I Have a problem to know Coptic very well

edited December 1969 in Hymns Discussion
Peace and Grace.

I really like Coptic and i prefer using it in the services rather than arabic or english.
i know a lot of Coptic, not totally everything but with hearing the priest i can actually know what are we praying now.
the summer is starting now so imma study a lot of Coptic and memorize lots of vocab words and il try to use them somehow.
however, my problem is, after that i get this amount of knowledge, how can i stop forgetting it as i don't really use in my daily life, maybe only few words like good morning, thanks, please.
i know many people studied latin even though they don't use a lot.

so what i need to know, How can i still keep the language alive in my memory so what i will have to do is to improve it not to recover it every time i start studying it.

Ougai
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Comments

  • There are a lot of ways you can help keep vocabulary in your memory outside of a speech community. None of these are quite as good as the immersion method (living among people who speak it, so that you HAVE to speak it too), but since that is not available with Coptic, there are some other things you could do:

    (1) Listen to Coptic hymns, prayers, and liturgies. Every day. Often. (Since this is the only place you'll hear spoken Coptic.)

    (2) Find written materials on Coptic. There are LOTS available (a lot more than you might think if you think it is limited to what you'll hear in church). A lot of them are linguistic/academic in nature, which might make them hard to understand, but also could help you understand a bit more of the mechanics of the language (as opposed to just memorizing vocabulary), which can also help your understanding of the language. Many of them are not linguistic, and even those that are often contain large portions of Coptic text that you can benefit from. I've even seen collections of written homilies in particular dialects, which certainly could help you learn even more!

    (3) Try to encourage other people from your church or wider community to learn/practice Coptic with you. You might be in the minority who prefers it to Arabic, but there are an awful lot of people who are nonetheless interested in it.

    (4) Make flash cards! Friends of mine who have learned languages have told me that what they do is make flash cards with everyday words on them (chair, table, mirror, etc.), and tape them to the object that they describe. This way they can associate the word with the object in a very concrete way. Of course, this only works with nouns, but still it might be fun. It helps sometimes to have creative learning techniques like this, and of course to always reward yourself when you use the language successfully.

    I have found a lot of PDFs of Coptic materials at various places online. If you look around, I'm sure you can find more things to expand and help you preserve your knowledge of Coptic.
  • Ekhrestos anesty
    Dear danasbi 'snawnkh,
    Besides dzheremi's advice, log onto Kame.danacbe.com, and sign us to the Remenkimi yahoogroup. They will be beyond beneficial, and please let me know your nickname in both so I can learn from you...
    Oujai
  • Alithos anesty:
    Actually the name is: Tenacpi `cnaonϧ OR Tenacpi `cnaonϧ (Ten aspi esna onkh)

    I don't really like Kame.danacbe as it's full of the so-called old pronunciation so it's actually annoying to be read, maybe cause i didn't get use to it.
    What I really need are the websites where i can find modern Coptic documents so in Bohairic so I can read them over (they way they wrote in the old manuscripts is annoying, not enough space between the words and a lot of bad handwriting .
    Furthermore, where can i find a forum, website, chat where people chat in Coptic so i can actually catch up some language.
    Can i find somewhere like quizzes to translate, conjugate some Coptic, kind of practice?
    Ougai
  • [quote author=Tenacpi esna onkh link=topic=11542.msg138984#msg138984 date=1307187117]
    Alithos anesty:
    Actually the name is: Tenacpi `cnaonϧ OR Tenacpi `cnaonϧ (Ten aspi esna onkh)

    I don't really like Kame.danacbe as it's full of the so-called old pronunciation so it's actually annoying to be read, maybe cause i didn't get use to it.

    hehe......you should take it easy on the "old pronunciation"......ophadece is a believer.
  • Ekhrestos anesty
    Dear danasbi,
    I obviously cannot advise you with websites that teach you to pronounce English as "bleez bartake from za Holy Communion", and similarly I won't do the same for Coptic. You want to speak the wrong language then you look for sources you're comfortable with, but what you have opened so far are the authentic and true Coptic language resources. If you subscribe to Remenkimi @ yahoogroups you'll find them meet on yahoo messenger every now and then for Coptic chat...
    Oujai
  • [quote author=ophadece link=topic=11542.msg138988#msg138988 date=1307204793]
    Ekhrestos anesty
    Dear danasbi,
    I obviously cannot advise you with websites that teach you to pronounce English as "bleez bartake from za Holy Communion", and similarly I won't do the same for Coptic.

