Coptic Pronunciation as given by Sir G. Willinkson

[Admin]

I've found this text in a book called
A Compendious Grammar of the Egyptian Language as Contained in the Coptic, Sahidic, and ... (1863)
can be found here http://www.archive.org/details/acompendiousgra00tattgoog

[Krammy]

Don't you just love it when Anglo-Saxon authors label the hieroglyphs equivalent to the Arabic letters Ha and Ayin (  حand  ع) as "h" and "a" ?

[Admin]

why would I love that?

[Krammy]

I was being sarcastic. I meant to say that I think it is annoying when authors try to represent the phonology (the pronunciation/the sounds) of a foreign language by using sounds of their own that are not like the ones in the language. Doing this is very misleading.

[Admin]

they don't, they use h with (.) under it to represent ح
and they use half circle to represent ع
of course in Coptic both letters are rare anyway, but in hieroglyphics they represent those letters correctly

[Anaksunamun]

I was being sarcastic. I meant to say that I think it is annoying when authors try to represent the phonology (the pronunciation/the sounds) of a foreign language by using sounds of their own that are not like the ones in the language. Doing this is very misleading.

It is only usually used to help assist those who are not familiar with the possible pronunciation.
Ancient Egyptian possibly did not have the ayin or aleph sounds, instead through history they merged into different sounds as is evident in Coptic. But I totally understand where you are coming from, since I also speak Spanish and when I read the grammars and pronunciation I also tell people that some of the letters are not pronounced the way they show it in the books, and usually it's more than one letter and it causes people to mispronounce words and doesn't sound natural.

[bashandy]

It's an interesting document. The resemblance to Old Bohairic pronunciation is remarkable. I think pronunciation has always been a spectrum. Where Old bohairic is a spectrum that varies from person to person but it retains a certain frame.

[Coptic Advocate 3]

In the document, what does the author mean when he distinguishes 'Sahidic' from 'Coptic',  and what does 'Bashmuric' mean?

[Admin]

Egyptian language (Coptic) had many dialects. 7 to be specific.

Bohairic (Northern Dialect, used in church prayers today)
Sahidic (Southern Dialect, was used by Church in the past and also is the most rich of all dialects).
Other dialects also existed but these two were the big ones.

[Coptic Advocate 3]

Yes, I know that the Coptic language has dialects, but my question was what is bashmuric, and what dialect does it refer to by 'Coptic', because that would be just one of the dialects.

[Admin]

> what is bashmuric
It's a dialect spoken in northern Egypt like Bohairic but much less wide spred. We only have very few text in this dialect.

> what dialect does it refer to by 'Coptic'

For very old books like these, Coptic typically referred to dialect used by church (i.e Bohairic)