Date: Mon, 9 Nov 2009 01:12:13 +0100 (CET) From: "omezzab@tin.it" To: Subject: R: Re: AEL Shipwrecked Sailor.mP3 audio version Well, thanks, Marianne. You have been very kind to me in your reply. But, as I said, my target was the metric reconstruction, not the vocalization. Probably it would have been better if I had used only the academic "e" -- just to make clear what my purpose was. But I couldn't help using some reconstructed forms I found especially in Loprieno. As a matter of fact, even though interested, I don't know how far we could go in trying to retrieve the ancient sounds. And honestly I think I have not the needed competence to try my strenght with it. And, what is most important, I am not trying to speak Egyptian, that is not my objective. My investigations are limited to the metrical forms and I think that in that field some acceptable results may be obtained. That's why, in a reply to another mail, I said that in the near future I would like to share a dialog with Sinuhe. Probably what I aim at is to grasp the dramatic form of those texts and try to give them life. And there are many hints in them that can be caught especially, if not only , through listening. In the Shipwrecked Sailor, for example, I couldn't understand why the" Smsw jqr" tells twice the story of the shipwreck. Some may say that the repetition was a literary convention: that does not explain the reason though. But when I had to give voice to it I thought that a simple repetition would have been quite bothering. So I had to change the inner register. And then I understood. Though the words are the same the inner emotion is different. The first version of the story is just descriptive. The sailor is enraptured by the ship, its size, its importance, by the expert sailors, so good at manouvering. He remembers how tremendous the gale was, the shipwreck and his dead friends. But in telling the story to the captain there is a sort of detachment in him. That is only " historical account ". The second version is quite different though. It's a sort of meditation on human frailty. That big ship, those brave, expert and clever sailors, all come to nothing. He himself, the only survivor, a poor defenceless shipwrecked person on a land strange and unknown. That's why the two versions are not a repetition. They are a variation on the same theme.( Like in the melodrama, when the singers repeat a section of a romanza so that they may use variations and give more meaning to the whole. ) And what I think is really a stroke of genius is the tale of the Snake, which is a sort of third variation on the same theme. Well, I could talk at lenght about the other literary inventions which can be found in this tale, but I don't think this is the place for literary criticism. All I want to say is that what I think is most important is the inner meaning of those tales and how a live recording - through the reconstruction of their rhytms and sounds - may be a tool to grasp their amazing beauty. Thank you again Orlando ============================================================================== From: "Marianne Luban" Date: Mon, 9 Nov 2009 16:48:01 GMT To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.org.uk Subject: Re: AEL Shipwrecked Sailor.mP3 audio version Maybe I am not the one to do this--or I should wait until later in the day :-( It is"ink tAyk sn" that means "I am your brother"--but the same goes for "tAyk" as for "pAyk" when it comes to pronunciation. Marianne Luban ============================================================================== From: "Marianne Luban" Date: Mon, 9 Nov 2009 16:28:19 GMT To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.org.uk Subject: Re: AEL Shipwrecked Sailor.mP3 audio version ---------- Original Message ---------- From: gilbert To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: AEL Shipwrecked Sailor.mP3 audio version Date: Mon, 9 Nov 2009 05:18:09 +0800 (WST) >Thanks for your suggestion Marianne . It would be great to have some spoken text as closely to the (reconstructed) >spoken language as possible (even if this is still far removed from the original). I hope Orlando will take you up on >it. I think it can be done with reasonable accuracy in a limited sense. In fact, it's probably better to make up phrases containing terms the vocalization of which one is fairly certain, rather than use an existing text. Here's an example: ink pAyk sn meaning "I am your brother" Having noted that I have not come across a spoken phrase since the late 17th Dynasty that is not in Neo-Egyptian, even though the rest of the text is in Middle Egyptian, I think it's better to leave ME alone for pronunciation purposes. In any case, I think one can reconstruct the above vocally as "anoki payk sawn" "anoki" comes from the Bible, "pAyk" is difficult to imagine pronounced any different than it looks, and "sawn" is from Coptic and is probably one of those words that remained basically unchanged in speaking. And I feel sure that if somebody [especially Orlando!] said it an ancient Egyptian could easily understand it, theoretically. The reason is a native speaker knows his language so well that he is able to understand foreigners speak it with imperfect pronunciation. if I hear someone say "I hev ask-ED a poleezmen vair to go becos I dunno vair ahm goink", most of that is not the English pronunciation I am normally accustomed to hearing, but it's close enough for me to know what the speaker is saying. In language, "perfectly pronounced" is not necessary for communication. Take