Copt

 

(kŏpts) , the native Christian minority of Egypt; estimates of the number of Copts in Egypt range from 5% to 17% of the population. Copts are not ethnically distinct from other Egyptians; they are a cultural remnant, i.e., the Christians who have not been converted to Islam in the 14 centuries since the Muslim invasion. The Coptic language, now extinct, was the form of the ancient Egyptian language spoken in early Christian times; by the 12th cent. it was superseded by Arabic.

Most Copts belong to the Coptic Church, an autonomous Christian sect that officially adheres to Monophysitism, which was declared (451) a heresy by the Council of Chalcedon. The church is in communion with the Jacobite Church (also Monophysite), but a traditionally close relationship to the Ethiopian Orthodox Church was dissolved in 1961 when it declared itself independent of the Coptic patriarch. In rites and customs the Coptic Church resembles other Eastern churches; however, Copts circumcise their infants before baptism and observe certain Mosaic dietary laws. Coptic, Greek, and Arabic languages are all used ceremonially. The chief bishop, the patriarch of Alexandria, is in direct succession to the 5th-century patriarchs who embraced Monophysitism; he is entitled pope.

Among the Copts a small minority are in communion with the pope; these “Catholic Copts” have their own organization and churches but share the rites and practices of the Coptic Church. This community began to develop in the 18th cent. Protestant missionaries have established some Coptic congregations. Besides Copts there are Orthodox communities in Egypt, mainly Greek and Syrian; the Orthodox patriarch of Alexandria traces his succession to the Catholic patriarchs of the 5th cent. There are also many Catholic Syrians, mainly Melchites and Maronites. In the last decades of the 20th cent., Copts were the object of attacks by Muslim fundamentalists in Egypt.

Bibliography

See D. Attwater, The Christian Churches of the East (2 vol., 1947–48); E. Wakin, A Lonely Minority: The Story of Egypt's Copts (1963); M. Kāmil, Coptic Egypt (1968); O. F. A. Meindarus, Christian Egypt: Faith and Life (1970).

Coptic Ⲙⲉⲧⲣⲉⲙ̀ⲛⲭⲏⲙⲓ Met.Remenkīmi
Spoken in:	Egypt
Language extinction:	Near extinct since the 17th century[1][2]
Language family:	Afro-Asiatic  Egyptian   Coptic
Writing system:	Coptic alphabet
Language codes
ISO 639-1:	none
ISO 639-2:	cop
ISO 639-3:	cop
This article contains Coptic text. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Coptic letters.

Coptic or Coptic Egyptian^[3] (Ⲙⲉⲧⲣⲉⲙ̀ⲛⲭⲏⲙⲓ Met.Remenkīmi) is the final stage of the Egyptian language, a northern Afro-Asiatic language spoken in Egypt until at least the seventeenth century CE. Egyptian began to be written using the Greek alphabet in the first century CE. The new writing system became the Coptic script, an adapted Greek alphabet with the addition of six to seven signs from the demotic script to represent Egyptian phonemes absent from Greek. Several distinct Coptic dialects are identified, the most prominent of which are Sahidic and Bohairic.

As developmental phases of Egyptian, both Coptic and Demotic are grammatically closely akin to Late Egyptian, which was written in the hieroglyphic script, but differ significantly in their graphic representation. Coptic flourished as a literary language from the second to thirteenth centuries CE, and its Bohairic dialect continues to be the liturgical language of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria. It was supplanted by Egyptian Arabic as a spoken language toward the early modern period, though some revitalization efforts have been underway since the nineteenth century.

Name

The native name of the language is ⲙⲛⲧⲣⲙⲛⲕⲏⲙⲉ (mentrmenkēmə) in the Sahidic dialect and ⲙⲉⲧⲣⲉⲙⲛ̀ⲭⲏⲙⲓ (metremenkīmi) in Bohairic. The particle prefix ment-/met- is a construct of the verb ⲙⲟⲩϯ mouti ('to speak'), which forms all abstract nouns in Coptic (not only those pertaining to "language"). The expression literally means 'language of the people of Egypt', or simply 'Egyptian language'. Another name by which the language has been called is ⲙⲛⲧⲕⲩⲡⲧⲁⲓⲟⲛ ment kuptaion from the Copto-Greek form ⲙⲛⲧⲁⲓⲅⲩⲡⲧⲓⲟⲛ ment aiguption ('Egyptian language'). The term logos ən aiguptios ('Egyptian language') is also attested in Sahidic, although logos and aiguptios are both Greek in origin. In the liturgy of the Coptic Orthodox Church, the name is more officially Ⲧⲉⲛⲁⲥⲡⲓ ̀ⲛⲢⲉⲙ ̀ⲛⲭⲏⲙⲓ tenaspi en remenkimi, 'the Egyptian language', aspi being the Egyptian word for language.

