ( شمس الاصيل , Shams il-ʿAṣīl , 'Late Afternoon Sun'; 1998), Safa Abdel Al Moneim 's Min Halawit il-Ruh ( من حلاوة الروح , Min Ḥalāwit il-Rōḥ , 'Zest for Life', 1998), Samih Faraj's ( Arabic : سامح فرج , romanized :  Sāmiḥ Faraj ) Banhuf Ishtirasa ( بانهوف اشتراسا , Bānhūf Ishtirāsā , 'Bahnhof Strasse', 1999); autobiographies include

4692-746: The Burden from the Language of the People of Cairo") by the traveler and lexicographer Yusuf al-Maghribi ( يوسف المغربي ), with Misr here meaning "Cairo". It contains key information on early Cairene Arabic and the language situation in Egypt in the Middle Ages . The main purpose of the document was to show that while the Cairenes' vernacular contained many critical "errors" vis-à-vis Classical Arabic, according to al-Maghribi, it

4794-524: The Cat';, 2001) by Abdel Rahman el-Abnudi is exceptional in its use of Saʽidi Arabic . 21st-century journals publishing in Egyptian Arabic include Bārti (from at least 2002), the weekly magazine Idhak lil-Dunya ( اضحك للدنيا , Iḍḥak lil-Dunyā , 'Smile for the World';, from 2005), and the monthly magazine Ihna    [ ar ] ( احنا , Iḥna , 'We', from 2005). In

4896-478: The Coptic alphabet, flourished in the second and third centuries. However, it was not until Shenoute that Coptic became a fully standardised literary language based on the Sahidic dialect. Shenouda's native Egyptian tongue and knowledge of Greek and rhetoric gave him the necessary tools to elevate Coptic, in content and style, to a literary height nearly equal to the position of the Egyptian language in ancient Egypt. The Muslim conquest of Egypt by Arabs came with

4998-487: The Coptic language, but they were unsuccessful. In the second half of the 20th century, Pope Cyril VI of Alexandria started a national Church-sponsored movement to revive Coptic. Several works of grammar were published, including a more comprehensive dictionary than had been formerly available. The scholarly findings of the field of Egyptology and the inauguration of the Institute of Coptic Studies further contributed to

5100-487: The Egyptian deserts. In time, the growth of these communities generated the need to write Christian Greek instructions in the Egyptian language. The early Fathers of the Coptic Church , such as Anthony the Great , Pachomius the Great , Macarius of Egypt and Athanasius of Alexandria , who otherwise usually wrote in Greek, addressed some of their works to the Egyptian monks in Egyptian. The Egyptian language, now written in

5202-471: The Egyptian language. It is written with the Coptic alphabet , a modified form of the Greek alphabet with seven additional letters borrowed from the Demotic Egyptian script . The major Coptic dialects are Sahidic, Bohairic, Akhmimic, Fayyumic, Lycopolitan, and Oxyrhynchite. Sahidic Coptic was spoken between the cities of Asyut and Oxyrhynchus and flourished as a literary language across Egypt in

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5304-463: The Fayyumic dialect, a feature of earlier Egyptian) and [ k ] and [ ɡ ] , with the voiceless stop consonants being more common in Coptic words and the voiced ones in Greek borrowings. Apart from the liquid consonants , this pattern may indicate a sound change in Later Egyptian, leading to a neutralisation of voiced alveolar and velar plosives. When the voiced plosives are realised, it

5406-501: The French; bamba "pink" from Turkish pembe . Verbal nouns of form I are not regular. The following table lists common patterns. Egyptian Arabic object pronouns are clitics , in that they attach to the end of a noun, verb, or preposition, with the result forming a single phonological word rather than separate words. Clitics can be attached to the following types of words: With verbs, indirect object clitic pronouns can be formed using

5508-476: The Greek loan words may come from any other part of speech except pronouns' Words or concepts for which no adequate Egyptian translation existed were taken directly from Greek to avoid altering the meaning of the religious message. In addition, other Egyptian words that would have adequately translated the Greek equivalents were not used as they were perceived as having overt pagan associations. Old Coptic texts use many such words, phrases and epithets ; for example,

