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Egyptian Arabic colloquial words from Coptic

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  • ophadeceophadece
    @Remenkimi
    For gb to equate to Klingon and Esperanto is to have another name than Coptic and to not depend on the text used by the church as originally a different language.. have you ever heard on wrong language teaching, or are they each called a new dialect or a variant of such a language?
    Oujai
  • minatasgeelminatasgeel
    @ophadece and @imikhail stop arguing for the sake of arguing....i feel like you guys have spent some time with sasi/vassilios to be acting this way. Also, @ophadece, please stay on topic. evidence or not, invention or mish invention, it's what we are using now and what we will keep using that's a fact and that makes it a dialect.

    Remnkemi's statements are clear enough.
  • RemnkemiRemnkemi
    Ophadece and Imikhail,
    Listen I know you are both very passionate about OB. I wish we had more people like you passionate about linguistic history and identity. I have stated in the past that I like OB and I have used it in Church. I too lament over the misunderstanding and lack of use of OB. But I cannot sit back and let anyone trash GB in their zeal to improve OB's status. You may disagree with this because you believe GB is not a real entity. But as Mina said, you cannot deny GB's usage. My dream is that OB and GB proponents can one day use both dialects bilingually, not one over the other. 

    BTW, I would still like to continue the discussion if we are all open to learning, not arguing. 
  • ophadeceophadece
    @minatasgeel,
    No problem.
    Please answer my questions above in order to prove to me how gb is any thing as you or @minatasgeel claim. By the way, I am arguing because as you rightly say I feel so passionately about this. You are probably ignorant of what saints like St. Samuel the confessor said about Copts at the end of days. I don't want to see my beloved church drown into ignorance, and lack of knowledge, when the evidence is so overwhelming of the opposite. There is no SCIENTIFIC evidence for me other than Mr. Guirguis's work not being acknowledged, and Fr. Shenouda obtaining a doctorate from Oxford. You may choose not to answer any of my arguments above, but this is not important. More importantly you should actually study the claims in a scientific manner (I doubt that for so many things are mixed with Arabic notations anyway). 
    Oujai
  • imikhailimikhail
    edited August 2014
    Your definition of dialect does not fit what we are discussing here. I am talking about a natural dialect with natural development of a certain language. You, instead accept the fact that an invention of a language is a dialect so long as two people understand each other. This is not the definition we are addressing here. 

    GB is an invented dialect because it arbitrarily invented sounds for Coptic. It is not a natural development of the Coptic language.


  • ophadeceophadece
    @imikhail,
    Very well said. Thanks
    Oujai
  • ophadeceophadece
    I'd like to ask how I could attach a file. I have finished the word document I was preparing about Coptic words used in Egyptian colloquial lingo. Please let me know...
    Oujai
  • ophadeceophadece
    Please have a look onto sucha  link (this is the best I could do for now):
    Oujai
  • ophadeceophadece
    I will hopefully some day pursue another project to get another list from Crum and Georgy Sobhy.. pray for me please..
    Oujai
  • alam ala weshak
    foota means towel 
  • alam ala weshak
    Also dont you people have anything better to do than to fight on the internet ??
  • RemnkemiRemnkemi
    If the material doesn't interest you, keep moving. There are people who are passionate about things others may believe are non-essential. It is not simply internet polemics. Be respectful of others.
  • Tenacpi esna onkh
    edited September 2014
    regarding the transition from OB to GB as people claim, sometimes I ask how did that happen all of a sudden, why did it happen and who did it. Why did the Church agree to use it as the standard. It's enough to remember that it happened at the time of Pope Cyril IV Father of Reforms, who is credited for the Coptic revolution in all branches if Christianity. Why would this reformer let such heresy spread, the language which represents the Copticnationality. Therefore denying the authenticity of the current dialect is not very logical.

