Ancient Egyptian (was: new Unnamed Conlang)

On Friday, September 17, 2004, at 12:59 , Rodlox wrote:

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Christian Thalmann <cinga@...>
> To: <CONLANG@...>
> Sent: Friday, September 17, 2004 12:08 AM
> Subject: Re: new Unnamed Conlang
>
>
>> --- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, Rodlox <Rodlox@H...> wrote:
>>
>>> jy (like "DJoser" in Ancient Egyptian)
>>
>> Does anyone what Ancient Egyptian sounded like?
>
>  the Rosetta Stone.
Eh? It's a *stone*, not a gramophone record, tape or CD. It gives us no
idea whatsoever what either ancient Egyptian or for that matter what
ancient Greek sounded like.

>
>  other than that...I once heard that Coptic was a relic / vestige of
> Ancient
> Egyptian.
Neither - it's a descendant of ancient Egyptian in the same way that
French, Spanish and so on are descendants of (Vulgar) Latin. Fortunately,
in the latter case we have several different Romance languages and by
making comparisons can make a reasonable guess what Vulgar Latin sounded
like.

Ancient Egyptian has only one descendant. It is rather like trying to
reconstruct what Latin sounded like if French were its only descendant.

The only certainty in fact is that we do not know what ancient Egyptian
sounded like and short of time-travel we will probably never properly know.

Ray
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http://home.freeuk.com/ray.brown
ray.brown@freeuk.com
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"They are evidently confusing science with technology."
UMBERTO ECO				September, 2004