5610-464: The Nile ( Egyptian Arabic : رحلة في النيل , romanized:  Riḥlah fī il-Nīl , 1965) (and his Bet Sirri ( بيت سري , Bēt Sirri , 'A Brothel', 1981) that apparently uses a mix of Standard Arabic and Egyptian Arabic ). Prose published in Egyptian Arabic since the 1990s include the following novels: Yusuf al-Qa'id 's Laban il-Asfur ( لبن العصفور , Laban il-ʿAṣfūr , 'The Milk of

5712-673: The Nile Valley such as Qift in Upper Egypt through pre-Islamic trade with Nabateans in the Sinai Peninsula and the easternmost part of the Nile Delta . Egyptian Arabic seems to have begun taking shape in Fustat , the first Islamic capital of Egypt, now part of Cairo . One of the earliest linguistic sketches of Cairene Arabic is a 16th-century document entitled Dafʿ al-ʾiṣr ʿan kalām ahl Miṣr ( دفع الإصر عن كلام أهل مصر , "The Removal of

5814-473: The basis of early Coptic literature. The core lexicon of Coptic is Egyptian , most closely related to the preceding Demotic phase of the language. Up to 40% of the vocabulary of literary Coptic is drawn from Greek , but borrowings are not always fully adapted to the Coptic phonological system and may have semantic differences as well. There are instances of Coptic texts having passages that are almost entirely composed from Greek lexical roots. However, that

5916-433: The consonants, along with prefixes and/or suffixes, specify grammatical functions such as tense, person, and number, in addition to changes in the meaning of the verb that embody grammatical concepts such as causative , intensive , passive or reflexive . Each particular lexical verb is specified by two stems, one used for the past tense and one used for non-past tenses along with subjunctive and imperative moods. To

6018-550: The country. The dialect of the Fellah in Northern Egypt is noted for a distinct accent, replacing the urban pronunciations of / ɡ / (spelled ج gīm ) and / q / ( ق qāf ) with [ ʒ ] and [ ɡ ] respectively, but that is not true of all rural dialects, a lot of them do not have such replacement. The dialect also has many grammatical differences when contrasted to urban dialects. Egyptian Arabic has

6120-587: The education systems of various countries in the Arabian Peninsula and also taught there and in other countries such as Algeria and Libya . Also, many Lebanese artists choose to sing in Egyptian. Arabic was spoken in parts of Egypt such as the Eastern Desert and Sinai before Islam. However, Nile Valley Egyptians slowly adopted Arabic as a written language following the Muslim conquest of Egypt in

6222-417: The former stem, suffixes are added to mark the verb for person, number, and gender, while to the latter stem, a combination of prefixes and suffixes are added. (Very approximately, the prefixes specify the person and the suffixes indicate number and gender.) Since Arabic lacks an infinitive , the third person masculine singular past tense form serves as the "dictionary form" used to identify a verb. For example,

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6324-488: The functional load was extremely low. Bohairic did not have long vowels. / i / was only written ⟨ ⲓ ⟩ . As above, it's possible that / u / and / o / were distinct vowels rather than just allophones. In Late Coptic (that is, Late Bohairic), the vowels were reduced to those found in Egyptian Arabic, /a, i, u/ . ⟨ ⲱ, ⲟ ⟩ became / u / , ⟨ ⲉ ⟩ became / æ / , and ⟨ ⲏ ⟩ became either / ɪ / or / æ / . It

6426-417: The language retained an important position, and many hagiographic texts were also composed during this period. Until the 10th century, Coptic remained the spoken language of the native population outside the capital. The Coptic language massively declined under the hands of Fatimid Caliph Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah , as part of his campaigns of religious persecution. He issued strict orders completely prohibiting

6528-493: The local vernacular began in the 1800s (in opposition to the language of the ruling class, Turkish) , as the Egyptian national movement for self-determination was taking shape. For many decades to follow, questions about the reform and the modernization of Arabic were hotly debated in Egyptian intellectual circles. Proposals ranged from developing neologisms to replace archaic terminology in Modern Standard Arabic to

