Re: Revived Egyptian (was: Ah-ha! New computer, YANC and fluency)

At 09:12 PM 04/14/2000 +0200, you wrote:
>At 16:51 13.4.2000 -0500, Terrence Donnelly wrote:
[...]
>>It seems that 3 and ' aren't vowels at all.  3 was most likely /n/, and
>>' is a glottal stop!
>
>According to whom?  AFAIK 3 is glottal stop (2alif) voiced pharyngeal
>fricative (9ayn).  Loprieno says 3 was originally /R/, tho I don't quite
>see what he bases it on.  If so it would explain the fact that AA *r and *l
>merged, but probably they would have been both [l] rather than [r] to begin
>with.  If _h was originally a voiceless lateral fricative then 3 might well
>have been its voiced counterpart rather than /R/.
>
My source is my current textbook, by James Hoch.  He doesn't explicitly
call it anything, but does assert that it wasn't a glottal stop.  I base my
idea mainly on the verb m33 "to see".  In many cases where you would
expect to see reduplication of the 3, the scribes have written m3n (where
other verbs have true reduplication, with no n involved).

>Anyway the trad. pronunciation of approximants as vowels isn't all that far
>out, since that actually happened in several AA languages: Vj and Vw
>diphthongs monophthongized into i: and u:, 2alif and 9ayn disappeared,
>leaving darker versions of vowels as phonemes.  Even in Coptic vicinity to
>old 3 and ` gives vowels different qualities than /2/ from other sources or
>non-guttural consonants.
>
This is good to keep in mind.

>My idea for 3 "o" builds on the fact that Danish /R/ colors a preceding /@/
>as /O/.  Also since m3`t was something like [mu2a] in late Egyptian
>[moa(t)] seems a reasonable mnemonic, and it *is* helpful to be able to
>tell 3 and ` apart when memorizing vocabulary, don't you think?  I for one
>memorize sounds rather than spellings, mostly.
>
Quite arbitrarily, I give 3 the broad "a" sound in "father" and ` the
short "a" of "at".  Weirdly, I find it _easier_ to memorize the spelling
than the prononciation.  I can recognize lots of words from their
glyphs that I can't remember how to pronounce!

>BTW I would be quite pleased to revive Coptic.  Cool lang and the coolest
>Greek-derived script around!
>
I thought Coptic was still in use, although mostly just liturgically.

>/BP
-- Terry

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