Date: Mon, 19 May 1997 08:01:11 +0100 To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk From: Marc Line Subject: AEL Westcar - Part 1 - Line 16 - mni Dr Hoch has asked about the form of mni in line 16 of part 1 of the Westcar exercise. The below is what I think is going on there. Line 16 begins: xr m-xt, nA-n aHa.w mni r mry.t I think this is some kind of verbal statement of fact construction. "xr m-xt" is a non-enclitic sentence particle which, in this case, probably has a meaning along the lines of "Now later" "nA-n" can be a plural demonstrative meaning "these" or often, particularly in later texts, can be read as the definite article "the" "aHa.w" is the plural noun meaning "ships" "mni" is the 3rd weak verb meaning "to moor" (though Gardiner suggests that it is a 4th weak verb "m(i)ni" "r mry.t" is a prepositional phrase composed of the preposition "r" meaning "at" and the noun "mry.t" meaning "shore/bank" So, word for word we get: xr m-xt, nA-n aHa.w mni r mry.t Now later these/the ships moor at the shore/bank So what is the verb form of mni? The word order gives the clue. The normal order in Egyptian is VERB => SUBJECT => OBJECT. Here, in the terms which we would apply to English we have SUBJECT => VERB => OBJECT, or to borrow Dr Hoch's more correct and rather appealing terminology, TOPIC => COMMENT. The Topic is "these/the ships" and the Comment is "moor at shore/bank." Topic before Comment is an indication of the Stative form, Gardiner's "Old Perfective or Pseudo-Participle". So, mni is here used in the Stative form and has a meaning which focusses on the end-state of the action "to moor", i.e it has the meaning "in the state of having been moored". The translation of the phrase, then, should probably be: Now later, (when) the ships had been moored at the bank... Regards Marc Line ============================================================================== Date: Tue, 20 May 1997 21:21:19 -0400 From: James_Hoch@mail.campuslife.utoronto.ca (James Hoch) Subject: AEL Westcar, L. 16 mni(w) To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Marc was absolutely correct about the importance of word order here (nA n aHaw mni(w)...), with the topic coming first (the nominal thing that the speaker is talking about) before the verbal form (acting as comment--i.e. the point that the speaker makes about the topic). There is one clarification, however. This is not really a verbal statement of fact (in that case, the word order would have been VERB SUBJECT, as Marc pointed out). (Well, there can be a case of TOPIC [VERB +SUBJECT], in which the group [VERB + SUBJECT] functions as the Comment, but that is a variation, and the subject is required. The stative (also called "old perfective," and "pseudo-participle") fits the category of "adverb," and thus this is the same pattern as iw.f m pr "He" (is) "in the house," in which the prepositional phrase m pr "in the house" serves as (adverbial) comment. This may seem strange to some at this point, but make a mental note of this, and in the course of reading Westcar, it will become quite clear that stative verb forms belong to the category identified as "adverbial." Second point: the basic VERB SUBJECT is a predicate-subject relationship--and in Egyptian does not differ TOO drastically from that found in English, French, German, etc. The relationship between nominal element and a following stative form is not the same. The stative form used varies depending on the number and gender of the noun that comes before it. In other words, the relation is more that of antecedent modifier. I hope that this does not muddy the waters, because Marc's basic points were correct and his approach precisely the type that one needs to really read Egyptian (as opposed to playing around with it--which can be entertaining, but not very productive). James Hoch -- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- CampusLife - University of Toronto http://www.campuslife.utoronto.ca ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- ============================================================================== Date: Wed, 21 May 1997 17:28:35 -0700 From: Stephen Fryer To: Ancient Egyptian Language List , Dave Seifert Subject: Re: AEL ?Westcar Mark Wilson wrote: > The Westcar text and the archives are available on the world wide > web. Simply point your web browser at: Unfortunately, Mark's finger slipped when typing that URL. The correct one is: http://www.rostau.demon.co.uk/AEgyptian-L/index.html> > The address is case sensitive! > > You don't need any special