     my theory is the claimed-to-be-Old-Bohairic-dialect is probably an evolution for the language, however was not a natural revolution similar to the one we see in KJV and NKJV. Arabs has influenced the Copts a lot, Coptic was banned at some point and was replaced by Arabic by force, so everyone in Egypt at some point spoke Arabic, along with some remnant of Coptic. this Coptic started to look like Arabic a lot. Notice the similarity!! the letters that do not exist in Arabic DO NOT exist in OB too, such as PH, P,... Copts have probably used some Coptic words, but pronounced it in Arabic way as it is the colloquial language of the time. This theory could be observed on the Egyptians born and raised in the West. Their arabic is pronounced almost like English. I have once an 'O Kirios Metasou' from a Montreal Church that took me a while to realize it's Greeko-Coptic (very poor meaningless language)  not French. And the way the arabic words of Coptic origin coheres with the OB way of pronunciation supports my point too.
  • ophadeceophadece
    edited September 2014
    @tenacpiesnaonkh,
    Manuscripts from as old as the tenth and ninth centuries prove the authenticity of Bohairic and its relationship to the Demotic language. Not only that but it is structurally different yet linguistically similar to Sa'idic and Akhmimic. If anything it was the Coptic language that influenced the Arabic language and not the severe.
    Unfortunately by the time of the 19th century the Bohairic has died down considerably but not the Sa'idic. Therefore due to ignorance and other political reasons the need for Hellenising the Coptic language arose. However because Sa'idic dialect was still more or less surviving as a dialect for communication the former was referred to as Bohairic. When coptologists and other scientists discovered and brought to use the old Bohairic manuscripts the pro gb boffins started to distinguish it calling it Greco-Bohairic!
    So in a nutshell the gb was a fabricated dialect based on the premise that Coptic uses Greek letters hence it ought to be pronounced as Greek. Pope Kyrollos IV may not have had any problems spreading Coptic by any means necessary but unfortunately the one he allocated that job to wasn't up to the task in a strictly scientific sense, or even loosely for that matter.
    All what I mentioned is recorded historically and you just need to spend a couple of hours googling sources that are reliable enough and you'll understand. There's no need to venture any guesses or personal deductions. Pray for me I am currently undertaking the project of translating Erian Moftah's book but that is still going to take a long while
    Oujai
  • RemnkemiRemnkemi
    What? Pope Cyril IV, Father of Reforms....let such heresy spread? You really need to look up the definition of heresy. A heresy implies a false belief that is detrimental to one's salvation. How can changing a language justifiably be called a heresy? 

    O Kirios meta sou is the end of Shere theotoke. I assume you are speaking of Agios Istin, which is a different hymn. Agios Istin is not meaningless. It is hymnographic poetry. I wrote about it in Coptic 10. This is outside the topic so I won't go into it.

    I am working on an article that shows Erian Moftah's technic has linguistic science to support it. I will wait till Ophadece translates Moftah's book to see if it supports my hypothesis. 

    In the meantime, please give sources of ninth and tenth century manuscripts that support OB over GB. No one is arguing that Bohairic is not a unique dialect of Coptic and that Coptic in its totality influenced Arabic (and not vice versa). The discussion is about OB and GB, not Bohairic and Sahidic. 
  • qawe
    @Remnkemi

    Doesn't the hymn go "o kyrios meta so, Agios Esteen..." How are they 2 distinct hymns?
  • RemnkemiRemnkemi
    No it does not. "O Kyrios meta sou" is the last line of Shere Theotoke. 

    No manuscript starts Agios Istin with "O Kyrios meta sou". 