Geographic distribution

As a nearly extinct language, Egyptian no longer has official status in Egypt. However, it is presently a liturgical language of the Coptic Orthodox and Coptic Catholic churches (along with Arabic). Coptic Egyptian was spoken only in Egypt, and historically has had little influence outside of Egypt proper, with the exception of monasteries located in Nubia. Coptic's most noticeable impact has been on the various dialects of Egyptian Arabic, whose lexicon has preserved a large number of Coptic words, in addition to Coptic morphological, syntactical, and phonological features.

Influence on other languages

Apart from Egyptian Arabic, there are a handful of words of Coptic origin that have been borrowed more generally into Classical Arabic and Biblical Hebrew. These include:

• timsāḥ, تمساح (Arabic), תמסח (Hebrew) - "crocodile"; ⲉⲙⲥⲁϩ emsaḥ.
• ṭūbah طوبة "brick"; Sahidic ⲧⲱⲃⲉ to:be; Bohairic ⲧⲱⲃⲓ to:bi; this subsequently entered Spanish (via Andalusi Arabic) as adobe, whence it was borrowed by American English.
• wāḥah واحة "oasis"; Sahidic ⲟⲩⲁϩⲉ waḥe, Bohairic ⲟⲩⲉϩⲓ weḥi.

A few words of Coptic origin are found in Greek, some of which were ultimately borrowed into various languages of Europe (e.g. barge from Coptic ⲃⲁⲁⲣⲉ bari "small boat"). However, most words of Egyptian origin that entered into Greek, and subsequently other European languages, come directly from ancient Egyptian (often Demotic). An example of this is Greek ὄασις oasis, which comes directly from Egyptian wḥ3.t or demotic wḥỉ. Yet Coptic re-borrowed some words of ancient Egyptian origin back into its lexicon via Greek. For example, both Sahidic and Bohairic use the word ebenos, which was taken directly from Greek ἔβενος "ebony", originally from Egyptian hbny.

In addition, the Greek name Παπνούθιος Paphnutius finds its origin in Coptic ⲡⲁⲡⲛⲟⲩⲧⲉ papnute 'the (man) of God' – still a common name in Egypt. The name entered Russian as Пафнутий (for example, the famous mathematician Pafnuty Chebyshev). Finally, Old Nubian and modern Nobiin borrowed many words of Coptic origin.

History

Egyptian may have the longest documented history of any language, having remained in written use from c. 3200 BCE to the Middle Ages and as a spoken language for longer. The history of the language is characterized by two important transitions, one in the structure of the language and another in its orthography. First, a change from synthetic to analytic patterns in the verbal system and the nominal syntax took place, and is often described in scholarly literature as a transition from "Older Egyptian" (Old and Middle Egyptian) to "Later Egyptian" (Late, Demotic and Coptic Egyptian). On the whole, Later Egyptian is characterized by the development of analytic features such as prefixal definite and indefinite articles, which replaced the earlier suffixal markers of morphological oppositions (more akin to Semitic), as well as a periphrastic development involving a change from the older VSO word order (also characteristic of Classical Arabic and Biblical Hebrew) to SVO. The second major change marks the transition from the older Egyptian writing systems, namely the native hieroglyphic, hieratic, and demotic scripts, to the Coptic alphabet. Coptic therefore is a reference both to the final stage of Egyptian after Demotic, and to the new writing system that was adapted from the Greek alphabet.

Coptic before the Islamic period

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 period. Scholars frequently refer to this phase as Pre-Coptic. However, it is clear that by the late pharaonic period, demotic scribes regularly employed a more phonetic orthography, 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 CE. The transition from the older Egyptian scripts to the newly adapted Graeco-Coptic script 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 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 faith. This forced new converts to flee to the Egyptian deserts, where they founded the monastic movement. In time, the growth of these communities generated the need to write Christian Greek instructions in the Egyptian language. The early Fathers of the Egyptian Church, such as Anthony the Great, Pachomius, Macarius and Athanasius, who otherwise usually wrote in Greek, addressed some of their works to the Egyptian monks in Egyptian. The Egyptian language, now written in the Coptic alphabet, flourished in the second and third centuries CE. However, it was not until Shenouda the Archimandrite that Coptic became a fully standardized 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 pre-Christian Egypt.

