Re: Egyptian Vowels (Was Re: Phonological terminology question)

Eamon Graham scripsit:

> Has any linguist done a reconstruction of the old Egyptian vowels?
> Is it possible?  I'm certainly not a specialist in Egyptian but I
> would imagine that if we can come up with vowels for Proto-languages
> we should be able to come up with vowels for Egpytian.
I know that work has been done on it, triangulating from Coptic and
the other branches of Afroasiatic, but I'm not familiar with any details.

> Sure, it
> would still be an educated guess, but it would be better than, as
> Tristan says, pretending they're /e/ or null.
It's not so much a pretense as a convention -- a convention for
pronouncing transliterations.  Even those who scrupulously print
"nfrtyty" still say "Nefertiti", and why not?  They must say something,
and as long as all modern Egyptologists know it's a convention --
as they do -- it works for them.

--
John Cowan           http://www.ccil.org/~cowan              cowan@ccil.org
To say that Bilbo's breath was taken away is no description at all.  There
are no words left to express his staggerment, since Men changed the language
that they learned of elves in the days when all the world was wonderful.
        --_The Hobbit_

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