Re: Egyptian based Conlangs

> On Tue, 15 Dec 1998, Sheets, Jeff wrote:
>
> > Does anyone know if anybody has ever based a conlang on Egyptian?  There is
> > ample room for creation, because the most information on Egyptian Verbs I've
> > ever seen is E. A. Wallis Budge's Egyptian Language book.  There is also an
> > excellent basis for vocabulary, given the same author's two volume
> > Dictionary of Egyptian Hieroglyphics.  As is usual for me, something is
> > itching me away from my current conlang (Tit'xka), this time it is Egyptian.
I have out of the library Alan Gardiner's vast 1927 _Egyptian Grammar_.
Unlike Budge, it seems, there is ample discussion of the complex Egyptian
verb.  Lessons XXI through XXIII cover such things as the verb classes,
voice, mood, tense, the prothetic, reduplication, bilateral/trilateral
verbs, compound verbs, denominative verbs, the infinitive (if that's what
Egyptian has), the infinitive as substitute for a noun clause (which is
what Teonaht does in spades--including marking objects of the infinitive
by a kind of genitive...all discovered after I had picked up the Egyptian
book), the old perfective, etc. etc. etc. I, too, had a fancy for the idea
of Teonaht borrowings from Egyptian, given the T's interest in Bastet and
so forth.

I also learned from this book that Coptic has "adjective-verbs" like "to
be small," which is what the Teonaht "-ndi" verbs do, probably much less
complexly.

Sally
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Sally Caves
scaves@frontiernet.net
http://www.frontiernet.net/~scaves/teonaht.html
http://www.frontiernet.net/~scaves/contents.html

Aro le thena neom, ma haikkebo vera.
"Snow breathes on us but doesn't fall."
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