How many people is there who can talk coptic in the whole world?

[bonnah]

How many people is there who can talk coptic in the whole world?
I read that it was 300 and that they all live in canada and us and some family in egypt..
but now when they are learning coptic in the chuchres and internet its gotta be moore than 300?
thank u for answering.

[Admin]

u first need to define the word "talking"
so if you can say "Good Morning" in Coptic u might call this talking
or if you are totally fluent in Coptic, that is also called talking
also if you pronounce the Coptic letters as the church, do u call this speaking Coptic (because the church's has invnted this kind of pronunciation and it never existed before the last two centuries
http://kame.danacbe.com/index.php/topic,2.0.html
u need to answer those questions to get an accurate answer

[bonnah]

i meant talking like copts that can talk coptic like they are speaking arabic, fluetly

[Admin]

none that I know of,
yes some can speak Coptic at some degree
take for example those videos that was created by batros http://kame.danacbe.com/index.php/topic,261.0.html
I can and do read Coptic books (but never without a dictionary)

some people claim to be speaking coptic fluently, take for example mona zaki http://kame.danacbe.com/index.php/topic,95.0.html but she is not native speaker, her grandfather learned Coptic and used it at home
he made success at some degree but I doubt that they have ever spoke fluently

if that is all not enough, the way you (and mona zaki and most Coptic speakers) pronounce Coptic words is not correct.
this way of pronunciation was invented by church, true Coptic never had letters like "th" and "V"
so the language we use to pray in our churches is not the same as the one our grandfathers used

[bonnah]

Yes but the language is still coptic its just modernizised ( spell )
all languages are developing, egyptian is a language that existed in moore than 5000 years the copts that lived before the arab conquest could surely not speak with the egyptians that lived in egypt for 6000 years ago do u see my point?
excuse me for my bad english btw..

[Admin]

No doubt, all languages develop and change by the time
even Egyptian language, it passed through many changes
but there is a different between natural change/development and artificial one
here is the differences:
* natural development happens only while the language is still alive, not 400 years after its death
* natural development happens because people find better/easier or simpler way to express what they want to say by the time this simpler way dominates and become part of the language, In case the "invented" Coptic the language became harder for the Egyptian to pronounce since "th" and "V" are not native to their tongue.
* natural development has no creator/inventor unlike artificial development which is someone's idea/teaching.

u can not make catholic churchs pronounce the letter V in Latin as W and yet insist that Latin develop like any language.

and this development has bad side effects too
for example the two letters ⲩ v and ϥ  f became very similar (since Egyptian pronounce the V as F)
so now post Coptic students fail to distinguish between ⲁⲩϧⲱⲧⲃⲉϥ they killed him (or he was killed) and ⲁϥϧⲱⲧⲃⲉϥ which means he killed him(self).
that caused many Coptic books to mistakenly write that Jesus "Crucified himself" ⲁϥⲉⲣⲥⲧⲁⲩⲣⲟⲛⲓⲛ ˋⲙⲙⲟϥ instead of "was Crucified"  ⲁⲩⲉⲣⲥⲧⲁⲩⲣⲟⲛⲓⲛ ˋⲙⲙⲟϥ
in the past those two letters had very different pronunciation ⲩ was W and ϥ was F.

[Canis Majoris]

How many people is there who can talk coptic in the whole world?
I read that it was 300 and that they all live in canada and us and some family in egypt..
but now when they are learning coptic in the chuchres and internet its gotta be moore than 300?
thank u for answering.

A major problem with Coptic is the lack of accessible vocabulary as well as resources to learn it; the language died in the 1700's, and by that point the Egyptian language and culture were already heavily Arabized. Coptic only exists now in the archaic form written during the late Roman Empire.

I expect the number of actual speakers to be close to or exactly 0.

[Admin]

You are correct in your estimation. No more speakers unfortunately.

While Arabs certainly take big part of the blame for the disappearance of Egyptian language, the language had already deteriorated a lot by the time they conquered Egypt with lots of Greek vocab entering the language and Egyptian original writing systems were pretty much forgotten by that time.

I think shutting down the Egyptian temples (among others) by Constantine II, was the beginning of the end for Egyptian language.
Without temples there was no place to teach the language nor it's writing system. Church became the main source of education but Church was so much into Greek that eventually the language lost lot of it's vocab to it's equivalent Greek words.
Final Arabs came and gave the final blow to what was already weak language at that point.

[Coptic Advocate 3]

Wait a second aren't there native and fluent speakers in al zenneya village near luxor?

[Admin]

I know about al zenneya people that they didn't adopt the altered Coptic pronunciation introduced by the church so their pronunication is much more authentic however there are no native Coptic speakers there. Fluent speaker I don't know but no native for sure.

[Coptic Advocate 3]

Really? I always thought they were the only village left to have an unbroken tradition of native Coptic pronunciation and a continuous community of native speakers.

[Didymus]

Why did the people of Al Zenneya not adopt the novel pronunciation, especially if they were still speaking Coptic natively at the time?

[bashandy]

I would take your question to mean people who are fluent in Coptic (spoken and written), for example C1 in Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR).

I am aware of the families of Pisenty Rizkalla, there is an interesting video of one of the speakers named Toutmos Rizkalla, there are also families like Fr Pigol Bassili, ⲁⲡⲁ ϫⲏⲙⲏⲧⲣⲓⲟⲥand families like Maurice AbdelMessih. These consider themselves natives/bilingual speakers, albeit some argue that it is a constructed pidgin form of the language that is used, due to influence of French and Arabic grammar as well as neologisms.

Dr Kamal F. Ishaq hosted a monthly meeting for Coptic language speakers for many years. It gathered between 6-18 people. A few could speak fluently at that time. The most fluent person that I have seen was Dr Nabil Mikhail Markos. Dr Kamal F. Ishaq also speaks very well.

Otherwise, George Sedhom of Akhmim speaks fluent Coptic, Amadou Attiya and many others speak fluently.


There are many others eg ⲧⲥⲱⲛⲓ Magda F. Tanios who wrote plays in Coptic. George Andrawes who wrote ϩⲁⲛⲇⲟⲝⲟⲗⲟⲅⲓⲁ ⲛⲉⲙϩⲁⲛⲯⲁⲗⲓ ϣϫⲉⲙϫⲟⲙ

I cannot quantify the number of speakers, as they are not in the same circle.