    ;D ;D ;D ;D
  • Actually the I agree that the OLD pronunciation might be somehow right but still it sounds old and kinda arabic. the New sounds cooler with letters like P and V, it makes me feel more Caucasian, or at least not an arab guy who can't spell neither the P nor the V as they don't exist in arabic.
    maybe the old one is the last spoken after the invasion of islam so the coptic became similar to arabic like "bleez bartake from the holy communion"
    anyway, i will prefer keeping my accent, it makes me cooler.
    What i need is WRITTEN stuff, and anyone can pronounce it however he like.

    Ougai
  • Ekhrestos anesty
    DEar danasbi 'snaonkh,
    I think you didn't get my point. I didn't actually appreciate your commenting on the quote I gave, but I guess that only comes down to not getting my point. Anyway, if you're looking to written material then I can help you find documents supporting the authentic pronunciation of the language. Other stuff is in Sa'idic and you may find it difficult if you don't want to learn the authentic dialect. I'm sure you know there is a huge link in the system of writing as well. You can log onto Remenkimi.com and you'll find abundant material there.
    As for the other argument, I suggest you ask yourself this question: if you haven't already learnt or tried to learn Arabic or Hebrew, would you not give up on the sounds of 'p' and 'v', or stick to them and learn wrong? You may also have an idea of the relationship between Egyptian and other languages around it geographically. If you don't, then I suggest you read up on some articles on that. Now if you don't know the history I can provide you some material as well.
    Lastly, let me tell you a story my tutor once told me: he met a lady in a church in el-haram, one of the poshy areas in Cairo, and for the record, he and many other people started learning the language the flawed way, and then corrected themselves. Anyway, he was talking with that lady about what's authentic and what's not, and she told him the authentic dialect I'm convinced with, but it sounds so dull, suiting only peasants and illiterate Sa'idic people, but to save my pride as a learned woman I'll keep using the accent that distinguishes me from those people. Now you can see how annoyed I am, but your being Caucasian isn't a good enough reason if you want to learn Coptic. If anything I presume you are more civilised to understand what's right from what's incorrect.
    OUjai
  • [quote author=Tenacpi esna onkh link=topic=11542.msg139000#msg139000 date=1307283672]
    Actually the I agree that the OLD pronunciation might be somehow right but still it sounds old and kinda arabic. the New sounds cooler with letters like P and V, it makes me feel more Caucasian, or at least not an arab guy who can't spell neither the P nor the V as they don't exist in arabic.
    maybe the old one is the last spoken after the invasion of islam so the coptic became similar to arabic like "bleez bartake from the holy communion"
    anyway, i will prefer keeping my accent, it makes me cooler.
    What i need is WRITTEN stuff, and anyone can pronounce it however he like.

    Ougai


    Hello,

    I don't know about what sounds cooler, but as far as the sound inventory of Coptic is concerned, your speculations aren't really supported by the facts. The complexity of Coptic pronunciation (which is glossed over by simply assigning Greek values to everything) has to do on one hand with dialectical variations that persisted in Egypt since before the Arabs (see, for instance, Dyneley Prince 1902), and also with the original Egyptian roots of Coptic (Lopriento 1995, 1997). If you can't respect those aspects of the language, I might humbly suggest that the mindset with which you are approaching the language will be an obstacle rather than a help.

    Regarding "feeling Caucasian" by having or not having certain sounds in a given pronunciation, this is just silly. Plenty of Semitic languages have [p], like Hebrew, the Neo-Aramaic languages, and Ge'ez/Amharic (also, tons and tons of languages spoken by black and brown people have these sounds!). Hebrew has [p] and [v] (apparently, in some phonological environments [v] exists as an alternate pronunciation of "b" in Syriac, and from there Neo-Aramaic). Not to mention, Egyptian (of any era) is NOT a Semitic language. It is its own separate branch of the Afroasiatic language family, making it about as related to the Semitic languages as, say, Swedish is to Albanian (both are Indo-European, but Albanian is its own branch). If more people realized this fact,  prehaps they'd be less likely to treat Coptic as some sort of bastard tongue in competition with Arabic or Greek, and hopefully have a little more pride in it as a result.