6630-440: The long Greek vowels ⟨η, ω⟩ . As with the vowels, there are differences of opinion over the correct interpretation of the Coptic consonant letters, particularly with regard to the letters ϫ and ϭ . ϫ is transcribed as ⟨j⟩ in many older Coptic sources and ϭ as ⟨ɡ⟩ or ⟨č⟩ . Lambdin (1983) notes that the current conventional pronunciations are different from

6732-422: The majority of cases, the article marks number. Generally, nouns inflected for plurality end in /wə/ , but there are some irregularities. The dual was another feature of earlier Egyptian that survives in Coptic in only few words, such as ⲥⲛⲁⲩ ( snau ) 'two'. Words of Greek origin keep their original grammatical gender, except for neuter nouns, which become masculine in Coptic. Possession of definite nouns

6834-463: The medieval Islamic period, when Coptic was still spoken. There are some differences of opinion among Coptic language scholars on the correct phonetic interpretation of the writing system of Coptic. Differences centre on how to interpret the pairs of letters ⲉ/ⲏ and ⲟ/ⲱ . In the Attic dialect of Ancient Greek in the 5th century BC, the first member of each pair is a short closed vowel /e, o/ , and

6936-408: The most widely spoken and by far the most widely studied variety of Arabic . While it is primarily a spoken language, the written form is used in novels, plays and poems ( vernacular literature ), as well as in comics, advertising, some newspapers and transcriptions of popular songs. In most other written media and in radio and television news reporting, literary Arabic is used. Literary Arabic

7038-447: The one by Ahmed Fouad Negm , by Mohammed Naser Ali  [ ar ] Ula Awwil ( اولى أول , Ūlá Awwil , 'First Class Primary School'), and Fathia al-Assal 's Hudn il-Umr ( حضن العمر , Ḥuḍn il-ʿUmr , 'The Embrace of a Lifetime'). The epistolary novel Jawabat Haraji il-Gutt ( Sa'idi Arabic : جوابات حراجى القط , romanized:  Jawābāt Ḥarājī il-Guṭṭ , lit.   'Letters of Haraji

7140-424: The perfect with / i / , for example for فهم this is faham instead of fihim . Other examples for this are لَبَس , labas , 'to wear', نَزَل , nazal , 'to descend', شَرَب , sharab , 'to drink', نَسَى , nasá , 'to forget', رَجَع, طَلَع, رَكَب. Port Said 's dialect (East Delta) is noted for a "heavier", more guttural sound, compared to other regions of

7242-482: The period c.  325  – c.  800 AD. Bohairic, the language of the Nile Delta , gained prominence in the 9th century and is the dialect used by the Coptic Church. In Coptic the language is called ϯⲙⲉⲧⲣⲉⲙⲛ̀ⲭⲏⲙⲓ ( timetremǹkhēmi ) "Egyptian" or ϯⲁⲥⲡⲓ ⲛ̀ⲣⲉⲙⲛ̀ⲭⲏⲙⲓ ( tiaspi ǹremǹkhēmi ) "the Egyptian language". Coptic also possessed the term ⲅⲩⲡⲧⲓⲟⲥ ( gyptios ) "Egyptian", derived from Greek Αἰγύπτιος ( Aigúptios ). This

7344-488: The postposition of demonstratives and interrogatives, the modal meaning of the imperfect and the integration of the participle. The Western Egyptian Bedawi Arabic variety of the western desert differs from all other Arabic varieties in Egypt in that it linguistically is part of Maghrebi Arabic . Northwest Arabian Arabic is also distinct from Egyptian Arabic. Egyptian Arabic varies regionally across its sprachraum , with certain characteristics being noted as typical of

7446-417: The preposition li- plus a clitic. Both direct and indirect object clitic pronouns can be attached to a single verb: agíib "I bring", agíb-hu "I bring it", agib-húu-lik "I bring it to you", m-agib-hu-lkíi-ʃ "I do not bring it to you". Verbs in Arabic are based on a stem made up of three or four consonants. The set of consonants communicates the basic meaning of a verb. Changes to the vowels in between