    Attaching "O Kyrios meta sou"  to Agios istin had two purposes. First, it was just a convention many cantors used to "say" the hymn Shere theotoke without the long melismatic tune. Think of it as a pseudo-damg way of saying Shere theotoke (without actually saying the remaining part of Shere theotoke). Second, it was a mnemonic tool to remember how to start Agios istin musically by attaching it to the end of the previous hymn. The same is done with the beginning of the melismatic (long) version of Shere theotoke. Musically the end of Ksmaroot is attached to the beginning of Shere theotoke. Conventionally, the hymn is given the title "on she" because "on" is the last syllable of Ksmaroot and "she" is the first syllable of Shere theotoke. Contrastly, the same is done by connecting Shere theotoke to Agios Istin (except it was not the last syllable but the last stichon/line of Shere theotoke). Similarly, the hymn Agios istin is given the title "O Kyrios meta cou" but it has semantically and contextually, the two are separate hymns. Shere theotoke is a theotokia, a hymn for the Theotokos. While Agios Istin is a Trinitarian hymn. 
  • ophadeceophadece
    @Remenkimi,
    I was mistaken. The manuscripts listed as references in Fr. Shenouda Maher's research are from the 10th and 11th centuries AM, or 13th and 14th AD. I don't think I will hold my breath to read your study on Erian Moftah's technic. As a person who supports scientific evidence, and the practical use of the brain (something less prevalent in a place like Egypt), I wouldn't get convinced by any arguments supporting his technic. To me it is like some Indians called the English they pronounced modified Cockney, because people refuted their original nomination of such being Cockney. That is not only dishonesty, chaos, but lack of scientific applications, however or whatever the end goal reached was (or still is!)
    Oujai
  • mabsootamabsoota
    wow, can you open another thread to discuss agios istin?
    is there a good english translation somewhere?
    i have heard on the internet that the hymn is not in very good greek / coptic, but there is something about it i love a lot.
    please tell me more if you can.
    if i had a good translation, i would be able to share it at church, as i have been asked to find hymns in english (NOT easy to find good hymns - the old english ones sound like someone has died and many modern ones have wrong theology).

    i would love so much to sing this in english.

    i am not going to comment on the different forms of coptic.
    i am still on lesson 11 of the internet series and have just leant the letters.
    i may return to the subject in 10 or 20 years when i have something to say!
    ;-)
  • abgad
    edited November 2014
    ophadece said:

    Tarabeza for the table

    Taftaf spelt as thefthef meaning spit
    Maow for mother, sorry for my transcription system..hehe..
    Embare7 for empaihoou meaning that day as the phrase object used in colloquial Egyptian Arabic as yesterday
    Boktor spelt as Victor
    More to follow
     Oujai
    what's up guys? Language nerd here.

    imbari7/embare7 for "yesterday" is actually from tribal Yemeni Arabic

    Some tribes in Southern Yemen say "am-" instead of "al-" for "the", so "al-bari7a" which is another fusha way of saying "yesterday" becomes "am-bari7a" or imbari7

    Not coincidentally Southern Yemenis pronounce "jeem" as "geem" just like Egyptians!

    ophadece said:

    Wala which is the proper pronunciation of owalow meaning kid
    Oh my gosh! I've been looking FOREVER for someone who knows "Wala!" as a way of saying "boy!/hey you!" An old Egyptian neighbor used to call me that as a joke when I was a kid, but when I went to Cairo NO ONE knew what I was talking about when I mentioned that! Is this a regional thing or obscure slang or what?

    The only person who got it was an old Syrian guy who said he saw it one time in an Egyptian movie where they shouted it as a waiter and he said it was slang that very few people would know.
  • ophadeceophadece
    @abgad,
    in old Egyptian language the r sound is found unspelt in some words, but I like you have questioned the etymology particularly of Embare7.. you may be right, or may not be, I guess the main point is to not blindly follow research done by others. I still highly believe it is from Coptic, or at least a bit of both..
    about wala you strike me as having lived long parts of your life outside the Arab world, so probably it's to do with your pronunciation that Egyptians didn't understand what you mean. The word is very widespread and I mean very, and doesn't have any regional variations..
    oujai
  • coptic_deacon
    Just for fun:

    The company Adobe Systems was named after a certain Adobe Creek in California.

    California was once part of New Spain (Spanish North America).

