From: Rhio Barnhart To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: AEL Egyptian grammar Date: Mon, 14 Sep 2009 14:29:21 -0700 As a beginner in studying the language, I must agree with Ms. Luban. Just beginning the fourth lesson in the Hoch text with the Glyphstudy group, I find I must continually review the previous lessons. I have surveyed all the major grammars and it seems that there is a rather fragmentary presentation made necessary by the language itself. Daily review is needed to cement important points in memory. Hoch presents material in more manageable bites than some, I think. To me this is not a negative, however, as it is fascinating, challenging and one could easily become obsessed, "Le canard des hi=E9roglyphes est, me dit-il, une b=EAte singuli=E8rement venimeuse. D=E8s qu'il vous a mordu, on en a pour la vie". Il en parlait d'apr=E8s son exp=E9rience propre : le canard des hi=E9roglyphes l'avait mordu si durement qu'il ne gu=E9rit jamais de la morsure. Ce qui l'avait frapp=E9 chez la plupart des savants qui s'effor=E7aient de continuer l'=9Cuvre de Champollion, c'=E9tait surtout l'absence de l'esprit critique. Egyptologist, Emmanuel de Rouge (1811-72) quoted in "Notice biographique du Vicomte Emmanuel de Rouge" by Gaston Maspero Once I finish Hoch, I will start Allen. If I live another ten years, maybe I'll have a basic understanding! Cheers, RHB ============================================================================== Date: Wed, 16 Sep 2009 01:20:17 -0500 From: Robert Myers To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: AEL How To Learn Middle Egyptian--If You Really Want To Hi; As one who has been trying to tackle Middle Egyptian off and on by myself for 35 years, I find this exceptionally clear, astute, and helpful. I understand that this might sound a bit eccentric, but I think one day it would make a nice piece to translate into Egyptian. The character of the explanation is gutsy, cogent, and challenging; like = a lot of Egyptian literature. Sincerely, Bob ============================================================================== Date: Wed, 16 Sep 2009 10:46:33 +0100 From: Paul Tatum To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: AEL How To Learn Middle Egyptian--If You Really Want To Marianne Luban wrote: > > In a message dated 10/09/2009 09:09:09 GMT Daylight Time, > djedra.nat@googlemail.com writes: > >> Sorry - I think I missed the first bit of this thread re the criticism. >> Gardiner is driving me up the wall. Would you recommend Loprieno to help >> me improve my grasp of grammar. > > No. Gardiner, in his grammar, uses actual texts for examples, to which the authors > of newer grammars object because these might contain something unknown to the student > at his level. Well...in the end, there is nothing to translate but those actual texts > and maybe there is not much point in shielding the student from anything they might contain. > Here is a method that really works: Go through a grammar of your choice to the end, do the > exercises. Then choose a Middle Egyptian text and make sure it is one that really interests > you. The minute you look at it, you wll see just how much you didn't learn from that grammar-- > whichever one you used. There isn't a one that's going to make the process easier. Also, make > certain you have a translation of the same text in a language that you know. Read that and then > put it away. But now you will have a good idea of what the text is all about and that will > help you. It's not cheating. You are engaging in a very difficult task and anything that > assists is just money in the knowledge bank. > > Transliterate the hieroglyphs as best you can. Refer to the translation again and probably that > will help you to alter some errors in the transliteration. Put the translation away again and > try to translate the text yourself, using both your transliteration and the original glyphs. > You may have to refer to your dictionary, glossary, anything you can umpteen times. It doesn't > matter because there's no better way. Look at the expert translation again and compare it to your > own effort. Make whatever changes are necessary to your own translation--unless you think you're > expert enough to disagree--and probably you won't. Put that expert translation away yet again and > read those glyphs. They will make a lot more sense to you by this time and don't pick up that expert > translation again unless you really get stuck. Better still, look up those words the meanings of > which you've already forgotten. The more of the work you do yourself, the better, laborious though > it will be. Repeat this as many times as necessary until you can read that text from beginning to > end without having to consult anything even once. When you know what it says, you will have a > wonderful feeling of accomplishment. How much did you actually learn? You won't find that out until > you tackle the next text. Keep on using this method and, without being a prophet, I can guarantee > you will, before the next century, not even want to look at an expert translation before you begin > a new text. You will only do that after you've challenged yourself to get it right. That is--unless > you give up on the whole endeavor. That's one of only two things that can happen. The alternative > is that you will become hooked on Egyptian and want to keep on learning. > > Marianne Luban > http://thetimetravelerreststop.blogspot.com/ > I would agree with this. Loprieno is not a good book