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Re: More Ancient Egyptian (was: new Unnamed Conlang)

From:Dan Saunders <obeythehamster@...>
Date:Saturday, September 18, 2004, 18:28
im new to the conlang listserv, but i saw ancient egyptian and thought i'd
put out what is "known" about it.

ancient egyptian is primarily VSO, lacks a 'to be' verb, and  has an abjad
writing system with the following consonants (followed by  a English approx. and
description of the hieroglyphs):

b        Bed                    foot
p        Pet                     square
f         Feel                    viper
m       Moon                  owl
n        Noon                    squiggle (sorry for the highly technical
terms)
r          Right                   oval
h        Hat                     spiral  w/ right angles
h!       aHa!                    "twisty"  lines
H        loCH  (Scotch)      placenta (most Egyptologists not sure;  circle
with lines through it)
h_       iCH (German)      animal  belly
s        Saw                    doorbolt
S        SHow                 pool
K        Key                    hill
k        basKet                basket
g        Go                       jar
t          Tap                      semicircle
t_       CHurch                rope
d        Dog                      hand
d_       aDJust                snake  (swimming)

pseudo_vowels:
a           fAther                vulture
i           In                      leaf
ee        y                       2  leaves
A         cAr                    arm
oo        w                       quail

most of the vowels are unknown so Egyptologists generally insert an 'e'
(bEt) sound where absolutely necessary so that we can "speak" it. there are some
biliterals and trileiterals which are too numerous to discuss, an example  of
one being the popular 'ankh' (a cross with an oval at the top) being a
triliteral of 'A'+'n'+'H'. search google for 'hieroglyphs' and you'll  probably find
about a million sights with more valuable info.  Some words I  remember:

to (prep):    n (en)
stop:          ab  (ab)
walk:          swtwt  (sootoot)
many:        ASa (asha - the first 'a'  being more gutteral)
woman:      Hmt (hemt - the 'h' being like in  'aHa!')
breathe:     nSp (neshp)
darkness:   kkwy (kekooee)

btw, Tutankhamen's name is properly transcribed: /twtanH imnn/ ['twtankh'
being his name / 'imnn' being his title (it means 'Lord' approx.)] pronounced
Tutankh Im?n?n (the question mark being an unkown vowel)

Again, there are sites and books with a much larger vocabulary and more
information which i highly recommend.

-Dan