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6th letter in the Coptic alphabet

mark.naguib7
edited December 1969 in Hymns Discussion
Why is it that "soo" is a letter? It is never used as a letter only as number, so why is it in the alphabet?

Comments

  • mark.naguib7
    Anyone?
  • mark.naguib7
    Remnkemi? Ophadece? Imikhail? Anyone?

    It's fine if you don't have much evidence.
  • ophadeceophadece
    Ekhrestos anesty
    dear Copticandproud,
    I'm not sure I'm the best one to answer that question as I'm not so much evidence based.. I might be wrong but I may have read that in the demotic language that's the way it was, so Copts carried the same principle over on using the Greek letters.. I may be wrong
    oujai
  • Aegyptian
    ΧPICTOC ANECTH

    I thought the same, that the letter coo came from demotic (ayin sound?)

    The reason why it's in the alphabet is quite logical
    I think. For numbers, each letter in the alphabet is given a number (by adding a supralinear stroke, i.e. Alpha=1, Wida=2). You can see here that the Greek alphabet has the idea for making numbers. The Greeks used a stigma for the sixth number, which used to be a letter in previous alphabets. See http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_numerals

    In order for Greek numbers to correspond with Coptic (i.e. Rho being 100 and not some other number) the letter coo was introduced as the sixth letter in the alphabet to signify 6, to avoid confusion.

    Correct me if I'm wrong.

    Oujai
  • mark.naguib7
    [quote author=Aegyptoc link=topic=14455.msg164932#msg164932 date=1370125988]
    ΧPICTOC ANECTH

    I thought the same, that the letter coo came from demotic (ayin sound?)

    The reason why it's in the alphabet is quite logical
    I think. For numbers, each letter in the alphabet is given a number (by adding a supralinear stroke, i.e. Alpha=1, Wida=2). You can see here that the Greek alphabet has the idea for making numbers. The Greeks used a stigma for the sixth number, which used to be a letter in previous alphabets. See http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_numerals

    In order for Greek numbers to correspond with Coptic (i.e. Rho being 100 and not some other number) the letter coo was introduced as the sixth letter in the alphabet to signify 6, to avoid confusion.

    Correct me if I'm wrong.

    Oujai


    I am not too sure I follow... So what is the number 6 in Greek? What about 90 "Fai" is not a Greek letter right?
  • Aegyptian
    Did you check the link I gave you? There you can see the letter used for 6 in Greek (ϝʹ or ϛʹ or στʹ, im seeing blocks when I copy them, but I can see the letter themselves when I check the wiki).  There you can also see that the Greek number for 90 is a letter that's not used in Coptic. Instead of giving rho or the Greek-non-Coptic letter the 90th number, the fai was used instead.
  • mark.naguib7
    [quote author=Aegyptoc link=topic=14455.msg164936#msg164936 date=1370166091]
    ϝʹ or ϛʹ or στʹ


    I can see this.

    So why did they not use this when they first introduced the Greek Alphabet to Coptic? Why introduce a new letter/number?
  • Aegyptian
    I'm afraid my knowledge is not enough, so there is a big chance my answer is wrong. I'm mostly getting my info from wiki and some knowledge of Greek alphabets.

    But like wiki said, for the numeral system, the Greeks needed 27 symbols, while they only had an alphabet with 24 letters. The 3 additional letters came from earlier alphabets, and these letters were rendered obsolete.

    I don't know the timeline so I don't know the sequence of events, but I can imagine that the Greeks had a numeral system with the 27 symbols that I just mentioned, and this system was adopted in the Coptic language. I think (almost) all of the 24 letters are also used in Coptic, but not the three additional, because they were not used in the Coptic language, they were not present in the Coptic alphabet. Therefore it makes sense to, like the Greeks did with earlier (Greek) alphabets, to take letters from earlier Egyptian alphabets.

    image

    image

    You can see that there is a different letter used for 6, 90, and also 900.

    Unfortunately I have no sources for most of the story I just mentioned. Maybe someone else can add them.
  • mark.naguib7
    [quote author=Aegyptoc link=topic=14455.msg164942#msg164942 date=1370279275]
    I'm afraid my knowledge is not enough, so there is a big chance my answer is wrong. I'm mostly getting my info from wiki and some knowledge of Greek alphabets.