to learn from, It'll make you run away in horror. The books I have learnt from and how I feel about are: Gardiner: good but old-fashioned - The first ten chapters are still useful as an introduction to the elements of the language, but most of the rest has been superseded. B. Watterson, More About Egyptian Hieroglyphs - this was my main book.If Egyptian grammars were meals, this would be a good solid work-a-day dinner. Conservative grammar but recognizes second tenses. Collier and Manley - I really liked this book, nice and up to date, fascinating excursi, but there's not enough of it - where's the main course? I've had a look at Allen on Google Books, and I will definitely be getting it in the near future, it looks like a fuller complement to Collier and Manley. Paul Tatum. ============================================================================== From: "Jim Ashton" To: "Ancient Egyptian Language List" Subject: RE: AEL How To Learn Middle Egyptian--If You Really Want To Date: Wed, 16 Sep 2009 14:27:34 +0200 I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the thing which I found most difficult:- learning the hieroglyphs. There is nothing more irritating than trying to transliterate a text which contains a wierd glyph which does not appear in the section you are learning, either in Gardiner (my favorite) or any other book. When I was learning middle Egyptian at Swansea, I solved this by making flash cards and trying to learn 10 glyphs per day. I usually forgot 7 of them but they stuck in the following days. I began with Gardiner's examples, then moved to his list of glyphs, still with 10 a day (harder!) Consider learning the glyphs to be at least as important as the grammar and you will have less frustration. A problem I found with all the books is that they assume that you are already a linguist! I was 62 when I began to learn and had forgotten most of my English grammar, so much of the A.E. grammar meant little to me. Let's have a book which assumes that you have never heard of the subjunctive! Regards to all Jim Ashton. ============================================================================== From: "Marianne Luban" Date: Wed, 16 Sep 2009 15:21:01 GMT To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.org.uk Subject: Re: AEL How To Learn Middle Egyptian--If You Really Want To ---------- Original Message ---------- From: Paul Tatum To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: AEL How To Learn Middle Egyptian--If You Really Want To Date: Wed, 16 Sep 2009 10:46:33 +0100 >I would agree with this. Loprieno is not a good book to learn from, >It'll make you run away in horror. It's not as bad as all that! :-) The book has a linguistic slant and I must say I like it. Right away, in the preface, Loprieno states that the work is not a "grammar of ancient Egyptian nor a handbook for the study of hieroglyphs". The author says he wants to "address the interdisciplinary interests of linguists and Egyptologists". I would not recommend this book for beginners, of course, but it contains a lot of interesting information and does, despite its initial caveat, address numerous grammar issues. It's really for linguists or those who have already been hooked on Egyptian for some time. Another book that is a great favorite with me is Hoch's "Semitic Words in Egyptian Texts of the New Kingdom and Third Intermediate Period". If you are interested in learning about "group writing" or the syllabic orthography, this is the work for you. Marianne Luban ============================================================================== From: "Anne Morrison" To: "'Ancient Egyptian Language List'" Subject: RE: AEL How To Learn Middle Egyptian--If You Really Want To Date: Thu, 17 Sep 2009 10:24:31 +0930 Hi, I would also like to endorse Marianne's suggestions for learning Middle Egyptian, based on my experiences. I am a member of a local "hieroglyph study group" - a small group of non-specialists that has been meeting once a month for 19 years. We essentially use a very similar method as recommended by Marianne. First, we select an interesting text, one where we have access to an "expert" translation for comparative purposes. Then we do our best to transliterate and translate the text on our own (if we have the time in between meetings) or in the group. Then we check against the expert translation to see where they (oops, we) went wrong. If you are really keen, once a month is nowhere near enough. As Marianne correctly points out, as with any language, it is much better to practice often - every day if you can! But once a month is better than nothing, and by meeting as a group we can swap ideas, discuss, debate, agonise over "grammar", and generally have a good time. How much Egyptian have we learnt? Not nearly as much as we would have hoped for 19 years ago! But on the other hand, our learning has taken off in unexpected directions. We started a parallel "Coptic study group" and two members have now completed formal study in Coptic. Another member tackled Arabic. One of us, frustrated by the struggle with Egyptian grammar, ended up completing a higher degree in linguistics. We have each travelled to Egypt, and attended interstate Egyptology conferences. These activities may not have happened if we had each been learning in isolation. So even if we will never be fluent in Middle Egyptian, our learning is certainly not a waste of time - at least, that's how I look at it. Regards to all, Anne Anne Morrison School of Education University of South Australia ============================================================================== Date: Wed, 16 Sep 2009 09:41:01 -0400 (EDT) From: Diane J Donaldson To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: AEL How To Learn Middle Egyptian--If You Really Want To I agree. Really, this is the best way to learn ANY language -- no matter how many times you hear that "you can learn a language naturally, without any effort!" I have never found that to be true, unless you're still under 5, and even then you have to put a lot of time into it. But if you put in the effort, the rewards are worth it. Thank you Marianne. I have appreciated your posts in the past, but this one makes you my hero. Diane On Wed, 16 Sep 2009, Robert Myers wrote: > Hi; > > As one who has been trying to tackle Middle Egyptian off and on by myself for > 35 years, I find this exceptionally clear, astute, and helpful. I understand > that this might sound a bit eccentric, but I think one day it would make a > nice piece to translate into Egyptian. The character of the explanation is > gutsy, cogent, and challenging; like a lot of Egyptian literature. > Sincerely, > > Bob > > Marianne Luban wrote: >> [ very good explanation cut to save space ] >> >> Marianne Luban >> http://thetimetravelerreststop.blogspot.com/ ============================================================================== Date: Wed, 16 Sep 2009 14:54:11 -0000 (GMT) Subject: Re: AEL Egyptian grammar From: msore@albawaba.com To: "Ancient Egyptian Language List" Marianne Luban said, "There is no short cut to embedding Egyptian into your brain." While all her warnings and encouragements should be taken to heart, there are - as humans have found in every kind of learning - some things we can do to enhance and facilitate learning (even mastery) of even the most complex subjects. Good approaches, good tools, structure, clear explanations, clear examples and exercises, etc. Without these, with the student on their own, it would be hopeless. With some tools, it is hopeful. Extended, the logic suggests that with more and better tools, the task of learning any complex subject can be facilitated. This is what we have developed science for, right? And that includes the science of pedagogy, the science of grammar-writing, the science of linguistics, the science of archaeology and the science of doing ancient history with a dead language. We do have tools, they help, and they can be improved. And yes, like mastering music, like mastering shipbuilding, like mastering poetry, you really have to do a lot of it. matthew ============================================================================== Date: Wed, 16 Sep 2009 15:20:38 -0000 (GMT) Subject: AEL Collier study of Egyptian grammar From: msore@albawaba.com To: "Ancient Egyptian Language List" Yes, terrific. This article is well written and linguistically responsible. It uses data (although the data is necessarily mixed in with traditional interpretations/translations) to make arguments supporting one alternative theory over another. The upshot, if this article is taken to be important, is that the more egyptologists like Collier actually do linguistics, the farther away from Standard Theory they will get. Collier says, "As it happens, I belong to the school of thought which thinks that Junge has correctly followed the ST position to its logical conclusion and has given use the clearest vision yet of what an internally consistent fully-fledged ST view of Middle Egyptian would look like ... My disagreement lies in the theoretical underpinnings of his work (and, of course, much work in the ST), primarily his adoption of the verb subjugation hypothesis in dealing with the grammar of the circumstantial sdm(=f)/sdm.n(=f) and the grammatical ramifications with follow from this view." A good start. Is this representative? Is there a growing audience for what Collier calls NSST (not so standard theory)? What will traditional egyptologitst - either of the Gardiner type or the Hoch type - make of Collier's method of evidence and argumentation. I also note that Collier takes pains to frame and phrase his arguments in terms NOT belonging to the ST cult, but rather tries to "translate" the jargon of that school into terms that can be made sense of by outsiders, by linguists. Thanks very much for sharing that article. matthew > Matthew, > > try Mark Collier's paper ?"Predication and the circumstancial > sDm=f/sDm.n=f" (LingAeg 2 1992 pp17-65) > as an example of the language discussion that has been going on in > Egyptology for decades and see if that is what you are looking for! > http://wwwuser.gwdg.de/~lingaeg/pdfs/LingAeg_02-p17-65.pdf > > Tilly > ? > Mechthild Burton > ahatnakht@aol.com > ============================================================================== Date: Thu, 17 Sep 2009 13:27:30 +0100 From: Paul Tatum To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: AEL How To Learn Middle Egyptian--If You Really Want To Marianne Luban wrote: > > ---------- Original Message ---------- > From: Paul Tatum > To: Ancient Egyptian Language List > Subject: Re: AEL How To Learn Middle Egyptian--If You Really Want To > Date: Wed, 16 Sep 2009 10:46:33 +0100 > >> I would agree with this. Loprieno is not a good book to learn from, >> It'll make you run away in horror. > > It's not as bad as all that! :-) The book has a linguistic slant and I must say I like it. Sorry, don't get me wrong, I too like Loprieno, but I wouldn't recommend it for beginners, I've been studying languages and linguistics