    Signed,
    An actual Caucasian guy  ;D
    (It's not all that special, to be honest)
  • EKhrestos anesty
    THanks dzheremi. I'm aware of the fact that Coptic is semi-semitic semi-Hamitic as is Amharic I think while both Arabic and Hebrew are Semitic. IS that correct?
    OUjai
  • [quote author=ophadece link=topic=11542.msg139003#msg139003 date=1307301826]
    EKhrestos anesty
    THanks dzheremi. I'm aware of the fact that Coptic is semi-semitic semi-Hamitic as is Amharic I think while both Arabic and Hebrew are Semitic. IS that correct?
    OUjai



    Hi Ophadece,

    What you just said rang a bell for mel. A while ago,I read some stuff at this site-  http://stores.lulu.com/ancientgebts

    A writer , i think an ethiopan ,claims the ancient hieroglyphics are related to the geez script or language. I do not think his claim is evidenced by research,but he makes some interesting observation that shows a link between these two ancient languages or scripts.Have a look at the examples of common words the author lists in the link. Some of the claims are bizzare,but somewhat interesting.
  • [quote author=ophadece link=topic=11542.msg139003#msg139003 date=1307301826]
    EKhrestos anesty
    THanks dzheremi. I'm aware of the fact that Coptic is semmitic semi-Hamitic as is Amharic I think while both Arabic and Hebrew are Semitic. IS that correct?
    OUjai



    Not quite. I think you are confusing the levels of language taxonomy slightly. The term "Hamitic" or "Hamito-Semitic" is no longer used (the switch to the current "Afroasiatic" followed Greenberg 1950, as "Hamitic" was proven to be an invalid grouping), and all the languages you mentioned above are Semitic, with the exception of Egyptian which is its own branch of Afro-Asiatic (sometimes called "Afrasian", though I still see AA as the most widely used and accepted term). The division of languages is from Family (the largest grouping, excluding theoretical "proto-families" for the sake of clarity) to Branch (and, confusingly, at this level we can also talk of "families", e.g., the Germanic family, which is a branch of the Indo-European family). There are various proposals that Egyptian is more or less Semitic (Vergote 1965, Rossler 1971; Vycichl argued in the late 1950s that it was Semitic, but had separated from a common ancestor prior to any other subdivision of the Semitic family), but that is the not accepted by the majority of the field of linguistics, which accepts Greenberg's reclassification of the family (above). This is not to say that they are not related at all, but perhaps more accurately to say that the division between Egyptian and the other members of the family reflects a fundamentally different split from the assumed proto-language or proto-family (related to Vycichl's idea above, but keeping Semitic and Egyptian at essentially the same "level" in terms of descent).

    Let me illustrate it using simplified sketches from your examples above:

    (Proto-Afroasiatic) > Afro-Asiatic > (Proto-Egyptian) > Eygptian (Heiroglyphic) > Egyptian (Demotic) > Egyptian (Coptic)

    (Proto-Afroasiatic) > Afro-Asiatic > (Proto-Semitic) > Semitic > South Semitic > Ethiopian > South > Transversal > Amharic-Argobba > Amharic

    (Proto-Afroasiatic) > Afro-Asiatic > (Proto-Semitic) > Semitic > Central Semitic > South > Arabic

    (Proto-Afroasiatic)  > Afro-Asiatic > (Proto-Semitic) > Semitic > Central Semitic > Northwest > Canaanite > Hebrew

    Some other sources place Hebrew as South instead of NW, but I've read more of the above taxonomy, so that's what I'm going with since I've never worked with Hebrew. These later stages of descent are not really important for our discussion anyway. The point to notice is that Egyptian has a common origin with the others, but a different immediate ancestor at the proto-language/proto-family (doesn't matter, as Egyptian is the only member) level, whereas the others stay "together" until later stages. Another thing to notice is that Amharic is South Semitic, so it is more closely related to the modern South Semitic languages (the two most documented of which are Mehri and Soqotri, spoken in small numbers in Oman and Yemen) than to either Hebrew or Arabic, since it descended from the South Semitic languages which used to be widely spoken in Yemen prior to the Arab conquests.

    The levels in parentheses, by the way, are argued proto-families from which the existent/documented  "daughter" languages come, rather than languages in their own right. No identifiable community is taken to have spoken something called "proto-Semitic"; rather, common Semitic forms shared across languages are argued to come from a common proto-form, shown in typological/historical works with an asterisk, e.g., *PSem byt > Common Semitic noun *bayt-  'house' > Ar. bayt > Amh. bet > Heb. beth > N. Asyr. bet(h), etc.