software to view the text (apart from > your web browser, of course). We are sort of making an assumption here that Dave has a graphical web browser - there are after all people using text-based browsers still. We should maybe check this possible problem out and see hwat we can do for any such people. -- Stephen Fryer Lund Computer Services ************************************************** The more answers I find, the more questions I have ************************************************** ============================================================================== Date: Thu, 22 May 1997 10:06:09 +0200 From: Marc DIEBOLD To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: AEL Egyptian Not For Fun? My job: director of computing services My employer: department of economics. (so far nothing to do with egypt) One of my private hobbies: egyptian philology I agree with Saida's opinion. I learned egyptian by myself, without any help, and with Gardiner's grammar and Faulkner + Budge's unexpensive dictionnaries. It's undoubtful that my pleasure was to be able to translate texts from hieroglyphics to french. I worked mainly on texts xeroxed from 1900's editions of Erman, Recueil des Travaux, and Zeitschrift fur Aegypische Sprache. The translations of these texts contained many errors, when I compared the translations made by Erman and others with modern translations. So why should'nt I allow myself to commit errors? I have only 5 years of practice, and committing errors does not diminish the pleasure of studying hieroglyphics! Eg. is an entertainment for me, and I "play around" with great satisfactions. And I could see that some Eg. scribes didn't care much of grammar too!!! I have translated Westcar years ago, and I am glad to see that many of you are sharing their effort on this AEL list. Yes, Eg. philology can be nothing other than an entertaining and even satisfying pastime to all of us who don't earn their money in this domain. I speak french, english, german, and learned by myself italian, spanish, egyptian simply because I enjoyed it. So thanks Saida for your opinion. Many of us will agree with you. Thanks also for the existence of the AOL, wich is an important link for isolated persons like me. -- Amicales salutations / kind regards / mit freundlichen Gruessen, Marc. /////// ( o o ) ----oOOo-----U-----oOOo----------------------------------- Marc DIEBOLD Universit. Louis Pasteur Strasbourg France 4 rue Blaise Pascal 67070 STRASBOURG FRANCE Internl: Phone: (33)3.88.416.149 Fax: (33)3.88.416.060 France : Tel: 03.88.416.149 Fax: 03.88.416.060 mailto:diebold@cournot.u-strasbg.fr Francais: http://cournot.u-strasbg.fr/diebold/homepage.htm English : http://cournot.u-strasbg.fr/diebold/us.htm ---------------------------------------------------------- ============================================================================== From: "Dave Seifert" To: Subject: AEL ?Westcar Date: Thu, 22 May 1997 07:48:24 -0500 Stephen Fryer, Thanks for the info. What I really needed was just the web-site. My apologies to Mark Wilson for wrongly attributing the ownership of the web-site to Dr. Hoch. I am curious about why I was unable to open the large file on the cover page of the site. I believe it was named "EX1-SM.GIF". It took several minutes to down load and now, when I open the web-site, it no longer appears. Well, I seem to have everything I was looking for so I am happy. THANKS! David Seifert ============================================================================== Date: Thu, 22 May 1997 17:32:47 +0100 To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk From: Rachel Juckes Subject: AEL Egyptian Not for Fun? I just thought that I'd add another dimension to this subject. I'm learning hieroglyphics at University and although I have quite a lot of difficulty with languages (especially dead ones!) I *really* am enjoying it. It's great to be able to tell my mum what bits say. Admittedly, I can only really read the first few lines of the odd stela, but I'm impressed all the same. Give me another few years and I might even manage to make the odd academic viewpoint, but for now, I'm just some student who's only been at it for eight months and who has had a brilliant lecturer doubtless to whom I owe all my AEL knowledge. And it's FUN!!! Rachel Juckes. ============================================================================== Date: Thu, 22 May 1997 15:18:14 -0500 From: Saida To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: AEL Egyptian Not For Fun? Stephen Fryer wrote: > > The tendency is to