since I was 14, and I'm in my 40's now, but I found this book really hard going although very rewarding for the work. I just had to pick it to pieces almost sentence by sentence, and had to really think about what he was trying to say. I think he assumes his reader already has a grasp of Egyptian. A bit like learning to drive by studying how a car works. One thing I forgot to mention when talking about the books I learn from was that Barbara Watterson's More About Egyptian Hieroglyphs does have one flaw: really badly drawn hand-written hieroglyphs, to the point that at times it is difficult to decipher what she has written. Paul Tatum ============================================================================== To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.org.uk Subject: Re: AEL How To Learn Middle Egyptian--If You Really Want To Date: Thu, 17 Sep 2009 08:35:18 -0400 From: ahatnakht@aol.com >I would agree with this. Loprieno is not a good book to learn from, >It'll make you run away in horror. I had started drafting a response to this comment, but Marianne Luban has expressed it so much better. Nic, who originally asked the question about Loprieno, appears to be already at a fairly advanced stage of her studies and I therefore answered her with a definite "yes". > It's really for linguists or those >who have already been hooked on Egyptian for some time. ... and yes, I freely admit that I am totally addicted :-) As for the the various paedagogic grammars, they all have their strengths and weaknesses - but even with the whole lot them put together, I still would NOT have progressed far beyond Watterson and Collier & Manley, if I hadn't had some excellent face to face tuition as well. As soon as I had grasped the basics, my tutor put the Shipwrecked Sailor in front of me, told me to read the first line out loud (!) and translate - there is really no substitute for sitting down with someone who really knows her stuff and can provide plenty encouragement in a subject as difficult as Middle Egyptian (and I am not even beginning to think about late Egyptian yet...) Tilly ============================================================================== To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.org.uk Subject: Re: AEL How To Learn Middle Egyptian--If You Really Want To Date: Thu, 17 Sep 2009 08:43:28 -0400 From: ahatnakht@aol.com > A problem I found with all the books is that they assume that you are already a > linguist! I was 62 when I began to learn and had forgotten most of my English > grammar, so much of the A.E. grammar meant little to me. Let's have a book which > assumes that you have never heard of the subjunctive! Barbara Watterson! Still widely available second hand, even if both volumes are out of print. Only snag is that the hieroglyphs are handwritten and her hieroglyphic handwriting isn't the easiest to decipher! So you will need a printed sign and vocabularly list or dictionary, too - but the side effect is, that you learn the signs much quicker as you keep double checking the words against Gardiner or Faulkner (the latter also handwritten, but beautifully). ============================================================================== From: "A.P. de Visser" To: "'Ancient Egyptian Language List'" Subject: RE: AEL How To Learn Middle Egyptian--If You Really Want To Date: Fri, 18 Sep 2009 21:44:41 +0200 I do agree with Paul Tatum about the rather bad quality of the hieroglyphs in Watterson,s book,but on the other hand it is her enormous achievement to collect the fundamentals of Middle-Egyptian grammar in such a comprehensive and concise way.I hope the book has or will have a reprint because it is very recommendable for all the beginners. Bram de Visser ============================================================================== From: "Marianne Luban" Date: Thu, 17 Sep 2009 18:26:31 GMT To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.org.uk Subject: Re: AEL How To Learn Middle Egyptian--If You Really Want To I had mentioned, as part of a method, that it was important to choose an interesting text to work on. If someone is unsure of how to get hold of one, I would recommend "The Tale of the Doomed Prince", which is fun. One can find the hieroglyphic version here: http://webperso.iut.univ-paris8.fr/~rosmord/hieroglyphes/DoomedPrince/html/doomedPrince1.html Since it is not an "official" text but a novel, it is written in the vernacular and includes the definite articles and things like "pAy=f" to indicate "his" but those things don't pose difficulties and are very easy to memorize. The chief advantage of this text is that it is not especially difficult and contains repetitive phrases in order to aid memory. As for translations, an online one is my own at http://www.geocities.com/scribelist/doomed.html I also furnish an ending but that is to be taken cum grano salis. if you don't feel an interest in "Doomed", once you get to Serge Rosmorduc's site at http://webperso.iut.univ-paris8.fr/~rosmord/hieroglyphes/hieroglyphes.html you will see there are others. Marianne Luban ============================================================================== From: Subject: Re: AEL How To Learn Middle Egyptian--If You Really Want To To: "Ancient Egyptian Language List" Date: Fri, 18 Sep 2009 11:39:46 -0500 (CDT) The Doomed Prince is a fairly easy and engaging text, but it is _not_ written in Middle Egyptian. The language of this story is often described as "Literary Late Egyptian", which means it contains a number of