Coptic language and script - Koptische Sprache und Schrift

Christian prayer in Coptic in the Maria Cave on Gebel eṭ-Ṭeir

The most recent form of the Egyptian language is the Coptic language. Arabic as a language has only been used in Egypt since the Arab conquest. Previously, various forms of the Egyptian language, which is a separate Afro-Asiatic language family, were spoken.

The name is derived from the Greek word Aἰγύπτος (Aegyptus) for Egypt or Aἰγύπτιοι (Aigyptioi) for Egyptians. This is where the Arabic word originatedقبط‎, Qibṭ for Copts, the Christians of Egypt.

Historical development

Coptic developed in the 3rd and 4th centuries AD from demotic, the prevailing form of Egyptian up to that point. Coptic is still used after the Arabization. Since the 10th century it has been superseded by Arabic and has been an extinct lingua franca since the 17th century.

Coptic was the everyday language and was used to a large extent in the Egyptian-Orthodox, the Coptic-Orthodox Church as the liturgical language. In the administration, however, Greek was spoken in the Christian-Byzantine period and later Arabic. Lately the language has been increasingly spoken again among the Copts, the Christians of Egypt, who use this language as a sign of their identity.

Coptic has five dialects, the most important of which are Sahrawi in Upper Egypt and Bohairi in Lower Egypt.

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The Coptic script was derived from Greek, but had to be extended by eight letters for consonants unknown in Greek. In contrast to earlier forms of the Egyptian written language, this is an alphabet script that also knows the vowels. This, and the fact that Coptic is the most recent form of Egyptian, makes it so interesting for exploring ancient Egyptian.

Coding of the font

Coptic is encoded in Unicode, but the final encoding was not made until Unicode version 4.1 with the addition of the Unicode block Coptic (2C80–2CFF), which now also contains a number of important special characters. Previously an attempt had been made to accommodate the Coptic in the Unicode block Greek and Coptic (0370-03FF).

The late encoding is the reason that Coptic letters are missing in all common Unicode character sets. In order to be able to display them anyway, one cannot avoid installing special character sets. We recommend using the fonts freely available on the Internet Arial Coptic, Free Serif KoptosMS, Free Serif CoptoMS, New Athena Unicode or MPH 2B Damasethat are called in the cop and copS templates. When selecting fonts, particular preference was given to fonts that can also be easily read on the screen.

The Coptic alphabet and its transcription

The Coptic alphabet consists of 32 letters:

LetterⲀⲂⲄⲆⲈⲊⲌⲎⲐⲒⲔⲖⲘⲚⲜⲞ
SurnamealphabetagammadaldaeggsouzētaētathētaiōtakapalaulamēnēksiO
Transcriptionab, vGde-zēthi, jklmnksO
LetterⲠⲢⲤⲦⲨⲪⲬⲮⲰϢϤϦϨϪϬϮ
SurnamepirōsēmmadewheyphikhipsiOšaifeiḫaihoriḏanḏiačimati
Transcriptionprstu, wphchpsOschfHHdschč, qti

The Coptic letter sou has no sound value, it is only used as a number sign for 6.

literature

  • Plisch, Uwe-Karsten: Introduction to the Coptic language: Sahidic dialect. Wiesbaden: Reichert, 1999, Languages ​​and cultures of the Christian Orient; Vol. 5, ISBN 978-3895000942 .

Web links

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