apply one's built-in grammar (which was learned when > we first learned to speak) to any language, whether you are conscious of > doing so or not. Unfortunately, not all languages come very close to > the way European languages are built. Egyptian actually isn't all that > different, but some other languages are quite a bit different, Japanese > being somewhat different, and Slaimmon (Coast Salish family) is VERY > different. > > It is definitely possible to have fun and still pay attention to > grammar. I don't think James meant to imply otherwise. Nor do I, but my point was really this: None of us can successfully study languages, especially independently, unless we have that built-in sense of grammar of which you speak. However, not all of us can identify the parts of speech by name so that we can rattle them off when we post our translation on the AEL! Those who can--great--but the rest of us, who use the approach of simply translating the text without really being able to describe in too much detail how we arrived at the translation, are not necessarily doing ill justice to the text, either. Maybe we just have a knack or, as you and others say, this is our idea of fun. As I told someone else recently, a few lines of pWestcar is all the "high" we need! One of the great things about this list is finding out that there are people all over who, instead of finding it strange that someone should try to learn a dead language on ones own, are doing the very same thing. Marianne Luban ============================================================================== Date: Thu, 22 May 1997 22:39:22 -0400 From: James_Hoch@mail.campuslife.utoronto.ca (James Hoch) Subject: AEL Re: Egyptian not fun? To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk Since my off-the cuff remarks seem to have sparked a flurry of posts, perhaps I should explain my views a bit. First, Stephen has hit the nail on the head about having fun while not ignoring the grammar--in fact, my students usually find that exploring grammar ends up being a great deal of fun. Indeed, they need to learn a few terms to help describe what they are talking about, but then so do coin collectors and antique phonograph freaks (like me)... (Now, you must also bear in mind that the grammatical terms used by Egyptologists do not always correspond with the terms used in dealing with other languages.) Now down to the heart of my remarks--learning Egyptian is qualitatively somewhat different from learning modern languages or well constructed dead languages. The lack of vowels in the writing system, and not being able to reconstruct the vowels--for the most part--is a serious impediment to learning Egyptian. From my personal experience, I picked up French and a bit of German as an older child (at home and in the neighbourhood). Latin I studied more formally, but used modern language learning techniques. When I began studying Egyptian, however, I found that this was not quite as easy. Egyptian has, to its advantage, a very rigid sentence structure. Often it is a very simple structure, but it is almost exclusively this structure that allows one to identify a form. In other words, one cannot look at a line of Egyptian text and spot the forms--rather one has to figure out the structure (i.e. the relationship between the words and how they function, individually and as units). Only then can one say, "aha! this word is from a verbal stem, but here it must be a noun since it occurs in a position in which ONLY a noun could occur.... Now, what are the nominal forms of verbal roots? Oh yes, A, B, C, and D (because D functions as an adjective--which can serve as a noun, too)." In most languages that one might learn, the forms tend to be obviously differentiated, so *THAT* information is crucial (e.g. "singer" vs. "song"). In Egyptian, however, the forms are mostly undifferentiated (in the writing, but they WERE differentiated in the spoken language--or the language as read). This is why the grammar is crucial in Egyptian. Now, to close on an encouraging note (I hope): Egyptian grammar is actually very simple--so simple, in fact, that we expect a university student to learn virtually ALL the grammar in a single year. (Try doing that with French or German or English!) Obviously, self-learners have the leisure to take things at their own pace, and that has its advantages, too. In the end, my point is that you do not have to be a grammar whiz, nor do you need to be an "expert" to read Egyptian--but acquiring a simple grounding in some of the basic grammar will add