Posted on 10/20/2006 10:41:26 AM PDT by blam
Coptic language’s last survivors
By Joseph Mayton
First Published: December 10, 2005
Coptic is a combination of the ancient Egyptian languages Demotic, Hieroglyphic and Hieratic.
CAIRO: Considered an extinct language, the Coptic language is believed to exist only in the liturgical language of the Coptic Church in Egypt. The ancient language that lost in prominence thanks largely to the Arab incursion into Egypt over 1300 years ago remains the spoken language of the church and only two families in Egypt.
Coptic is a combination of the ancient Egyptian languages Demotic, Hieroglyphic and Hieratic, and was the language used by the Ptolemaic rulers of Egypt following the spread of Greek culture throughout much of the Near East. In essence, it is the language of the ancient Egyptians themselves.
Mona Zaki is one of only a handful of people that continue to use the language in everyday conversation. She speaks a colloquial form of Coptic with her parents and a few relatives that dates back 2,000 years.
“In many ways it helps strengthen my faith,” Zaki said. “It has really helped when I go to church because they still use a form of Coptic for many services.” Her dialect, however, differs slightly from the standard Coptic that is used for study and church services.
She does not speak Coptic with her children.
“I felt that Coptic was a worthless language to have my children speak, therefore I did not do so when they were young,” said Zaki.
Coptic is the language of the first Christian church in history, and when the members of the two families that speak the colloquial form of Coptic die, it will be the first language of the early Christian churches to become extinct.
Among those early languages, Aramaic was thought to be extinct until recent history proved otherwise. The language is still spoken in parts of southern Turkey and northwest Syria. Zaki feels it would be a great loss to Coptic Christianity and the world if the Coptic language is totally lost.
“I hope that the world will come to realize the importance of Coptic in Christian doctrine,” Zaki said. “Egypt is the first home for a Christian church and that makes Coptic truly the first language of Christianity in a sense.”
“It is sad to think that the language will truly be dead in the next 100 years. They are already classifying Coptic as a dead language in most encyclopedias,” Zaki said. Neither parents used Coptic with their children.
This is similar to the historical decline of the Coptic language. With the Arab conquest, Arabic began to be the language spoken in everyday life. After a period of religious turmoil in Egypt, Coptic leaders decided to use Arabic as their main means of conversation in order to show the Arab rulers that they were not conspirators of the European Crusaders.
It is a sad fact that the language will soon go the way of Latin.
Copt itself means Egypt. The word Egypt comes from the Greek aiguptios and the Arabic qupt – both of those words were derived from the Coptic language that was spoken when each community ascended upon Egypt.
Coptic is the closest descendant to the spoken language of the ancient Egyptians. Combining the Greek alphabet with Demotic, Coptic is a unique conglomeration of languages. Despite this fact, Coptic has no official status in Egypt. The form spoken in church services differs from Zaki’s. Coptic is a combination of the ancient Egyptian languages Demotic, Hieratic and Hieroglyphic. It was the latest evolution of the Egyptian language.
“My parents passed the language down to me like their parents did before them.
Unfortunately for Copts throughout Egypt, this process was broken over the years,” she said. “I guess I have continued the destruction of the language in many ways by me not passing it along to my children
“My parents felt it was an important part of our heritage and spoke to me in Coptic since I can remember,”
Zaki revealed. “Why I didn’t pass on the language to my children, I don’t know.” Zaki says that she often receives strange looks when she is overheard speaking Coptic on her mobile phone. “People look at me as if I am an alien and I don’t belong. I guess that is what my ancestors had to deal with,although violently in some instances,” she said,which is the main reason that Zaki chose not to speak Coptic with her children.
“I didn’t want my kids to have to experience the exclusion that Coptic had with me when I was younger,” she revealed. “I can remember my friends making fun of me when I talked to my parents
But it is vital to her cultural understanding of being a Copt in a country dominated by Islam. “It gives me the strength to practice my faith despite all the hardship that being Christian in an Islamic country has,” Zaki said.
Some scholars have theorized that some remote villagers in the Delta region of Egypt or in the south of the country may still speak forms of the Coptic language. Because many Egyptians live in small villages away from government control and active study by anthropologists, it is theorized that Coptic will persist despite official numbers.
“It would be nice to have more people speaking Coptic,” Zaki admitted. “It would mean that our culture and way of life will continue in the years to come.”
That is unlikely considering the evidence. As it is already considered a dead language akin to Latin, it seems implausible that undiscovered speakers of Coptic will be discovered.