    The word Adobe in Spanish means 'brick'.

    It entered the Spanish vocabulary via the Muslims in Spain (Al-Andalus) centuries before the discovery of the New World, from the arabic word 'Tubah', meaning brick.

    The arabic word Tubah is borrowed from the Coptic word 'Tub-e', meaning brick.

    How cool is that.


  • qawe
    coptic_deacon said:

    Just for fun:


    The company Adobe Systems was named after a certain Adobe Creek in California.

    California was once part of New Spain (Spanish North America).

    The word Adobe in Spanish means 'brick'.

    It entered the Spanish vocabulary via the Muslims in Spain (Al-Andalus) centuries before the discovery of the New World, from the arabic word 'Tubah', meaning brick.

    The arabic word Tubah is borrowed from the Coptic word 'Tub-e', meaning brick.

    How cool is that.


    Very cool!
  • lfahmylfahmy
    @abgad
    To continue off of what @ophadece said, even Pakistani people know the word wala. Sometimes they joke around calling each other,"shay wala." Shay meaning tea.
  • RemnkemiRemnkemi
    One small correction. Twbi is Bohairic for brick. Twwbe is Sahidic for brick. Twbe is the name of the fourth Coptic month in Sahidic. Twbi is the Bohairic word for the fourth Coptic month.

    Just for extra clarification. al-tub is the original Arabic word. It became at-tub, which became adobar (to plaster) which became adobe in the 19th century. 


    I'm not so sure oualou is the origin of wala. In OB and Sahidic, it would be walou or walow, not wala. 
  • ophadeceophadece
    @Remenkimi
    Al7agar and its plural ala7gar are originally Arabic words while altub and its singular altubah are words that found their way to Arabic through the Egyptian language..
    as for wala you're right when you pronounce the word carefully or slowly but in day to day language it's used as such.. pretty much like Tadros for Tawadros, and tedakeya for taodakeya..
    oujai
  • RemnkemiRemnkemi
    edited December 2014
    ophadece said:

    as for wala you're right when you pronounce the word carefully or slowly but in day to day language it's used as such.. pretty much like Tadros for Tawadros, and tedakeya for taodakeya..
    oujai

    Hmmm. This corroborates my hypothesis on Erian Moftah. But we won't get into that now. Still waiting and hoping you have Erian Moftah's book translated soon.
  • ophadeceophadece
    @Remenkimi,
    thank you for your trust in me.. I don't see how this could in any sense of the word have anything to do with Mr Moftah.. in fact that is the complete opposite.. in any case I respect your wish in not wanting to get into this..
    honestly speaking besides a number of issues that are hampering me from completing translation of the book I recently started feeling as shocking as it may sound, but seriously, like I'm wasting away my days in nonsense, not even worth to be called banter.. the scientific material worthy of critique if that's to be found anywhere in the book in the first place doesn't exceed more than five percent. I have had to stop for now for at least the next couple of months but until someone else who is less busy with their time and able to dedicate themselves to the work it'll be me, but not sure when or how I can resume.. if there's any urgency I suggest you request someone who reads Arabic to read it to you and translate as they go along if indeed it makes sense to them as it is absolutely full of tangential arguments and remarks in an old Arabic speaking style that is not easily understandable if at all..
    oujai
  • davidschanterdavidschanter

    Link to Abouna Shenouda's Thesis which touches upon this:

    https://copticsounds.wordpress.com/2012/10/21/online-emile-maher-ishaks-the-phonetics-and-phonology-of-the-bohairic-dialect-of-coptic/

  • nboutros
    Hi everybody . Excellent threads congrats on this topic!

    We have to go back to origin of language NOT only some words. I understand that Heiroglyphic is original, then demotic > coptic, also >PreSinatic > Kaananite/ Phenician and from this Greek/Latin all european And Semetic languages.of course european lainguestic know but try to skip the step of Heiroglyphic link and only mention Phenician origin. If you want I can send some links to these facts
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