From: "andre dollinger" To: "'Ancient Egyptian Language List'" Subject: RE: AEL AE animal names and glyphs Date: Mon, 12 May 2008 20:30:36 +0300 > Is there somewhere - some website - wherein I might find AE names/glyhs > for critters like the mongoose, sparrow, and such? Try the Thesaurus Linguae Aegyptiae website at http://aaew2.bbaw.de/tla/index.html Kind regards Andre Dollinger ============================================================================== From: Carl Edlund Anderson Subject: Re: AEL Breaking down syllables in ancient Egyptian words Date: Mon, 12 May 2008 15:57:09 -0500 To: Ancient Egyptian Language List On 04 May 2008, at 10:15 , A.K. Eyma wrote: > So the word was something like this: > *y=FA:rvp (OK) > *3=FA:r@p (NK) > =E9:rp (Coptic) > [OK: *y=FA:rap, *y=FA:rip, or *y=FA:rup] I have Loprieno, but haven't fully digested it yet (if I ever can!). Is there any particular reason that the OK /v/ might not have itself been /@/ instead of /a/, /i/, or /u/? Cheers, Carl -- Carl Edlund Anderson http://www.carlaz.com/ ============================================================================== Date: Tue, 13 May 2008 14:10:38 -0000 (GMT) Subject: Re: AEL Breaking down syllables in ancient Egyptian words From: msore@albawaba.com To: "Ancient Egyptian Language List" In making judgments about any kind of reconstruction (from syllables or semantics)it is necessary to lay out an empirical landscape of evidence. All the contributory languages that are known have to be considered and given their due weight. In every reconstruction project, that weighting is ongoing, as new texts, new languages, and new relationships are studied. In this discussion, as in most linguistic discussions involving Egyptian, Coptic seems to be the only language in the landscape of comparisons. True of the discussion in Loprieno. Can someone indicate where these questions are discussed in the literature? Surely other languages, other relationships, other grammars have weight other than Coptic, right? Thanks. Matthew ============================================================================== From: Carl Edlund Anderson Subject: Re: AEL Breaking down syllables in ancient Egyptian words Date: Tue, 13 May 2008 13:34:31 -0500 To: Ancient Egyptian Language List On 13 May 2008, at 09:10 , msore@albawaba.com wrote: > Can someone indicate where these questions are discussed in the > literature? Surely other languages, other relationships, other > grammars > have weight other than Coptic, right? Well, there are comparisons to be made with potential cognates in other Afro-asiatic languages (Berber and Semitic and the like). Certainly Loprieno discusses such issues extensively at various points -- he's not just working from Coptic. But this is well outside my area of expertise! :) Cheers, Carl -- Carl Edlund Anderson http://www.carlaz.com/ ============================================================================== Date: Wed, 14 May 2008 17:35:19 +0200 From: Michael Hahn To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: AEL Breaking down syllables in ancient Egyptian words msore@albawaba.com wrote: > Surely other languages, other relationships, other grammars > have weight other than Coptic, right? > Well, Coptic is not the only language that is employed for the reconstruction of ancient Egyptian vowels, attestations of Egyptian proper names and words in Akkadian and Greek are also quite important. Of the two most recent works on comparative Afroasiatic vocabulary and phonology (C. Ehret, Reconstruction Proto-Afroasiatic, 1995; V. Orel, O. Stolbova, Hamito-Semitic Etymological Dictionary, 1995) only Ehret's book tries to compare Egyptian vowels with that of other subbranches of Afro-Asiatic. I personally did some comparative work in this field, but my results have not yet been published. Virtually nothing has been done in the comparison of the Egyptian accent system with other languages. Regards Michael Hahn ============================================================================== From: "Aurelio LaRotta" To: "'Ancient Egyptian Language List'" Subject: RE: AEL Breaking down syllables in ancient Egyptian words Date: Thu, 15 May 2008 02:14:07 -0400 Hi Carl, As far as I know, no definitive argument has been made yet that shows that /@/ would NOT be an option for /v/ in Middle Egyptian. Coptic and Greek set in much too late to answer this question for the MK or even the times of Amenophis III (Nibmuaria for his friends ... ;-)); hence Akkadian transcriptions are our primary source. Unfortunately, Akkadian does not have a grapheme for /@/. Egyptian unstressed vowels typically show up as /a/, /i/ and /u/, although there is the occasional /e/. I know little about Akkadian, but thinking about it in general terms, one could imagine that a lot of vowel variation in the transcription would indicate a /@/ in the original Egyptian. Peust makes just this point about final vowels (p. 259): "In the representation of such final vowels in cuneiform, a fluctuation of all available vowel graphemes a, u, i and e can be found. In addition to the example Hr just cited, consider the noun pD.tj "bowman" (not preserved in Coptic), for which transcriptions pi-ta-tu, pi-ta-ti, and pi-ta-tu4 are found within a single text, to be accompanied by writings such as pi-ta-ta and pi-ta-te in other texts (Zeidler 1995:199 and 206). This probably indicates a reduced vowel like [@] ..." Note, however, that this refers specifically to final vowels - I do not have statistics for unstressed vowels in non-final positions. It may only prove that the /@/ was not inherently alien to the Egyptian tongue of the NK :-) Hebrew/Aramaic would be a great source if properly dateable texts with vowel indication were available from the time. Unfortunately, however, all VOCALIZED examples of Hebrew stem - to my knowledge - from a much later date, and are by that time too far removed to be of much help. The question of a terminus ante quem non for the evolution of /@/ (assuming it was not present before the OK) remains thus open, IMHO. Best regards, Aurelio La Rotta ============================================================================== Date: Wed, 14 May 2008 18:28:54 +0100 From: "D.N.Tranter" To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: AEL Breaking down syllables in ancient Egyptian words The reconstruction of Egyptian vowels is a little like the reconstruction of a hypothetical ancestor language such as Proto-Indo-European or Proto-Semitic. The big difference is that, unlike pIE or pS, Egyptian is not hypothetical; however, because of its writing system, its vowels are pretty much hypothetical. To reconstruct a language combines various clues. (1.) 