Coptic after the Islamic period

Egypt came under the dominance of Arab rulers with the spread of Islam in the 7th century CE. At the turn of the 8th century, Caliph Abdel al-Malik bin Marwan decreed that Arabic replace Koine Greek and Coptic as the sole administrative language. Literary Coptic gradually declined such that 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 the language retained its important position, and many hagiographic texts were also composed during this period. Until the tenth century, Coptic remained the spoken language of the native population outside the capital.

Violent persecutions under the Mamluks led to the further decline of Coptic, until it completely gave way to Egyptian Arabic sometime in the 17th century CE, though it may have survived in isolated pockets for a little longer. In the second half of the 19th century, Pope Cyril IV of Alexandria started a national Church-sponsored movement to revive the Coptic language. Several works of grammar were published, along with a more comprehensive dictionary than had been previously available. The scholarly findings of the field of Egyptology and the inauguration of the Higher Institute of Coptic Studies further contributed to the renaissance. Efforts at language revival continue to be undertaken, both inside and outside the Church, and have attracted the interest of both Copts and Muslims in Egypt.

Writing system

Main article Coptic alphabet

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. 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 only for words that are themselves Greek in origin. Old Coptic texts employed several graphemes that were not incorporated in literary Coptic orthography.

In Sahidic, syllables may have been indicated by a supralinear stroke, though many scholars hold that it was used to indicate [ɪ] or [ə]. Some scribal traditions use a diaeresis over /i/ and /u/ at the beginning of a syllable. Bohairic uses a superposed point or small stroke known as a djinkim. It is may be related to the Sahidic supralinear stroke, or additionally, it may indicate a glottal stop. Most Coptic texts do not indicate a word division.

Literature

Main article: Coptic literature

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 and Shenouda the Archimandrite. Shenouda helped fully standardize the Coptic language through his many sermons, treatises and homilies, which formed the basis of early Coptic literature.

Vocabulary

The core lexicon of Coptic is Egyptian, being most closely related to the preceding Demotic phase of the language. Approximately one-third of the vocabulary of literary Coptic is drawn from Greek, though 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, this is likely due to the fact that the majority of Coptic religious texts are direct translations of Greek works.

Words or concepts for which no adequate Egyptian translation existed were taken directly from Greek so as not to alter the meaning of the religious message. In addition, other Egyptian words that would have adequately translated the Greek equivalents were not employed as these were often perceived as having overt pagan associations. Old Coptic texts employ many such words, phrases and epithets; for example, the word ⲧⲃⲁⲓⲧⲱⲩ 'Who is in His Mountain', is an epithet of Anubis.^[4] There are also traces of some archaic morphological and syntactic features, such as residues of the Demotic relative clause, lack of an indefinite article and possessive use of suffix pronouns.

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 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 non-religious documents such as letters and contracts.

Phonology

Coptic provides the clearest indication of Later Egyptian phonology thanks to its writing system, which fully indicates vowel sounds and occasionally stress pattern. The phonological system of Later Egyptian is also better known than that of the Classical phase of the language due to 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 phonology, in addition, is known from a variety of Coptic-Arabic papyri written during the early Islamic period (when Coptic was still spoken) in which Arabic letters were used to transcribe Coptic and vice versa.^[5]

In all, there are about 10 vowels and 25 consonants in the Coptic sound inventory, though their number and phonetic properties vary slightly from dialect to dialect.

Vowels

Monophthong phonemes

	Front	Central	Back
Close	iː   i		uː
Close-mid	eː   e		oː   o
Mid		ə
Open	a		ɑ

The 6 vowels of Later Egyptian expanded to about 10 in Coptic:

• Six short vowels: /e/, /a/, /o/, /i/, /ə/, /ɑ/
• Four long vowels: /iː/, /eː/, /oː/, /uː/

In the Upper Egyptian dialects, /e/ is absent before sonorants but is indicated by the superlinear stroke. In the Lower Egyptian dialects, it is indicated by ⲉ in Bohairic, and ⲏ or ⲩ in Fayyumic. For example, /ʃemʃə/ 'to worship' is Sah/Akh/Lyc ϣⲙ̅ϣⲉ, Bohairic ϣⲉⲙϣⲓ and Fayyumic ϣⲏⲙϣⲓ. The vowel /e/ can alternately indicate [ɪ] or [ə].