immensely to the pleasure of reading--AND will actually let one read more quickly and with a measure of confidence. This level of competence can be attained by self-learners as well as those studying in a more formal setting. This obviously requires some effort, but trust me, it is well worth the effort in the end. (I eventually intend to produce a workbook that would be particularly useful to self-learners.) My comments were not intended as a caveat or a warning, nor as a criticism, but rather as an invitation. Best wishes, James Hoch -- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- CampusLife - University of Toronto http://www.campuslife.utoronto.ca ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- ============================================================================== Date: Fri, 23 May 1997 09:37:20 +0100 To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.demon.co.uk From: Marc Line Subject: Re: AEL ?Westcar Patrick C. Ryan typed: >Dear AEListers: > >Can someone give me simple instructions on how to get these hieroglyphic >documents to fit on an 8.5x11, or to reduce them to normal page/screen >width? Hello Pat The method which seems to work the best for me involves the use of a piece of shareware called Paintshop Pro. It's available gratis from WWW (URL via a search) sites or from incentive CDs on magazine covers. It allows for the resizing of graphics files prior to printing. The only thing you have to watch out for is that in the process of reduction, a bitmap image which has narrow line widths might lose the odd line or two. The "p" box regularly becomes 3 sided, for example. After printing, it's a good idea to check the hard-copy with the screen image in order to pencil in the losses. HTH Regards Marc ============================================================================== From: "Dave Seifert" To: Subject: AEL AEL-WEBSITE TO INSCRIBE Date: Fri, 23 May 1997 07:21:00 -0500 To whomever can help, Can inscriptions on the AEL-website be downloaded directly into InScribe? Are they scanned onto the website or are they editable documents which I can only copy as a picture? Patrick Ryan, I have only been able to save these inscriptions by right clicking my mouse on them and copying them as a picture file. If someone else has a better way I'm all ears (or should I say "eyes"). Thanks dseifert ============================================================================== Date: Fri, 23 May 1997 22:39:21 -0500 From: Saida To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: AEL The Problem of "x" (long)y The sign Gardiner Aa1, sometimes called the "sieve" or the "placenta" is transliterated as "x" (I think the lower case x, but I may be wrong). This seems to indicate some sort of hard "k" sound like the Greek X as in "Christos". That is misleading. Budge has this glyph vocalized as a gutteral "h" sound and Loprieno still seems to agree. He has it sounding as in the German "Buch" (book). This could be wrong or, oddly enough, it could be right and wrong at the same time! Among the Egyptian signs, there seem be an awful lot of "aitches" as Eliza Dolittle would call them. One seems to be what we deem an "ordinary h" and the rest we guess to have some sort of vocalizations foreign to English but present in German and the Semitic languages. Sometimes, though, I think we tend to lump Egyptian in with Semitic too much. That is probably why it has been difficult for philologists to imagine that /x/ may very well have had a vocalization like either the "ch" in the English "child". In my dictionary, several glyphs are seen as alternating with Aa1, notably M12, which Gardiner calls "leaf, stalk and rhizome of lotus". However, this may be not strictly true. In Coptic, Aa1 survives nearly always as "sh", whereas M12 survives as an "h" sound. But M12 is not a problem. It seems to have been consistently an "h" of whatever sort throughout the evolution of Egyptian. Aa1 is another story. Surely it did not wind up "sh" in Coptic for no reason! Yet there was also no reason for Aa1 to be strictly /S/ because there are a couple of other glyphs that take care of that sound. "ch" as in "child" seems reasonable to me. If you look at /x/ that way, straight off the dictionary tells a rather startling tale: xyy (pronounced "chai")--child xt (pronounced poss. "chet")--chattles, belongings, possessions Sometimes Aa1 and M12 follow in that order to make a word, in one case, that would have had to have been vocalized something like "ch'ha'aoo-t", which is to say a pair of sandals--a pair of