'Internal reconstruction' reconstructs backwards from patterns in a later extant language. (2.) 'Comparative' evidence looks at related languages, and uses the differences in daughter languages and the principle that sound change is regular to reconstruct the mother language. (3.) Transcriptions (especially in a phonetic script) in another language of names or the occasional word can be useful. (2.) is the most useful method, simply because of the weight of evidence. That's the basis of the reconstruction of 'proto-Indo-European' as the languages of most of Europe, Iran and the northern Subcontinent. The problem with Egyptian is that it has only one descendant language, Coptic. And as for languages that are sister languages of Egyptian, the other AfroAsiatic languages (Semitic, Chadic, Hamitic etc.) provide some very useful information but in the end they are not close relatives to Egyptian and the evidence they provide has limits. (3.), transcription in Babylonian etc., provides some information, but it is very limited in quantity. And because we're talking about the passage of time and a range of different periods, some such evidence is very difficult or even barely worth using - the late versions of names in Greek is a case in point. Essentially, that leaves us with (1.), which is why Coptic dominates the evidence, although authors such as Preust and Loprieno do use other evidence where it's available and reliable. NT ============================================================================== Date: Thu, 15 May 2008 07:48:52 -0500 From: Robert Myers To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: AEL Breaking down syllables in ancient Egyptian words Hi; When it comes to vowels, we may wish to observe that in the same general culture, a tribal difference can support a huge variance. Just listen to the dearth of the second component in many dipthongs in the speech of, say, Reba McIntyre as compared with Dan Rather. And, these two individuals are exposed to a huge literary and media overlap, every day. I remember a friend in college who had been perhaps the most noted public speaker in high school, with almost flawless enunciation before a literate audience. Yet, when he was in physical proximity to his parents, his speech slurred to a drawl that was almost unintelligible to me. An ethnic identity within a nation can create diction permutations that border on perversity, and certainly throw off any "regular" change. It almost seems that vowel change can make an arbitrary metamorphosis if that variance underscores the identity of a faction that uses dialect as a subcultural ward. ============================================================================== Date: Thu, 15 May 2008 20:02:17 -0700 (PDT) From: Weben Banu Subject: Re: AEL Breaking down syllables in ancient Egyptian words To: Ancient Egyptian Language List I am having difficulty locating Dr.(?) Preust's books, but am very interested in reading his theories- can anyone give me a title to search? Many thanks, Katherine ============================================================================== From: "Aurelio LaRotta" To: "'Ancient Egyptian Language List'" Subject: RE: AEL Resources on AE phonology? Date: Sat, 17 May 2008 04:04:33 -0400 Hi Carl, You can find Peust's book at the website below (under Egyptology): http://www.peust-und-gutschmidt.de/ The price is given as EUR 38 (in other words, that $200 used book quote on Amazon looks like quite a bit of a rip-off). It is a very thorough work giving plenty of evidence for each reconstruction. Out of its ~300 pages, about 70 (!) are dedicated to vocalization (which is great, if you're into vocalization, like me :-) ). In terms of accessibility: I'd say it's on about the same level as Loprieno - if you like phonology, there shouldn't be any problems. In terms of other works: Another classic is Osing's Nominalbildung der Aegyptischen Sprache, which I don't own myself, so unfortunately I cannot comment. More for the fun of it, but I liked it, so maybe somebody else will :-) : Peust has also written a New Kingdom Egyptian phrasebook for a German publisher specializing in language books for travelers (!) All examples (and plenty of grammar) are given in hieroglyphics, translation and reconstructed pronunciation. Example: "Eju'k ta'ne" - "coming-you where?" - "Where are you from"; "Eju'j m pe ta n ku'me" - "come-I from the land of Egypt" - "I come from Egypt" - well, you get the picture (note: the translations in the book are in German, not in English). The whole thing is certainly tongue-in-cheek but, nonetheless, also very educational. If you don't mind the German, you can find it for ~ 8 EUR at http://www.amazon.de/Kauderwelsch-Hieroglyphisch-Wort-f%C3%BCr/dp/3894163178 Nafe senebk/Best regards, Aurelio Aurelio La Rotta ============================================================================== From: "Aurelio LaRotta" To: "'Ancient Egyptian Language List'" Subject: RE: AEL Breaking down syllables in ancient Egyptian words Date: Sat, 17 May 2008 03:16:26 -0400 Hi Katherine, You'll find them on the website below (German & English), under Egyptology http://www.peust-und-gutschmidt.de/ I ordered the 'Phonology' a couple of years ago. It's certainly a book worth having :-) Best regards, Aurelio Aurelio La Rotta ============================================================================== Date: Sat, 17 May 2008 07:45:19 -0700 (PDT) From: Weben Banu Subject: RE: AEL Resources on AE phonology? To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Wonderful! Thank you! I should get the traveler's guide, too- in case I accidently stumble into a time loop next time I visit the museum! ;) ~Katherine ============================================================================== Date: Sun, 18 May 2008 19:52:56 -0500 From: Robert Myers To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: AEL Resources on AE phonology? Hi; I assume that everyone on this list has seen it, but, just in case, there is an excursus in Gardiner's grammar about the vocalization of Egyptian, that gives a brief but valuable introduction. I am not sure how much his interpretation has been displaced by modern theories, however. Bob ==============================================================================