Hundreds of languages are lost each year as the remaining speakers pass away.
GGG Ping.
Wasn't modern copt used to break the Rosetta Stone after it was found in Egypt?
bookmark for later
I don't know.
I've pinged muawiyah, he knows something about everything.
Modern Coptic has a vast infusion of more recent semitic words derived from Arabic, as do all the North African languages, so only old "church Coptic" (in which, for example, the Bible was written many centuries ago) would prove useful in dealing with Egyptian in the time of the Ptolemies.
This is sad another language lost because of Muslime invaders.
"Wasn't modern copt used to break the Rosetta Stone after it was found in Egypt?"
No.
The key to the Rosetta Stone is that it has two different languages on it, in three alphabets including the theretofore untranslatable Egyptian hieroglyphs.
One of the languages is (ancient) Greek, which was widely known to scholars. Because the Greek was there, it was possible to break the hieroglyphic texts, which say the same thing, in Egyptian.
Greek was the key to the whole thing.
Actually, Champollion recognized the similarities in certain characters between the three written languages on the Rosetta Stone. They were hieroglphic, demotic and Greek.
He was able to transliterate "Cleopatra" by seeing such letters as the "d" (a phoentic "T") in Greek in the same place in the name as the more cursive demotic symbol for "d" and the hieroglyphic "d" which is the symbol for the human hand.
GReek was the key to transliterating. Finding out what the words really meant required close analysis of the Egyptian and curch Coptic (which is the nearest language).
Did you choose your screen name from "mutemwiya" which is the ancient Egyptian name for "Mother of the sacred boat"?
That makes sense.
I suppose that there wouldn't be any way to know that the Greek is what the Coptic said, if you someone couldn't read the Coptic (in the Demotic script) and know that.
Probably the process was: Greek compared to Demotic-script Coptic, verifying that the two inscriptions said the same thing, and then Demotic Coptic to Hieroglyphic Coptic, allowing the breaking of the hieroglyphs.
Don't we have Napoleon to thank for all of this?
Wasn't the Rosetta Stone one of the things the scholars he took with him on his Egyptian campaign went and dug up?
That must've been a cool job: Napoleon's archaeologist. You never have to make an appointment to get in and see the artifacts...
Please FREEPMAIL me if you want on or off the
"Gods, Graves, Glyphs" PING list or GGG weekly digest
-- Archaeology/Anthropology/Ancient Cultures/Artifacts/Antiquities, etc.
Gods, Graves, Glyphs (alpha order)
LOL. Just shove the dead bodies out of the way.
Yes, that's who I was thinking of. Thank you.
Coptic is a combination of the ancient Egyptian languages Demotic, Hieroglyphic and Hieratic.Demotic, Hieroglyphic and Hieratic are scripts, not languages. IOW, those are three ways of writing. The Coptic language is a hanger-on from pharaonic times, but with a substantial loan vocabulary of Arabic.
"Zaki revealed. “Why I didn’t pass on the language to my children, I don’t know.” Zaki says that she often receives strange looks when she is overheard speaking Coptic on her mobile phone. “People look at me as if I am an alien and I don’t belong. I guess that is what my ancestors had to deal with,although violently in some instances,” she said,which is the main reason that Zaki chose not to speak Coptic with her children.
“I didn’t want my kids to have to experience the exclusion that Coptic had with me when I was younger,” she revealed. “I can remember my friends making fun of me when I talked to my parents "
Coptic was the spoken language of an advaced civlized society when its Arab speaking neighbors were raiding, butchering and terrorizing people and living like parasites on the societies of civlized people.
As a matter of fact, nothing has changed in 2,300 years.
actually this one is lost because some parents have decided not to teach their children their mother tongue.
Language casualties have been a feature of history for as long as we have philological records; the romans certainly helped wipe out gaulish dialects, etruscan, oscan, and who knows what other bronze- or stone-age languages in western europe. I think Basque and p- and q-celtic (welsh, bretonish, cornish, and irish, scots gaelic (post-roman migration from irish), and manx) were the only to survive into the modern age, with cornish and manx now gone.
I would assume the language casualty list from the arab migrations of roughly 1300 years ago is similarly impressive, especially in the area of modern syria/lebanon/jordan/iraq, not to mention coptic and punic.
Yes, but parents aren't teaching their children because they feel it makes them a target of violence. Whether real or imagined and I believe the threat of violence is real, the language is lost because of the Islamic invaders.
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