7548-548: The probable ancient pronunciations: Sahidic ϫ was probably pronounced [ tʲ ] and ϭ was probably pronounced [ kʲ ] . Reintges (2004 , p. 22) suggests that ϫ was pronounced [ tʃ ] . Beside being found in Greek loanwords, the letters ⟨φ, θ, χ⟩ were used in native words for a sequence of /p, t, k/ plus / h / , as in ⲑⲉ = ⲧ-ϩⲉ "the-way" (f.sg.) and ⲫⲟϥ = ⲡ-ϩⲟϥ "the-snake" (m.sg). The letters did not have this use in Bohairic, which used them for single sounds. It

7650-459: The pronunciation of the origin of the term, the British guinea ). The speech of the older Alexandrians is also noted for use of the same pre-syllable (ne-) in the singular and plural of the first person present and future tenses, which is also a common feature of Tunisian Arabic and also of Maghrebi Arabic in general. The dialects of the western Delta tend to use the perfect with / a / instead of

7752-505: The question of whether Egyptian Arabic should be considered a "dialect" or "language" can be a source of debate. In sociolinguistics , Egyptian Arabic can be seen as one of many distinct varieties that, despite arguably being languages on abstand grounds, are united by a common Dachsprache in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). During the early 1900s many portions of the Bible were published in Egyptian Arabic. These were published by

7854-468: The renaissance. Efforts at language revitalisation continue to be undertaken, and have attracted the interest of Copts and linguists in and outside of Egypt. Coptic uses a writing system almost wholly derived from the Greek alphabet , with the addition of a number of letters that have their origins in Demotic Egyptian . This is comparable to the Latin-based Icelandic alphabet , which includes

7956-410: The revolutionary government heavily sponsored the use of the Egyptian vernacular in films, plays, television programmes, and music, the prerevolutionary use of Modern Standard Arabic in official publications was retained. Linguistic commentators have noted the multi-faceted approach of the Egyptian revolutionaries towards the Arabic language. Whereas Egypt's first president , Mohammed Naguib exhibited

8058-401: The runic letter thorn . There is some variation in the number and forms of these signs depending on the dialect. Some of the letters in the Coptic alphabet that are of Greek origin were normally reserved for Greek words. Old Coptic texts used several graphemes that were not retained in the literary Coptic orthography of later centuries. In Sahidic, syllable boundaries may have been marked by

8160-516: The second member is a long open vowel /ɛː, ɔː/ . In some interpretations of Coptic phonology, it is assumed that the length difference is primary, with ⲉ/ⲏ /e, eː/ and ⲟ/ⲱ is /o, oː/ . Other scholars argue for a different analysis in which ⲉ/ⲏ and ⲟ/ⲱ are interpreted as /e, ɛ/ and /o, ɔ/ . These two charts show the two theories of Coptic vowel phonology: Dialects vary in their realisation. The difference between [ o ] and [ u ] seems to be allophonic. Evidence

8262-433: The seventh century. Until then, they had spoken either Koine Greek or Egyptian in its Coptic form. A period of Coptic-Arabic bilingualism in Lower Egypt lasted for more than three centuries. The period would last much longer in the south. Arabic had been already familiar to Valley Egyptians since Arabic had been spoken throughout the Eastern Desert and Sinai . Arabic was also a minority language of some residents of

8364-446: The significance of Pan-Arabism, making it a central element of Egyptian state policy. The importance of Modern Standard Arabic was reemphasised in the public sphere by the revolutionary government, and efforts to accord any formal language status to the Egyptian vernacular were ignored. Egyptian Arabic was identified as a mere dialect, one that was not spoken even in all of Egypt, as almost all of Upper Egypt speaks Sa'idi Arabic . Though

8466-427: The simple division. The language shifts from the eastern to the western parts of the Nile Delta , and the varieties spoken from Giza to Minya are further grouped into a Middle Egypt cluster. Despite the differences, there are features distinguishing all the Egyptian Arabic varieties of the Nile Valley from any other varieties of Arabic. Such features include reduction of long vowels in open and unstressed syllables,