Most dialects have unstressed vocalic phonemes. In Sahidic and other Upper Egyptian dialects final ⲉ indicates /ə/, while this is always /i/ word-finally (Coptic ⲓ) in the northern dialects. For the long vowels, /u/ and /o/ become phonemic in Coptic, marking the only significant phonological development from Later Egyptian as shown by the presence of minimal pairs.

The vowel /ɑ/ is typically represented by ⲁ, which may further indicate emphasis of obstruents in the same syllable. For example, ⲥⲁ (used in in the construction 'man of [trade]') is transcribed [sˤɑ] in medieval papyri. In some phonetic environments, /o/ is a more open [ɔ], and /a/ is a more forward [æ]. The vowel /ə/ is always unstressed and often reduced to Ø as in earlier Egyptian scripts, which did not indicate unstressed and most stressed vowels.

Coptic also has three to four diphthongs — mainly [aj], [ɔj] and [aw] — although these may be interpreted as series of vowels and glides. In some dialects, they eventually become monophthongized.

Consonants

IPA chart of Coptic consonants

	Bilabial	Labio- dental	Alveolar	Postalveolar	Palatal	Velar		Pharyngeal	Glottal
						Palatalized	Plain
Stop	p   b		t   d		c   ɟ	gʲ	k   g		ʔ
Nasal	m		n
Trill			r
Fricative		f	s   z	ʃ			x	ʕ   ħ	h
Affricate				ʧ
Approximant	w				j
Lateral			l

The status of /p/ and /b/ in Coptic is not entirely clear. To be sure, earlier phases of Egyptian may have contrasted voiceless and voiced bilabial stops, but the distinction seems to have been lost sometime during the language's evolutionary history, prior to the 7th-century Islamic conquest. 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. More confusingly, both letters were interchanged with ⲫ and ϥ to indicate /f/, and ⲃ was also used in many texts to indicate the bilabial approximant /w/ (the Semitic waw).

There is further evidence from transcriptions of Egyptian by other languages that /b/ and /p/ were not contrasted, or that /p/ had been lost at least in later phases. For example, the name of the ancient Egyptian god Anubis was written in Classical Greek with a voiced bilabial stop rather than /p/. Since Classical Greek more securely had both sounds, there is good reason to believe that ancient Greek writers transcribed the Egyptian phoneme based on how they heard it pronounced by contemporaneous Egyptians. Some Coptologists have also suggested that Coptic ⲃ may have been articulated as a voiced bilabial fricative [β]. In the present-day Coptic Church services, this letter is realized as /v/, though this is almost certainly a result of the pronunciation reforms instituted in the 19th century.

Whereas Old Egyptian contrasts /s/ and /z/, the two sounds appear to be in free variation in Coptic and are contrasted only in Greek loans; for example, Coptic ⲁⲛⲍⲏⲃⲉ (anzībə) and ⲁⲛⲥⲏⲃⲉ (ansībə) 'school'. Other consonants that sometimes appear to be either in free variation or to have different phonological distributions across dialects are [t] and [d], [r] and [l] (especially in the Fayyumic dialect — a feature of earlier Egyptian) and [k] and [g], with the voiceless stops being more common. Apart from the liquid consonants, this pattern may indicate a phonological change in Later Egyptian leading to a neutralization of voiced alveolar and velar stops. When the voiced stops are realized, it is often the result of sonorization in proximity to /n/.

Old Coptic texts graphically express the Egyptian pharyngeals in a variety of ways. For example, the Old Coptic grapheme ⳍ was occasionally used to convey a voiceless pharyngeal fricative. In literary Coptic, the two sounds are not indicated by separate letters, suggesting loss of phonemic status. Instead, the adapted demotic grapheme ϩ, which normally stands for /h/, is often used to express either sound. At the beginning and end of unstressed syllables and in a stressed final syllable, the voiced pharyngeal fricative is often conveyed by ⲁ as in ⲁϣⲁⲓ /ʕʃaj/ 'to multiply'. Similarly, different methods are employed to graphically express the glottal stop, including (though not uniformly) ⲁ word-initially (or [Ø]), ⲓ word-finally in an unstressed syllable, and reduplication of a vowel's grapheme.