    (example above from the Semitic roots list in the American Heritage Dictionary, 2006 ed., supplemented by me.)

    I hope this is clear and helpful.
  • EKhrestos anesty
    Dear Hezekiel,
    Very very interesting article, thanks very much. Two points caught my attention now: 1. The word 'ntok the writer spells with a dau rather than a teita to banish any doubts one might have about how proper Coptic should be pronounced (ie teita is not pronounced as th). 2. The conversion of r into l from pharaonic into Coptic. I hope that dzheremi or Remenkimi can shed any light as I don't know anything about hieroglyphics. I am aware that the akhmimic dialect used to substitute for one letter with the other, but nothing more... thanks again...
    Oujai
  • Ekhrestos anesty
    Very very helpful dzheremi thanks a million. ALthough just a tad technical but easy for me to understand. Thanks a lot... awaiting your comments on article Hezekiel quoted above...
    Oujai
  • Unfortunately my knowledge of Hieroglyphics is also null, but I can provide an academic (linguistic) counterpoint to the somewhat fanciful claims* of the Lulu book: Satzinger's The Egyptian Connection: Egyptian and Semitic Languages (this is where I took the overview of past theories from).

    * I hope it is now obvious from my post and Satzinger's article that Egyptian IS related to Semitic, but what I find fanciful is the Eritrean author's assertion that this has somehow been hidden from humanity, rather than blatantly obvious from the very beginning of modern Egyptian linguistics to any who travel in linguistics circles. This makes me think that the author himself does not, which makes me question the rest of his analysis. It is likely he is right in some individual instances, but that would be more or less true of any layperson would could similarly recognize the relationship between two genetically-related languages without any formal training, e.g., if you are a native English speaker, you can sort of follow along with German to some degree, but that doesn't "mean" anything outside of some analysis that would place it in a wider context, which requires at least some degree of linguistic study. Otherwise, it is akin to noticing that water is wet and angrily declaring that this important scientific fact should not have been kept from you for so long...  ;) [For all I know the book establishes this wider context; it's hard to tell from the one page preview, but I am not hopeful given the ideological stance which is the hallmark of many pseudo-scientific works.]
  • Anyway, i am not that convinced but still everyone is arguing about the old pronunciation that no one actually heard it But no1 has given me any useful direct links for advanced coptic tutoring or random modern stuff written in coptic
  • Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics are the original source of all modern Western and Middle Eastern writing systems.  This is well known.  From the Northern and Western side of things, the Phoenicians first borrowed hieroglyphics and made up their own alphabet.  The Greeks then borrowed from the Phoenicians and made their own alphabet.  The Romans then borrowed from the Greek and made the Latin alphabet.  The creators of the Cyrillic alphabet were Greeks who were preaching in Russia and so copied the Greek alphabet.  On the Eastern side, the Phoenician alphabet sprouted many of the modern and ancient writing that are known today: Aramaic, Syriac, Hebrew, Perso-Arabic, Uyghur, Mongolian, etc.  From the South the Nubians and Ethiopians copied hieroglyphics to make their own respective scripts. 
  • If anyone wants to learn everyday words in Coptic, visit www.speakcoptic.org
  • Ekhrestos anesty
    Dear danasbi,
    If you go over my post again you'll find I advised you to read www.Remenkimi.com. as I said you'll find many writings in Sa'idic, but also some in Bohairic, and some personal efforts of members who wrote Coptic stories themselves. Not sure if you can call it modern writings though.
    Dear dzheremi,
    That makes sense... thanks
    Oujai
  • I am a bit confused, so th hymns in our church which we assume are Sahidic are actually 'proper' Bohairic? For example, I was under the impression that the hymn Tenen is made up of Greek, Bohairic, and Sahidic...also, is the proper Bohairic pronounciation very similar to Sahidic?
  • timothym, if u r confused, i feel a bit better!
    there are plenty of hymns that start out in greek and then go to coptic (and parts of the liturgy) and vice versa.
    i can't quite keep up!
  • Ekhrestos anesty
    Dear timothym,
    NO, there are some hymns that are Sa'idic in their system of writings, ie spelling, grammar, not pronunciation-wise. Example is the hymn yestermagi. Danan as you said I believe is a mixture of the three.
    Dear mabsoota,
    I believe you're talking about a similar yet different issue, that is the amount of Greek that was imposed on the original Bohairic text used in the liturgy.
    Oujai
  • Alithos Anesti, mabsoota, thats ok to be confused, it takes time to know the difference between the Coptic and Greek at first. However, that is not my issue. I was trying to find out what the difference in pronounciation between Sahidic versus Bohairic are.