features found in Middle Egyptian (for example, fossilized narrative phrases containing the sDm-n=f, which is a dead form in Late Egyptian), but much of the grammar and a significant amount of the vocabulary is that of a later stage in the language. In addition to the Late Egyptian possessives that Marianne already mentioned, you will find such LE features as continuatives, conjunctives, Late Egyptian negative constructions, pronominal compounds used in First Present constructions, etc. In addition to the differences in grammar and syntax, the text contains Late Egyptian "group writing," a new form of phonetic spelling which is often very confusing to students who are used to Middle Egyptian orthography. The text is not written in the "vernacular" of its time, but rather in the literary language of the New Kingdom, which was in fact a mix of current grammatical features and standardized archaic literary phrases. The bottom line is that I would emphatically not recommend this text for someone who is attempting to grasp the basics of Middle Egyptian. The Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor or the Westcar Papyrus are much better bets if you're looking for a fun and straightforward literary text in Middle Egyptian. The Story of Sinuhe is a good solid text, too, but I would say it is slightly more challenging, or at least a tad more sophisticated in its style, than some of the other ME literary texts. Megaera Lorenz University of Chicago ============================================================================== Date: Fri, 18 Sep 2009 12:50:41 -0000 (GMT) Subject: Re: AEL How To Learn Middle Egyptian--If You Really Want To From: msore@albawaba.com To: "Ancient Egyptian Language List" Marianne Luban wrote "Gardiner, in his grammar, uses actual texts for examples, to which the authors of newer grammars object because these might contain something unknown to the student at his level. Well...in the end, there is nothing to translate but those actual texts and maybe there is not much point in shielding the student from anything they might contain. Here is a method that really works: Go through a grammar of your choice to the end, do the exercises. Then choose a Middle Egyptian text and make sure it is one that really interests you." She continues to describe a translation-based approach to learning, rather than a grammar-based approach. Could this be described as somewhat of a return to the text-based approach of the Budge generation? [Go through texts, study line by line, translate yourself instead of relying on experts ...] Another question I would ask of good teachers of AEL is about the relative merits of translating from (a) glyph texts or (b) transliterations? I can see different benefits from the two. thanks Matthew ============================================================================== Date: Fri, 18 Sep 2009 10:56:24 -0000 (GMT) Subject: AEL flash cards for Egyptian--If You Really Want To From: msore@albawaba.com To: "Ancient Egyptian Language List" Jim A recommends flash cards. I heartily agree. I have thousands of them lying around the house in pocket sized bundles that my wife keeps finding. Some notes about usage. My flashcards have three parts - top, middle, bottom - and lately I have been adding notes on cognates (Hebrew, Arabic) on the sides. At the top is the glyph text. In the middle is a transliteration (my own linguistic version, not MdeC), and at the bottom are glosses. I can go through a stack using either the top line or the bottom line for prompt, covering up the opposite side. I find it has been useful to put together SIMILAR words in the same packet, so that my brain can learn/focus on distinctions between them. It has been good too when creating a flash card about a certain root to include several of the words that are based on the root. Unfortunately, Egyptologists have not built root-based dictionaries, and so it remains hard for novices to see connections between verbs, derived verbs like causatives, participles, nouns and prepositions that are all based on the same root. At the same time as I create these word-level flash cards, I also try to include a couple of flashcards that have example sentences using the word. Words in isolation are a kind of false construct, right? An extension to that is to put together a packet of flash cards that have a whole text, with one sentence/phrase on each card, arranged in order. Another thing I have been doing recently is noting (whenever I can get the info from the "dictionaries") how words have changed diachronically. Cards with OLD forms get the later forms jotted down, and vice versa. Finally a note about the usefulness of the process of MAKING flashcards. Being careful and analytical about it is an exercise in concentration in itself. I tried for a while, but gave up, to construct some flash cards that showed me the DIFFERENCES between the translations for the SAME AEL word as found in the several dictionaries. I found it illuminating to contrast Gardiner, Allen, Mercer, Budge and even German glosses. One of these days, I will write a Java program putting flashcards online. Anything put on the computer is "better", right? As others have noted, however, flashcards are a first step. The putting together of words into sentences is a more advanced stage. And analyzing how the many sentences display the same powerful set of underlying rules of combination is another stage again. matthew ==============================================================================