Grammar

Typical of other Afro-Asiatic languages, Older Egyptian was a fusional language with a Verb Subject Object synthetic structure. Later Egyptian, including Coptic, is marked by a diachronic shift to a Subject Verb Object word order and prefixal analytic constructions for nominal morphemes of gender and number, as well as a move toward a polysynthetic type in Coptic. While vestiges of the older suffix conjugation pattern survive in Coptic, the change is fairly uniform across the different dialects. The decline in suffixal conjugation can be observed when comparing the Classical Egyptian form stp.f 'he chose' to Coptic a.f.sotp ⲁϥⲥⲱⲧⲡ, -f and -f- being the third-person singular masculine pronoun in both stages of the language.

Nouns

All Coptic nouns carry grammatical gender, either masculine or feminine. In earlier Egyptian, feminine nouns were distinguished by the Afro-Asiatic feminine marker suffix -t. In Coptic, this pattern was replaced by two sets of prefixal definite and indefinite articles that also indicate number — however, only definite articles carry grammatical gender. Many Coptic words have different forms for the singular and the plural, another vestige of Older Egyptian, though in the majority of cases, number is indicate by the form of the prefixal article. Generally, nouns inflected for plurality in Coptic end in /w/ in masculine forms and in /wə/ in feminine forms, though there are some irregularities depending on the phonetic environment. The dual was another feature of earlier Egyptian that survives in Coptic in only few words, such as /snaw/ ⲥⲛⲁⲩ 'two'.

There is no evidence that Older Egyptian possessed the three grammatical cases (nominative -u, accusative -a, genitive -i) so common of many other Afro-Asiatic languages, and the same is true of Coptic, but a related feature is observed. Egyptian adjectives are formed through a process known as nisbation by adding the suffix -j to the genitive of a noun; for example, Coptic ϩⲣⲁ /hrɑ/ 'face' → ϩⲣⲁⲓ /hrɑj/ 'facial'. Few true adjectives exist in Coptic, however, with the majority being expressed by a relative clause or the introduction of the determinative pronoun n between two substantives, a process common of many Berber languages. In all stages of Egyptian, this morpheme is also used to express the indirect genitive — for example, the Bohairic word for 'Egyptian', ⲣⲉⲙ̀ⲛⲭⲏⲙⲓ /rəmɪnkiːmi/, is a combination of the noun prefix rem- (construct of ⲣⲱⲙⲓ rōmi 'man'), followed by the genitive morpheme n ('of') and finally the word Egypt kīmi.

Pronouns

Coptic has two sets of personal pronouns, suffix and independent. Suffix pronouns are used as the subject of verbal forms, as possessive pronouns and as the object of prepositions. Their morphological structure is the similar to that of Semitic languages. The independent pronouns function as the subject of nominal sentences in the first and second person, and as the subject of a nominal or verbal cleft sentence used for emphasis.

Coptic pronouns

	Suffix	Independent
1st sg	-ⲓ	ⲁⲛⲟⲕ
2nd mas.	-ⲕ	ⲛ̅ⲧⲟⲕ
2nd fem.	-ⲉ	ⲛ̅ⲧⲟ
3rd mas.	-ϥ	ⲛ̅ⲧⲟϥ
3rd fem.	-ⲥ	ⲛ̅ⲧⲟⲥ
1st pl	-ⲛ	ⲁⲛⲟⲛ
2nd pl	-ⲧⲛ̅	ⲛ̅ⲧⲱⲧⲛ̅
3rd pl	-ⲟⲩ	ⲛ̅ⲧⲟⲟⲩ

Dialects

There is little evidence of dialectal differences in the pre-Coptic phases of the Egyptian language due to the centralized nature of the political and cultural institutions of ancient Egyptian society. However, literary Old and Middle (Classical) Egyptian represent the spoken dialect of Lower Egypt around the city of Memphis, the capital of Egypt in the Old Kingdom. Later Egyptian is more reprsentative of the dialects spoken in Upper Egypt, especially around the area of Thebes as it became the cultural and religious center of the New Kingdom.

