How do you decode hieroglyphics?

Answer 1

Hieroglyphic writing is somewhat phonetic.

Symbols stand for certain sounds (unlike the English alphabet where some letters have many sounds or can be silent). Let's start out with an example, the word freight. While the F, R, and T sound the "normal" way, the G and H are silent and the E and I make one sound (long A). There are 7 letters in the word, but only 4 sounds (F, R, long A, and T) are heard. So to spell freight with hieroglyphs, you'd use the symbols for those 4 sounds: Four different sounds are used to say "freight," so four symbols-- no more, no less-- are needed to write it the Egyptian way.

Our spelling is more complicated than it needs to be. Like, why do we spell phone with a PH when we have a perfectly good F just going to waste? And why bother with C when we already have K and S? Why have double letters (like the M's in rummy) when we only pronounce it once? And then there are words like knight, technique, and phlegm! When you use hieroglyphs, you spell your words phonetically (the way it sounds), so you leave out silent letters: height the E,G, and second H are silent maybe A and E are long, the Y is silent hey the EY sounds like a long A Christmas the CH sounds like K, the T is pretty much silent, and the A sounds more like a short I rogue the U and E are silent Saxophone the X is really a KS sound, the PH is an F sound, and the E is silent Alone or in pairs, vowels stand for lots of different sounds.

And sometimes they're silent. When any English letter (whether it's a vowel or a consonant) is silent, don't include a hieroglyph for it. Some English sounds weren't spoken in ancient Egypt... English and ancient Egyptian aren't from the same language family, so some of the sounds they said don't exist in our alphabet. And some of the sounds we make did not exist in Egyptian. For example, they didn't need a hieroglyph for the TH sound because they didn't say any words containing that sound. You'll notice in the chart at the bottom that some sounds (like F and V) that are different to us weren't distinguished by the ancient Egyptians, so we have to use the same hieroglyph. Why F and V? Because these two sounds are articulated in roughly the same place in your mouth. Try saying "ffffff" and then change it to "vvvvvv." See how changing the flow of air in your mouth makes a subtle difference in the sound? Vowels were often left out... The Egyptians often used only hieroglyphs for consonant sounds to write their words. Thus, you can spell freight like this: F-R-T.

Answer 2

Egyptian hieroglyphic writing is a means of recording the words of the ancient Egyptian language, so there are two basic necessities:

• an understanding of how the signs are used to represent words
• an understanding of how the words combine to produce meaningful sentences

There are a number of books that will teach both of these basics. Collier & Manley's How to Read Egyptian Hieroglyphs is a good introduction for students without linguistic training; more experienced students may want to turn to Hoch's Middle Egyptian Grammar or Allen's Middle Egyptian: An Introduction to the Language and Culture of Hieroglyphs, which provide a much more complete and in-depth view.

The Ancient Egyptian Language e-mail list (see related link below) hosts online study groups for each of these books and others.

Answer 3

Hieroglyphics contain symbols that represent the consonants of a word plus symbols that narrow its meaning, called "determiners." Very rarely did a symbol represent an entire word.
Names may also have additional determiners, for example, pharaohs included the symbol for pharaoh in their names even though it wasn't pronounced. A further complication is that sometimes the phonetic symbols were not written in order of pronunciation, but rather, they were arranged aesthetically.

Answer 4

i used the internet which i am on now to learn to read it

Answer 5

How should I know, this is my question.