8568-551: The simplification of syntactical and morphological rules and the introduction of colloquialisms to even complete "Egyptianization" ( تمصير , tamṣīr ) by abandoning the so-called Modern Standard Arabic in favor of Masri or Egyptian Arabic. Proponents of language reform in Egypt included Qasim Amin , who also wrote the first Egyptian feminist treatise, former President of the Egyptian University , Ahmed Lutfi el-Sayed , and noted intellectual Salama Moussa . They adopted

8670-488: The speech of certain regions. The dialect of Alexandria (West Delta) is noted for certain shibboleths separating its speech from that of Cairo (South Delta). The ones that are most frequently noted in popular discourse are the use of the word falafel as opposed to طعميّة taʿmiyya for the fava-bean fritters common across the country and the pronunciation of the word for the Egyptian pound ( جنيه ginēh [ɡeˈneː] ), as [ˈɡeni] , closer to

8772-469: The stem is used. The sound plural with the suffix ـِين , -īn is used for nouns referring to male persons that are participles or follow the pattern CaCCaaC. It takes the form ـيِين , -yīn for nouns of the form CaCCa and the form ـيِّين , -yyīn for nisba adjectives. A common set of nouns referring to colors, as well as a number of nouns referring to physical defects of various sorts ( ʔaṣlaʕ "bald"; ʔaṭṛaʃ "deaf"; ʔaxṛas "dumb"), take

8874-412: The subject is a pronoun, it normally is not also expressed independently, unless for emphasis. Egyptian Arabic Egyptian Arabic , locally known as Colloquial Egyptian ( Arabic : العاميه المصريه ) [el.ʕæmˈmejjæ l.mɑsˤˈɾejjɑ] ), or simply Masri (also Masry , lit.   ' Egyptian ' ) ( مَصري ), is the most widely spoken vernacular Arabic variety in Egypt . It

8976-520: The suffix inflection survive in Coptic, mainly to indicate inalienable possession and in some verbs. Compare the Middle Egyptian form *satāpafa 'he chooses' (written stp.f in hieroglyphs) to Coptic (Sahidic) f.sotp ϥⲥⲱⲧⲡ̅ 'he chooses'. All Coptic nouns carry grammatical gender , either masculine or feminine, usually marked through a definite article as in the Romance languages , the difference

9078-429: The temple scriptoria. Old Coptic is represented mostly by non-Christian texts such as Egyptian pagan prayers and magical and astrological papyri. Many of them served as glosses to original hieratic and demotic equivalents. The glosses may have been aimed at non-Egyptian speakers. Under late Roman rule , Diocletian persecuted many Egyptian converts to the new Christian religion , which forced new converts to flee to

9180-526: The territory, except for monasteries located in Nubia . Coptic's most noticeable linguistic influence has been on the various dialects of Egyptian Arabic , which is characterised by a Coptic substratum in lexical , morphological , syntactical , and phonological features. In addition to influencing the grammar, vocabulary and syntax of Egyptian Arabic, Coptic has lent to both Arabic and Modern Hebrew such words as: A few words of Coptic origin are found in

9282-467: The two sounds appear to be in free variation in Coptic, as they were since the Middle Egyptian period. However, they are contrasted only in Greek loans; for example, native Coptic ⲁⲛⲍⲏⲃ ( anzēb ) and ⲁⲛⲥⲏⲃⲉ ( ansēbə ) 'school' are homophonous. Other consonants that sometimes appear to be either in free variation or to have different distributions across dialects are [ t ] and [ d ] , [ ɾ ] and [ l ] (especially in

9384-538: The two varieties have limited mutual intelligibility . It carries little prestige nationally but continues to be widely spoken, with 19,000,000 speakers. The traditional division between Upper and Lower Egypt and their respective differences go back to ancient times. Egyptians today commonly call the people of the north بَحَارْوَه , baḥārwah ( [bɑˈħɑɾwɑ] ) and those of the south صَعَايْدَه , ṣaʿāydah ( [sˤɑˈʕɑjdɑ] ). The differences throughout Egypt, however, are more wide-ranging and do not neatly correspond to