Coptic more obviously displays a number of regional dialects that were in use from the Mediterranean coast in northern Egypt, south into Nubia, and in the western oases. However, while many of these dialects reflect actual regional linguistic (namely phonological and some lexical) variation, they mostly reflect localized orthographic traditions with very little morphosyntactic differences.

Sahidic

Sahidic (formerly called Thebaic) is dialect in which most known Coptic texts are written, and was the leading dialect in the pre-Islamic period. It is thought to have originally been a regional dialect from the area around el-Ashmunein (Coptic Ϣⲙⲟⲩⲛⲉⲓⲛ Shmounein), but around 300 CE it began to be written in literary form, including translations of major portions of the Bible. By the 6th century CE, a standardized spelling had been attained throughout Egypt. Almost all native authors wrote in this dialect of Coptic. Sahidic was, beginning in the 9th century CE challenged by Bohairic, but is attested as late as the 14th century.

While texts in other Coptic dialects are primarily translations of Greek literary and religious texts, Sahidic is the only dialect with a considerable body of original literature and non-literary texts. Because Sahidic shares most of its features with other dialects of Coptic and has few peculiarities specific to itself, and has an extensive corpus of known texts, it is generally the dialect studied by learners of Coptic, particularly by scholars outside of the Coptic Church.

Bohairic

The Bohairic (or Memphitic) dialect is generally believed to originate in the western Nile delta. The earliest Bohairic manuscripts date to the 4th century CE, but most texts come from the 9th century and later; this may, however, be due to poor preservation conditions for texts in the humid regions of northern Egypt. It shows several conservative features in lexicon and phonology not found in other dialects. Bohairic is the dialect used today as the liturgical language of the Coptic Orthodox Church, replacing Sahidic some time in the 11th century. In contemporary liturgical use, there are two traditions of pronunciation, arising from successive reforms in the 19th and 20th centuries (see Coptic pronunciation reform). Modern revitalization efforts are based on this dialect.

Akhmimic

Akhmimic was the dialect of the area around the town Akhmim (ancient Panopolis), and flourished during the 4th and 5th centuries, after which it became extinct. Akhmimic is phonologically the most archaic of the Coptic dialects. One characteristic feature is the retention of the phoneme /x/, which is realised as /ʃ/ in most other dialects. Similarly, it uses an exceptionally conservative writing system strikingly similar to Old Coptic.

Lycopolitan (also known as Subakhmimic and Assiutic) is a closely related dialect to Akhmimic in terms of when and where it was attested, though manuscripts written in it tend to be from the area of Asyut, ancient Lycopolis. The main differences between the two dialects seem to be only graphical in nature, though Lycopolitan was used extensively for translations of gnostic and Manichaean works, including the Nag Hammadi library texts.

Fayyumic

Fayyumic (or Faiyumic; in older works it is often called Bashmuric) was utilised primarily in the Faiyum region west of the Nile Valley. It is attested from the 3rd to the 10th centuries. It is most notable for writing ⲗ, which corresponds to the alveolar lateral approximant /l/, where other dialects generally use ⲣ /r/ (probably corresponding to a flap [ɾ]). In earlier stages of Egyptian, the liquids were not distinguished in writing until the New Kingdom, when Late Egyptian became the administrative language. In Late Egyptian orthography, a grapheme combining /r/ and /n/ was created in order express the phoneme /l/. Demotic for its part indicated [l] using a diacritic variety of /r/.

Oxyrhynchite (also called Mesokemic or [confusingly] Middle Egyptian) is the dialect of Oxyrhynchus and surrounding areas. It shows similarities with Fayyumic and is attested in manuscripts from the 4th and 5th centuries.

Notes

References

General studies

• Emmel, Stephen. 1992. "Languages (Coptic)". In The Anchor Bible Dictionary, edited by David Noel Freedman. Vol. 4 of 6 vols. New York: Doubleday. 180–188.
• Gessman, A. M. (1976). "The Birth of the Coptic Script". University of South Florida Language Quarterly 14 2-3. 
• Gignag, Francis Thomas. 1991. "Old Coptic". In The Coptic Encyclopedia, edited by Aziz Suryal Atiya. Vol. 8 of 8 vols. New York and Toronto: Macmillian Publishing Company and Collier Macmillian Canada. 169—188.
• Kasser, Radolphe. 1991. "Dialects". In The Coptic Encyclopedia, edited by Aziz Suryal Atiya. Vol. 8 of 8 vols. New York and Toronto: Macmillian Publishing Company and Collier Macmillian Canada. 87—96.
• Loprieno, Antonio. 1995. Ancient Egyptian: A Linguistic Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Polotsky, Hans Jakob. 1971. "Coptic". In Afroasiatic: A Survey, edited by Carleton Taylor Hodge. (Jana Linguarum: Series Practica; 163). 's Gravenhage and Paris: Mouton. 67–79.