    But like wiki said, for the numeral system, the Greeks needed 27 symbols, while they only had an alphabet with 24 letters. The 3 additional letters came from earlier alphabets, and these letters were rendered obsolete.

    I don't know the timeline so I don't know the sequence of events, but I can imagine that the Greeks had a numeral system with the 27 symbols that I just mentioned, and this system was adopted in the Coptic language. I think (almost) all of the 24 letters are also used in Coptic, but not the three additional, because they were not used in the Coptic language, they were not present in the Coptic alphabet. Therefore it makes sense to, like the Greeks did with earlier (Greek) alphabets, to take letters from earlier Egyptian alphabets.

    image

    image

    You can see that there is a different letter used for 6, 90, and also 900.

    Unfortunately I have no sources for most of the story I just mentioned. Maybe someone else can add them.


    Oh I see that all makes sense now, but can you elaborate a little on why is the letter "coo" in the alphabet? Why are the letters for 90 and 900 not in the alphabet also?

    Thank you so much, and sorry for my ignorance.
  • Aegyptian
    http://books.google.nl/books?id=-IHe-B480K8C&pg=PA27&lpg=PA27&dq=learn+coptic&source=bl&ots=217iENzJTm&sig=d98V6_MUk50h4eXi4VIoVfRaXoU&hl=nl&sa=X&ei=P9qsUcGSKsvXPITogegL&ved=0CGwQ6AEwCDgK#v=onepage&q=learn%20coptic&f=false

    See from page 53 for a complete list of the Coptic numbers.

    Oh I see that all makes sense now, but can you elaborate a little on why is the letter "coo" in the alphabet? Why are the letters for 90 and 900 not in the alphabet also?

    As you can see, the letter for 90 (FAI) and 900 (SHAI) are in fact in the alphabet, and are used in Coptic! :)

    I think "coo" is thus in the alphabet to make it logical for the users of Coptic, so that, when we only look at the numbers 1 - 10, the 10th number corresponds to the 10th letter in the alphabet. To make this happen, "coo" has to be on the sixth place in the alphabet.
  • RemnkemiRemnkemi
    No one introduced anything. The Greek numerical system is older than the Coptic alphabet. The Greek numerical system is based on Melisian (local) Greek system taken from Ancient Phoenician. It is dated some where from 7th century BC to 2nd century BC. No one is sure. The Melisian Greek alphabet is based on 27 alphabetic letters (not the traditional 24 letters). The three additional letters are also used in the numeric system. The first is the digamma used for "6", the second is the koppa used for "90" and the third is sampi used for "900". The digamma and the koppa are located in the original Melisian order. The sampi was moved. It used to be after the pi letter but then it moved to after omega. The word sampi is thought to be etymologically derived from sam + pi which means "like pi". Phonetically, the digamma gives /w/ sound (like OB's "b" letter), the koppa give the /k/ sound and the sampi gives the /ss/ sound. These three letters are thought to be derivatives of the archaic Phoenician letters. This theory is controversial because the theory relies on some assumptions.

    But logically, it makes sense. The Copts used the Greek system instead of the Ancient Egyptian system for their alphabet and numerical system because the Greek systems combined the two into one system. Early Copts were heavily bilingual (Greek and Demotic). The Ptolemaic period has many Greek manuscripts with the Melisian system. The characters in the Greek numerical system were also used in Coptic manuscripts. Today, these three additional letters are included in the Coptic Unicode character set.

    The only thing that changed in the Coptic alphabet was to change the look of the characters (i.e., different glyphs or orthography) and change the diactric from an apostrophe after the number (as seen in Greek) to an superlinear bar above the numbers (as seen in Coptic).
  • mark.naguib7
    [quote author=Aegyptoc link=topic=14455.msg164944#msg164944 date=1370282860]
    As you can see, the letter for 90 (FAI) and 900 (SHAI) are in fact in the alphabet, and are used in Coptic! :)


    I knew that!  ;D
    Haha I mixed them up with the Greek Letters for 90 and 900

    Anyways, it all makes sense now.

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