9486-401: The use of Coptic anywhere, whether in schools, public streets, and even homes, including mothers speaking to their children. Those who did not comply had their tongues cut off. He personally walked the streets of Cairo and eavesdropped on Coptic-speaking homes to find out if any family was speaking Coptic. As a written language, Coptic is thought to have completely given way to Arabic around

9588-432: The verb meaning "write" is often specified as kátab , which actually means "he wrote". In the paradigms below, a verb will be specified as kátab/yíktib (where kátab means "he wrote" and yíktib means "he writes"), indicating the past stem ( katab- ) and non-past stem ( -ktib- , obtained by removing the prefix yi- ). The verb classes in Arabic are formed along two axes. One axis (described as "form I", "form II", etc.)

9690-441: The word ebenos , which was taken directly from Greek ἔβενος ("ebony"), originally from Egyptian hbnj . Many place names in modern Egypt are Arabic adaptations of their former Coptic names : The Coptic name ⲡⲁⲡⲛⲟⲩⲧⲉ , papnoute (from Egyptian pꜣy-pꜣ-nṯr ), means "belonging to God" or "he of God". It was adapted into Arabic as Babnouda , which remains a common name among Egyptian Copts to this day. It

9792-464: The word ⲧⲃⲁⲓⲧⲱⲩ '(Who is) in (His) Mountain', is an epithet of Anubis . There are also traces of some archaic grammatical features, such as residues of the Demotic relative clause , lack of an indefinite article and possessive use of suffixes. Thus, the transition from the old traditions to the new Christian religion also contributed to the adoption of Greek words into the Coptic religious lexicon. It

9894-512: Was adapted from the Greek alphabet . The earliest attempts to write the Egyptian language using the Greek alphabet are Greek transcriptions of Egyptian proper names, most of which date to the Ptolemaic Kingdom . Scholars frequently refer to this phase as Pre-Coptic. However, it is clear that by the Late Period of ancient Egypt , demotic scribes regularly employed a more phonetic orthography,

9996-451: Was also borrowed into Greek as the name Παφνούτιος ( Paphnutius ). That, in turn, is the source of the Russian name Пафнутий ( Pafnuty ), perhaps best known in the name of the mathematician Pafnuty Chebyshev . The Egyptian language may have the longest documented history of any language, from Old Egyptian , which appeared just before 3200 BC, to its final phases as Coptic in

10098-574: Was also related to Arabic in other respects. With few waves of immigration from the Arabian peninsula such as the Banu Hilal exodus, who later left Egypt and were settled in Morocco and Tunisia, together with the ongoing Islamization and Arabization of the country, multiple Arabic varieties, one of which is Egyptian Arabic, slowly supplanted spoken Coptic. Local chroniclers mention the continued use of Coptic as

10200-412: Was also used in many texts to indicate the bilabial approximant / w / . Coptologists believe that Coptic ⲃ was articulated as a voiced bilabial fricative [ β ] . In the present-day Coptic Church services, this letter is realised as / v / , but it is almost certainly a result of the pronunciation reforms instituted in the 19th century. Whereas Old Egyptian contrasts / s / and / z / ,

10302-457: Was borrowed into Arabic as ‏ قبْط ‎ ( qibṭ/qubṭ ), and from there into the languages of Europe, giving rise to words like French copte and English Copt . Coptic is today spoken liturgically in the Coptic Orthodox and Coptic Catholic Church (along with Modern Standard Arabic ). The language is spoken only in Egypt and historically has had little influence outside of

10404-489: Was supplanted by Arabic as the primary spoken language of Egypt following the Arab conquest of Egypt and was slowly replaced over the centuries. Coptic has no native speakers today, although it remains in daily use as the liturgical language of the Coptic Orthodox Church and of the Coptic Catholic Church . Innovations in grammar and phonology and the influx of Greek loanwords distinguish Coptic from earlier periods of

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