    Ophadece, thanks for the helpful reply. I've never heard of the hymn yestermagi, but I assume it is about the Nativity. Danan, or Tenen starts off in Greek so originally it would've been pronounced Tenen....how the Egyptians who didn't speak Greek pronounced it is a different story :) Also, keep in mind that originally, the Alexandrian Liturgy was done completely in Greek and then translated into Coptic...since the more south/further away from Alexandria and the big cities you went, the people understood less and less Greek. The same thing applies with the Syriac Liturgy of St. James which was originally done in Greek and translated into Syriac for the commonfolk away from Antioch.

    I've read in a book about St. Cyril that the Greeks of Constantinople/mainland Greece in the 4th century used to make fun of the way people from Alexandria spoke Greek, so definitely we know that even amongst Greek speakers in Alexandria, there was a different dialect from other Greek speaking areas. I wonder if Agios Is-SHiros is an example...Greeks say Agios IS-KHiros while Copts say Agios is-SHiros (during the Trisagion Hymn)...
  • Ekhrestos anesty
    Dear timothym,
    Your last paragraph hits the nail on the head. Just because we Copts took Greek loan words and used Greek liturgies (or Greek in our liturgies, whichever is the more correct), we still spoke it the Coptic way, in a manner totally, without even exaggerating, different to the Greeks even in those days. That's way I would pronounce it danan even though it starts in Greek.
    The differences in pronunciation between Bohairic and Sa'idic are many, and if dzheremi doesn't point you to some of the references in the next couple of days, then I will do that after Tuesday as I have a big exam to retake and need all your prayers, and other members' of course...
    Oujai
  • Oh yes and yestermagi is a Nativity hymn spread mainly from Muharraq monastery in the south of Egypt indicating the Sa'idic roots of the hymn...
    Oujai
  • [quote author=ophadece link=topic=11542.msg139137#msg139137 date=1307507816]
    Oh yes and yestermagi is a Nativity hymn spread mainly from Muharraq monastery in the south of Egypt indicating the Sa'idic roots of the hymn...
    Oujai


    more specificly a paramoune hymn.
  • Ekhrestos anesty
    Thanks Mina, sorry I wasn't clear enough...
    Oujai
  • [quote author=ophadece link=topic=11542.msg139140#msg139140 date=1307509313]
    Ekhrestos anesty
    Thanks Mina, sorry I wasn't clear enough...
    Oujai


    dw.....it's just one of my favorites.....the tune atleast.
  • wow, thats so cool, I wonder where I can hear this hymn?
    As for the Greek, its correct to say our Coptic Rite/Alexandrian Ritual was done originally in Greek...to say we used Greek liturgies is more what the Arabic speaking Rum Orthodox (Antiochians) did which is simply adopt Byzantine texts and music, which the Copts definitely did not do. In fact I have a complete Coptic liturgy of St. Basil in Greek.

    Granted the non-Greek speakers didn't know how to pronounce the Greek correctly, and just as we ought to pronounce the Coptic properly (in Old Bohairc) then we also ought to pronounce the Greek properly (ie. Tenen :) At least thats my reasoning..

    I saw a pdf document of the Lord's Prayer in different Coptic dialects so I see now that the dialects are very diverse, but how do we know that Old Bohairic is the correct pronounciation? For example, did any monasteries preserve the manner of chanting the hymns/maradat in Old Bohairic versus Greco-Bohairic?

    Oh and God bless you on your exam ophadece!
  • I defer to Ophadece or Remnkemi to correct me, but it is my understanding that the adoption of Greco-Bohairic pronunciation was and is at best fairly uneven throughout Egypt, where dialectical differences persisted for so long due to the remoteness of certain churches and the resulting relative isolation of a given form from whatever may have been considered standard with reference to the churches in Alexandria or Cairo. Roughly 50 years on from the reform, linguists were still reporting wide variations from place to place (see Dyneley Prince, 1902), indicating that the features inherited from whatever dialect was originally spoken in a given place were still there to varying degrees in the Coptic used in the liturgy.

    I am not sure about today, when it seems like every church and monastery has its own website, but I would be surprised if this wasn't still the case, if to a somewhat lesser degree perhaps.
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