shoes! The surviving Coptic word sounds like "shoe" as well. "xpr" is one of the Egyptian words of many meanings. Yet it is entirely possible that it was pronounced "chepU" with the accent on the second syllable. The Hittites spoke in their document of a king, Nibhururia, which was probably Nbxprwr' or Tutankhamun. Of the "xprw", all the Hittites seemed to have heard was "huru". A gutteral "h" at the beginning of "xprw" would have been more difficult to lose or slur than a "ch" as in "child" and "xprw" might have tripped off the Egyptian tongue as no more than "'puru". The Egyptian number 8 "xmn", had it been pronounced "chemen" would have corresponded better to the Hebrew 8 "sh'monah", yet, oddly, /x/ is sometimes used to write the Egyptian equivalents of other Hebrew words that begin with "chet", a gutteral "h". This latter phenomenon is seen in Semitic place names. The /x/ or Aa1 is also used to begin the spellings of place names in the Delta or Lower Egypt, some of which still survive in Coptic as having an "h" or a "k" sound. However, in Upper Egypt, when /x/ is used to begin a place name, the Coptic survivor beings with either a "sh" or an "h" sound or is written both ways simultaneously! An example of this is "xm" or "Khem" the old Panopolis. In Coptic it is Khmim, Khmin and Shmin. Could it be that in Upper Egypt there was an accent that vocalized /x/ as "ch" (close to "sh") and that, in the Semitic-influenced Lower Egypt it was pronounced as a gutteral because Semitic doesn't have a sound like "ch" as in child? If so, the Upper Egyptian accent prevailed as evidenced by Coptic. It just seems too easy to say /x/ became /S/ in Coptic--but there has to be a reason, in my opinion. Marianne Luban ============================================================================== Date: Fri, 23 May 1997 16:57:30 +0000 From: "Patrick C. Ryan" To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: AEL ?Westcar Marc Line wrote: > > Patrick C. Ryan typed: > > >Dear AEListers: > > > >Can someone give me simple instructions on how to get these hieroglyphic > >documents to fit on an 8.5x11, or to reduce them to normal page/screen > >width? > > Hello Pat > > The method which seems to work the best for me involves the use of a > piece of shareware called Paintshop Pro. It's available gratis from WWW > (URL via a search) sites or from incentive CDs on magazine covers. It > allows for the resizing of graphics files prior to printing. The only > thing you have to watch out for is that in the process of reduction, a > bitmap image which has narrow line widths might lose the odd line or > two. The "p" box regularly becomes 3 sided, for example. After > printing, it's a good idea to check the hard-copy with the screen image > in order to pencil in the losses. > > HTH > > Regards > > Marc Dear Marc: Thank you very much for the expert information. Pat -- PATRICK C. RYAN (501) 227-9947; FAX/DATA (501)312-9947 9115 W. 34th St. * Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 * USA WEBPAGE: ************************************** 'Veit ek, at ek hekk, vindga meidhi, naetr allar niu, geiri undadhr... a theim meidhi er mangi veit hvers hann af rotum renn.' * (Havamal 138) ************************************** ============================================================================== Date: Fri, 23 May 1997 17:28:38 -0700 From: Stephen Fryer To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: AEL AEL-WEBSITE TO INSCRIBE Dave Seifert wrote: > > To whomever can help, > Can inscriptions on the AEL-website be downloaded directly into > InScribe? Are they scanned onto the website or are they editable documents > which I can only copy as a picture? > Patrick Ryan, I have only been able to save these inscriptions by > right clicking my mouse on them and copying them as a picture file. If > someone else has a better way I'm all ears (or should I say "eyes"). > The texts on the AEL web site are all scanned images, including Westcar, Hatshepsut, and Geoff's lessons. There was some attempt made to put them together in a Manuel de Codage compliant editable format, bet too many incompatibilities surfaced (between WinGlyph and MacScribe - we didn't check out InScribe at all). So yes the only way to download them at the moment is what you have already done. -- Stephen Fryer Lund Computer Services ************************************************** The more answers I find, the more questions I have ************************************************** ==============================================================================