Grammars

• Lambdin, Thomas Oden. 1983. Introduction to Sahidic Coptic. Macon: Mercer University Press.
• Layton, Bentley. 2000. A Coptic Grammar (Sahidic Dialect): With a Chrestomathy and Glossary. (Porta linguarum orientalium; N.S., 20). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.
• Mallon, Alexis. 1956. Grammaire copte: bibliographie, chrestomathie et vocabulaire. 4th edition. Beyrouth.
• Mattar, Nabil. 1990. A Study in Bohairic Coptic. Pasadena: Hope Publishing House.
• Polotsky, Hans Jakob. 1987. Grundlagen des koptischen Satzbaus. American Studies in Papyrology 28. Decatur, Ga.: Scholars Press.
• Plumley, J. Martin. 1948. An Introductory Coptic Grammar (Sahidic Dialect). London: Home & van Thal.
• Shisha-Halevy, Ariel. 1988. Coptic Grammatical Chrestomathy: a course for academic and private study. Orientalia lovaniensia analecta 30. Leuven: Peeters.
• Shisha-Halevy, Ariel. 1986. Coptic Grammatical Categories: Structural Studies in the Syntax of Shenoutean Sahidic. Analecta Orientalia 53. Roma: Pontificium Institutum Biblicum. ISBN 88-7653-255-2.
• Till, Walter C. 1994. Koptische Dialektgrammatik. Berlin: Walter De Gruyter.
• Vergote, Jozef. 1973–1983. Grammaire copte. Leuven: Peeters.
• Younan, Sameh. 2005. So, you want to learn Coptic? A guide to Bohairic Grammar. Sydney: St.Mary, St.Bakhomious and St.Shenouda Coptic Orthodox Church.

Dictionaries

• Černý, Jaroslav. 1976. Coptic Etymological Dictionary. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.
• Crum, Walter Ewing. 1939. A Coptic Dictionary. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
• Vycichl, Werner. 1983. Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue copte. Leuven: Éditions Peeters.
• Westendorf, Wolfhart. 1965/1977. Koptisches Handwörterbuch. Heidelberg: Carl Winter.

Phonology

• Depuydt, Leo. 1993. "On Coptic Sounds." Orientalia 62 (new series): 338–375.
• Loprieno, Antonio. 1997. "Egyptian and Coptic Phonology". In Phonologies of Asia and Africa (Including the Caucasus), edited by Alan S. Kaye. Vol. 1 of 2 vols. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns. 431–460.
• Peust, Carsten. 1999. Egyptian Phonology: An Introduction to the Phonology of a Dead Language. (Monographien zur ägyptischen Sprache; 2). Göttingen: Peust & Gutschmidt.

Bibliography

• Kammerer, Winifred (compiler), A Coptic Bibliography, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1950. (Reprint New York: Kraus Reprint Co., 1969)

See also

• Coptic alphabet
• Coptic Church
• Egyptian language
• Egyptian Arabic
• Nag Hammadi library
• Coptic Wikipedia, currently in incubator stage

External links

• New Athena Unicode font; includes the new Coptic range
• Learn the Coptic language online (in English, Arabic including video tutorials)
• Remenkimi: An extensive Coptic language site from enthusiasts attempting to revive spoken Bohairc
• Coptic Standard Fonts: ASCII-based fonts
• The History of the Coptic Language
• The Coptic Gospel of Thomas
• Coptic Number Translator (CNT) - a free Windows program by Ambrose Boles that converts modern numerals into Bohairic Coptic numerals and fully written numbers (including pronunciation). The site and program also include a free Bohairic Coptic number tutorial.
• Bohairic Coptic Grammar book
• Coptic Manuscript, 700–900
• Coptic Unicode test pages and fonts
• Coptic block in the Unicode 4.1 standard
• Heike Behlmer, Selected Bibliography on the Coptic Language
• Coptic texts and manuscripts at Leiden University Library

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