Re: Back in the Saddle

From: tschibasch <tschibasch_at_yahoo.com_at_hypermail.org>
Date: Thu, 13 Apr 2006 00:07:09 -0000

--- In OliveStarlightOrchestra_at_yahoogroups.com, Christophe <xof@...>
wrote:
>
> Well, my understanding (and it's only that) is that Coptic is still
> used as a liturgical language in the Coptic Orthodox Church, so we
> have some idea of what the pronunciation was like.

Maybe so. Maybe not. I don't think we are disagreeing here. One issue
I have with this kind of work is seeing where researchers impose how
THEY WANTED the ancient language to sound. We assume that the ancient
language was so sacred and perfect.

When Hebrew became the national language of Isreal, there was this
issue of taking such a great language and using it for such things as
ordering meals in a restaurant or arguing with your spouse.

> Of course, it may be completely misleading, and since Semitic
> orthography (almost?) always omits vowels, it would be a guess at
> best. (I've always loved the story of why we pronounce IHVH as
> "Jehovah," even though it was almost certainly not actually
> pronounced that way by Biblical Hebrew speakers, if they said it at
> all.)

The Semitic language that shows vowels is Amharic, now spoken in
Ethiopia. They use a syllabry, similar to Japanese Katakana. This is
also the only Semitic language written from left to right.
Interesting, huh?

John




> On 12 Apr 2006, at 13:55, tschibasch wrote:
>
> > Yes, Coptic is indeed a descendant of Ancient Egyptian. There is
> > reason to believe that the language has changed considerably since
> > then. We now have only the consonants, and apparently no vowels.
> >
> > Maybe someone has re-created a pronunciation guide for this ancient
> > language. In any case, in Historical Linguistics there is a certain
> > amount of guesswork. How would we be able to determine how accurate it
> > would be?
> >
> > John
> >
> > --- In OliveStarlightOrchestra_at_yahoogroups.com, Christophe <xof@>
> > wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >> On 12 Apr 2006, at 10:56, tschibasch wrote:
> >>> An interesting language that has truly died off is Ancient Egyptian.
> >>> We have an idea how it sounded, since we have figured out the
> >>> consonants and consonantal clusters. But the vowels are unknown. So
> >>> our best efforts to reproduce it would have to be off.
> >>
> >> Isn't Coptic a linear descendant of Ancient Egyptian, though? Of
> >> course, the vowels could have shifted all over the place, but doesn't
> >> that give us a clue as to what they might have been?
> >>
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Yahoo! Groups Links
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
Received on 2006-04-12 17:07:13