Old Bohairic Study

[MikeS]

Hello all,

I am attaching a copy of the study I did a few years back on the traditional/old Bohairic pronunciation.

The document is intended to help others with the OB pronunciation and is the result of my notes taken during my study. It is a lengthy document, so hopefully it will post here okay.

The study was done from a purely Linguistic point of view. 

It was written for as wide an audience as possible so all linguistic terminology is explained in detail (in fact, the first part of the paper is sort of a mini crash course in phonetics and phonology ).

There were sound files to go along with the texts and as you'll notice the study references other papers I had done - alas, my pc crashed a few years back and I lost many of the documents and sound files - I think I may have copied them elsewhere but I would have to hunt them down!

I would be very interested in any feedback from the study. I do not know how close it mirrors the pronunciation used on this site, but it does offer set definite rules which account for the variations is letters like wida.

Anyway - feedback would be appreciated!

Thanks!   

[Admin]

Wow. Looks very nice
1. But why is it images instead of text?
2. what/where is your references
your work is very good, I had some comments but I will post them as soon as I get some time
Thanks a lot for sharing it with us

[MikeS]

When I had first wrote the study a few people asked me for a copy - the problem was that there are quite a few different fonts used in the paper, the IPA in particular was one that was from a specific site that specialized in IPA fonts - rather than have people have to download several fonts and hopefully get them all installed without issue just to view the paper correctly, it was much easier for me to save it as a PDF document, hence the PDF format rather than the Word format.

At the time it was just a study for personal use, i.e. just a "formal" synopsis of my notes for myself to use so.....I was not quite as meticulous as I should have been with references to sources - again, this was just intended for personal use, not a formal thesis or "paper" by any means; just a nice consolidation of notes but I wrote it, as I do for many things, with the idea that I was sitting there teaching someone this (it's just an easier way for me to write, I guess - wierd, I know!).

Some, if not all the main sources are listed on the back page. Unfortunately, I wasn't very specific with the "internet sources" - most of them come from sites referenced here and on other Ancient Egyptian / Coptic forums.

Again this was written some years ago - I think if I were to go back to it, I would do more with the influence of Arabic on the language. I didn;t cover that much as at the time i was more interested in the actual phonology and any rules I could devise/discover that applied to all the variations in pronunciation people were discussing at the time.

Anyway - I do hope that it will be of some use to people, but please remember, it's not a formal thesis, just an analysis of what I was able to study and discover with the aid of many Coptic speakers and sources.

I think most of the "results / findings" will echo what has already been put forth, however, I was not satisfied with the explanation of, "well, this letter gets pronounced this way in one instance and that way in another, there are really no set rules, you just have to learn it."

As I found out, there are indeed rules as to why some of the letters are pronounced the way they are - I think all the phonetic rules I postulated will account for the variations found and apply "across the board" as it were, not just in certain instances.   

 

   

[Admin]

if you have the original article and its fonts, you can send them to me and I will convert them into a normal pdf file that can be viewed without installing any fonts and still can copy text from it

[MikeS]

Unfortunately, I do not - the only copy I could find was one I had printed out and saved. The original was actually a Word document but it was lost when my pc crashed a few years ago - I have been going through some old discs and files on the smaller floppy discs in hopes of trying to find it (I know I saved copies of it), it's just a matter of finding it.

Best I can do now is as I did here - I scaned the printed document to myself  - the scanner we have at work automaticaly converts it to a pdf document.

[MikeS]

BTW - I didn't realize it does not come up as a normal pdf document - it opens up fine on my pc.

[Admin]

what you created are images stored in pdf file
that's why its size is 2MB while it can be made 300K
also I can't read it from my mobile
on my computer its slow and the font aliased
i am just saying it will look much better if we stored it in digit form
that way, google can parse it also and make its content available when someone search for a keyword contained in your pdf

[MikeS]

Oh, I see - O don;t have that problem with it here. If I download the document from this site, it opens fine, a little small, but you can adjust the size to whatever you want. It prints out fine as well.

Maybe there is there a way to rescan it and save it as a normal pdf doc? Otherwise it's a matter of trying to locate the disc the original is on (yikes, I'm working on it, but that could take a while!)

[Admin]

i am afraid you will have to find the original
otherwise we will either have to use the current version or rewrite your research
originals will be needed anyway if you want to update/add to the study you wrote
scanning is not an option because Coptic and non latin letters will not be recognized :s

[MikeS]

That's what I thought - oh well, for right now the pdf as posted will have to do.

I really hope I can fine the original word doc as well as the sound files (and the other Coptic docs I had done referenced in the study).

The only other one I was able to find (again only a hard copy I had to scan) is the Lord's Prayer in three dialects with IPA transcription - had sound files for those too!

I suppose the sound files could be done over though I've been away from Coptic for a while so I'd have to practice reading the texts before I recorded them 

BTW - if I were to record them over, what is the preferable format, MP3?

[Admin]

the lord's prayer is already recorded by fr.Shenoda Maher (Emil Maher)
http://kame.danacbe.com/index.php/topic,4.msg13.html#msg13

[MikeS]

Oh cool! I'll have to give it a listen this evening (can't play sound files here at work).

I assume he's reading it in the OB pronunciation?

[Admin]

of course! he is the one who made the researches about OB, most articles about OB are based on his work
he is also the one who established the first OB institute

[ophadece]

Dear MikeS and all,
I am so sorry that I was absent for some time away from this forum. I have been rather busy. Well, I can say that I only had a chance to read your study in detail this afternoon, and I liked most of it so much. Not that I disagree with some of it, but I think it still needs more studying. However the part that I found myself disliking is: hymns having been borrowed from Greek and they should be pronounced as the Ecclesiastical Greek. I can't see a reason why you recommended such an advice! For someone like me who wants to pronounce Coptic the authentic rather than the "Greco-Bohairic" way, I will find a bit of a divisiveness here. How can I for example pronounce ⲡⲓⲇⲓⲁⲃⲟⲗⲟⲥ one way, and during the same service I pronounce it different when I am singing a "purely" borrowed Greek hymn. I can only assume that the rules should still be followed as with any other hymn, or indeed, conversation. Please let me know what you all think
ⲛⲟϥⲣⲓ ⲣⲟⲙⲡⲓ ˋⲙⲃⲉⲣⲓ
ⲟⲩϫⲁⲓ ϧⲉⲛ ˋⲠϭⲤ

[MikeS]

Yes, I agree - more study needs to be done in this field!

I suppose it could be done either way as far as Grerek hymns go - I guess I was thinking along the lines of borrowing a song from say another folk tradition - as an example, say singing a traditional Irish folk tune using a very American English pronunciation. Does it "kill" the tune - no, of course not, but it doesn't sound quite so "authentic".

I think one has to remember that Greek hymns that are borrowed are just that; Greek hymns - you can pronounce the Greek anyway you'd like (i.e. using Traditional Bohairic pronunciation, ecclesiastical Greek, modern Greek, whatever) but I think using Trad. Bohairic might come off as sounding a bit odd or at least Greek with a very heavy Coptic/Egyptian accent. Nothing wrong with that.

By the way, when I say Greek hymn, I mean the ones where the words are all Greek, not a mixture of Greek and Coptic.

It's a tough call, really - I understand your point completely.  A similar comparison might be to look at the way Latin hymns are sung in most churches here in America - or even the very few Greek phrases used here and there at times; most people just pronounce it as if it were English.