Coptic language

**Coptic** (Bohairic Coptic: ϯⲙⲉⲧⲣⲉⲙⲛ̀ⲭⲏⲙⲓ, *timetremǹnkhēmi*) is an Egyptian language family of closely related dialects, representing the most recent developments of the Egyptian language, and historically spoken by the Copts, starting from the third century AD in Roman Egypt. Coptic was supplanted by Arabic as the primary spoken language of Egypt following the Muslim conquest of Egypt and was slowly replaced over the centuries. Coptic has no native speakers today, although it remains in daily use as the liturgical language of the Coptic Orthodox Church and of the Coptic Catholic Church. Innovations in grammar, phonology, and the influx of Greek loanwords distinguish Coptic from earlier periods of the Egyptian language. It is written with the Coptic alphabet, a modified form of the Greek alphabet with several additional letters borrowed from the Demotic Egyptian script.

The major Coptic dialects are Sahidic, Bohairic, Akhmimic, Fayyumic, Lycopolitan, and Oxyrhynchite. Sahidic Coptic was spoken between the cities of Asyut and Oxyrhynchus and flourished as a literary language across Egypt in the period c. 325 – c. 800 AD. Bohairic, the language of the Nile Delta, gained prominence in the 9th century and is the dialect used by the Coptic Church. Despite being closely related, Coptic dialects differ from one another in terms of their phonology, morphology, syntax, and vocabulary.

## Phonology

Coptic provides the clearest indication of Later Egyptian phonology from its writing system, which fully indicates vowel sounds and occasionally stress pattern. The phonological system of Later Egyptian is also better known than that of the Classical phase of the language because of a greater number of sources indicating Egyptian sounds, including cuneiform letters containing transcriptions of Egyptian words and phrases, and Egyptian renderings of Northwest Semitic names. Coptic sounds, in addition, are known from a variety of Coptic-Arabic papyri in which Arabic letters were used to transcribe Coptic and vice versa. They date to the medieval Islamic period, when Coptic was still spoken.

### Vowels

These two charts show the two theories of Coptic vowel phonology:

**Monophthong phonemes (length theory)**

**Monophthong phonemes (vowel quality theory)**

Dialects vary in their realisation. The difference between [o] and [u] seems to be allophonic. Evidence is not sufficient to demonstrate that these are distinct vowels, and if they are, the difference has a very low functional load. For dialects that use orthographic <ⲉⲓ> for a single vowel, there appears to be no phonetic difference from <ⲓ>.

Double orthographic vowels are presumed here to be long, as that makes the morphology more straightforward. (Another common interpretation is that these represented glottal stop.)

Bohairic vowels
 Close-mid | ⲏ /e/
 Open-mid | ⲉ /ɛ/
 Open | ⲁ /a/

Sahidic vowels
 Close-mid | ⲏ /e/
 Open-mid | ⲉ /ɛ/
 Open |  | ⲁ /a/

Lycopolitan vowels
 Close-mid | ⲏ /e/
 Open-mid | ⲉ /ɛ/
 Open |  | ⲁ /a/

Akhmimic vowels
 Close-mid | ⲏ /e/
 Open-mid | ⲉ /ɛ/

1. ↑ Frequent spelling of this vowel as
 ⲱⲱ indicates that it is in free variation with [oː].

There is no length distinction in final stressed position, but only those vowels that occur long appear there: <(ⲉ)ⲓ, ⲉ, ⲁ, ⲟ~ⲱ, ⲟⲩ>.

There were no doubled orthographic vowels in Mesokemic. Some representative correspondences with Sahidic are:

 Mesokemic equivalent

It is not clear if these correspondences reflect distinct pronunciations in Mesokemic, or if they are an imitation of the long Greek vowels <η, ω>.

### Consonants

1. ↑ The aspirate series is present only in Bohairic.
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 The letter ϭ has two values: In Bohairic it represents /t͡ʃʰ/, the aspirated counterpart to ϫ /t͡ʃ/. In the other dialects it represents /kʲ/, the palatalized counterpart to ⲕ /k/.
3. ↑ /xʲ/ is present only in the minor Coptic dialects *P* and *I*, where it is written ⟨ⳋ⟩ and ⟨ⳃ⟩ respectively.
4. ↑ /x/ is written ⟨ϧ⟩ in Bohairic and Dialect *P*, and ⟨ⳉ⟩ in Akhmimic and Dialect *I*.
5. ↑ Coptic ⲃ is alternatively interpreted as a voiced bilabial fricative [β]. Like the other voiced consonants, it belongs to the class of sonorants and may occupy the syllable nucleus (*cf.* Sahidic: ⲧⲃ̄ⲧ /tv̩t/ "fish").

It is possible that in addition there was a glottal stop, ʔ, that was not consistently written. Coptic does not seem to have had a glottal stop at the beginning of orthographically vowel-initial words. It is possible that vowels written double were an attempt to indicate glottal stop, rather than a long vowel, in the middle of a word. However, there is little evidence for this (e.g., Arabic words with short vowels and glottal stop are not written with double vowels in Coptic, and Coptic words with double orthographic vowels are transcribed with long vowels rather than hamza in Arabic.)

In Late Coptic (ca. 14th century), Bohairic sounds that did not occur in Egyptian Arabic were lost. A possible shift from a tenuis-aspirate distinction to voiced-tenuis is only attested from the alveolars, the only place that Arabic has such a contrast.

Late Coptic consonants

## References

1. ↑ [ɟ] is the local equivalent of Cairene [ɡ].