the city of London, where even the natives don't speak with a uniform accent but still communicate. But I digress. I think it would be interesting to make up a list of phrases in order to demonstrate how they were probably vocalized and I will try to make a start with that for discussion. Marianne Luban Author of "The Pharaoh's Barber" A mystery set in the court of Thutmose III http://tinyurl.com/5qqvzt ============================================================================== Date: Tue, 10 Nov 2009 00:57:06 -0500 Subject: Re: AEL Shipwrecked Sailor.mP3 audio version From: Aurelio LaRotta To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Hi Marianne, There is a book you may like - are you aware of Carsten Peust's *"Hieroglyphisch Wort fuer Wort"*? It's a New Kingdom Egyptian phrasebook, written in the style of a modern travel guide with sentences like *"eyuk tane? - eyuy m pe ta n kume"* (where're you from? - I'm from Egypt) and *"eye ire she n suw chmane e suw mute tey"* (I'd like to stay from the 8th to the 10th of this month) - you get the picture :-) If you don't mind the German, you can pick it up at amazon.de for EUR 7.90 + shipping ( http://www.amazon.de/Kauderwelsch-Hieroglyphisch-Wort-f%C3%BCr/dp/3894163178). BTW: Peust gives *"an=E1k pek san"* for the sentence in question, which is certainly reasonable for the NK, judging from the Coptic. Now, for trying to vocalize the literature itself: I have tried this for Sinuhe - it was both a rewarding and a sobering experience. Rewarding, because once in a while I would get an entire string of words vocalized (building mainly on Loprieno and Peust's more serious "Egyptian phonology"). Line III, for example, turns from *"jnk Sms Sms nb=f b3k n jp.t nswt"* into *"jan=E1k sh=FAmsuw sham**=ED:sij n**=EDbef, b=E1:'ak n j=E1pet =E9nse(wt)"*. Now, that actually rolls off your tongue nicely and sounds like real literature :-) At the same time, it was a humbling experience, because in many lines there were only one or two words - or less :-) Despite the difficulty, I think this is a very worthwhile experiment and maybe one that could be done on the web someday if we find enough afficionados of vocalization ... A word of caution, though: even small errors will distort the results significantly. Take for example the silent [e] that needs to be pronounced in Chaucer in some positions (or the paragogical [e] in older Spanish poetry that was not even indicated in writing). Try reading the following two lines in the modern form *Well could he sit on horse and fair ride* *He could songs make and well indict* ** And in the original form, with the not so silent [e] in bold where it needs to be read: *Wel coude he sitte on hors and faire ryde.* *He coude songes make and wel endyte* One rule is that it is not pronounced if followed by a vowel or a silent /h/. Quite some difference, isn't it? And this is for a language where vowel positions, quantities and qualities are well known. How much harder to get the tone right when all we had was: *Wl cwd h st n hrs 3nd fyr ryd* *H cwd sngz mk 3nd wl jndyt* :-) Cheers, Leo ============================================================================== Date: Mon, 9 Nov 2009 21:29:19 +0100 (CET) From: "omezzab@tin.it" To: Subject: R: Re: AEL Shipwrecked Sailor.mP3 audio version You are right, Jerzy. As a matter of fact I have somewhere a file with hieroglyphs grouped into three-tempoed sections, but the trasliteration is quite messy since I worked out a special one as a help to my recording. And there's a thing I dind't mention in my first mail. When I was almost through with my recording I succeded in getting the 15th number of SAK which contains a really interesting essay by John Foster whose title is: "The Shipwrecked Sailor: Prose or Verse?" It doesn' talk about metrics, but his grouping of the hieroglyphs in order to show how the text is divided into verses is very much like my own divisions. I was gladly surprised since that was a sort of approval of what I was doing. I reached by my own the land that Mr Foster had already discovered almost twenty years before, even if he doesn't take into account the metrical structure which would have been very helpful in tracking the single verses. Universitiy libraries should have that essay, I think. If so give it a try! Bye Orlando Mezzabotta ============================================================================== From: "Marianne Luban" Date: Mon, 9 Nov 2009 21:28:09 GMT To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.org.uk Subject: AEL Talk Like An Egyptian OK, maybe we can start working on this one and if Orlando wants to give it a try, I know he can probably manage the same disgusted tone in which I imagine Kamose the Theban said this to his counselors. First the transliteration, then how I think it was pronounced and I welcome any input: 1. ziA=i sw r ix pAyk nxt--sr m Hwt-wart , ky m kSy "tzei=i su er akh payk amakhte --sar m Khaware, ky m Ekoshe" 2. Hms=kwi s-mAA=kwi m aAmw nHsy "khimes=kui smaw=kui m 'Aramu Nehasy" 3. s nb xr fdq m tA kmt, pzS tA Hnai "sa neb khor fedaq m ta Keme, pezash to khena=i Translation: 1. "I understand it for what [is] my power " or "I understand my power for what it is" 2. "[Here] I sit bound to an Asiatic and a Black" 3. "Each man for tearing off some of Egypt, dividing up the land with me" Discussion: 1. Since the word "ziA" is written with a rarely employed glyph, i think it must be 'tz" as in Semitic letter "tsade". I would think that, in this combination, /i/ and /A/ would probably be "ei". In Coptic, "ix" survives as "ash" and "ikh" [depending on dialect] and I don't see how it could be otherwise. I have seen "nxt" as "amakhte" in Coptic and it is not surprising. It could be that, in pronuniation, "m" just superceded "n" for some reason. That is probably why I saw written, in a text from Amarna, "imD" instead of "inD" [as in "inD Hr=k], the scribe writing it the way it was said instead of spelled. Those Amarna scribes were not the best. "Khaware" is rather obvious and I found "Ekoshe" in one Coptic lexicon and it makes sense to me. 2. I do not know why the Old Perfective should be used here to describe a situation in the present. I suppose "Hms" could be pronounced a lot like "Hmt" ["Khime", woman]. Since the designation "aAmw" goes so far back, I think there's a good chance the /A/ could have kept it's old value of creating a syllabic sound , "ar" or "ra". You can argue with me about that one. From the Biblical name of "Phineas" or "The Kushite", we can get a good idea of how to say "pA nHsy". /h/ or even /H/ gets dispended with quite often. Was Egyptian /p/ a simple "p" or a "pf" [as in German "Pfennig"] is anybody's guess. 3. 'sa" and "neb" are easy and so is "kmt"--but other words I'm not so sure. Wherever there is /a/--it might be OK to give it the Arabic pronunciation--but who knows? Maybe by the Late Period it was no longer distinguished from /A/--it must have been because the Coptic alphabet doesn't have a special sign for it. All we know for sure is that /a/ corresponds to Semitic "ayin" in group writing. Marianne Luban ============================================================================== Date: Tue, 10 Nov 2009 16:05:20 +0100 From: marwan kilani To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: AEL Shipwrecked Sailor.mP3 audio version Geniale! Veramente geniale! Complimenti! I think that it would had be quite difficult to find the right intonantion in such an ancient text! You pronunciation is very clear too! Very nice! Indeed, there is only one thing, a fun detail: when I heard you, suddenly I thought: you're from Italy! Am I right? Your pronounciation is quite "italian", and mainly your vowel, sound like italian ones.. I think that if one listenes it with more attention, can also the region you are from.. ;-) I think that a more "semitic" (or at least less "italian") way to pronounce vowels would have been better, but it's only a detail.. Your work is very cool!!! I linked your records in an italian forum of archeology, here: http://www.archeologia.com/forum/egittologia-lingua-scrittura-geroglifici-papirologia/5613-lettura-del-raccondo-del-naufrago.html#post54972 Maybe, if you would like to present you're work there too, it would be very interesting! omezzab@tin.it wrote: > >Anyway those who are interested , were it not >just for curiosity, may listen to >my audio version at: > >http://digilander.libero.it/ormez/ > ============================================================================== Date: Tue, 10 Nov 2009 07:09:22 -0500 Subject: Re: AEL Shipwrecked Sailor.mP3 audio version From: Aurelio LaRotta To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Addendum: I just realized that the reformatting of the list will probably kill the highlighting of the [e]s in my last post, so here is a more resilient version: Wel coud' he sitt' on hors and fai-rE ry-dE He cou-dE song-gEs mak' and wel endy-tE ... See how it changes the effect compared to the modern pronunciation :-) Cheers, Leo ============================================================================== Date: Tue, 10 Nov 2009 12:00:57 +0100 Subject: Re: AEL Talk Like An Egyptian From: Luka Trkanjec To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Hi. Wasn't "neb" pronounced "nib", as in Nibmuarya from Amarna archive? -- best regards, Lucius ============================================================================== From: "Marianne Luban" Date: Tue, 10 Nov 2009 17:32:20 GMT To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.org.uk Subject: Re: AEL Shipwrecked Sailor.mP3 audio version ---------- Original Message ---------- From: marwan kilani To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: AEL Shipwrecked Sailor.mP3 audio version Date: Tue, 10 Nov 2009 16:05:20 +0100 >Indeed, there is only one thing, a fun detail: when I heard you, >suddenly I thought: you're from Italy! Am I right? Your pronounciation >is quite "italian", and mainly your vowel, sound like italian ones.. I >think that if one listenes it with more attention, can also the region >you are from.. ;-) LOL---you talk like Professor Higgins from "My Fair Lady". ;-) >I think that a more "semitic" (or at least less "italian") way to >pronounce vowels would have been better, but it's only a detail.. Your >work is very cool!!! Well, I don't think there is a more Semitic way to pronounce the vowels. Some are longer and some shorter, according to Coptic. I don't know if Orlando can say the "ayin", but that is not a vowel, technically, but a consonant. There is even some doubt if the ancient Egyptians pronounced their /a/ in the Arabic way, even though they used it to transcribe Semitic ayin. But what Italian dialect says "kh" the way Orlando can--and that is essential to Egyptian, for sure? Marianne Luban ============================================================================== From: "Marianne Luban" Date: Tue, 10 Nov 2009 17:36:51 GMT To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.org.uk Subject: Re: AEL Talk Like An Egyptian ---------- Original Message ---------- From: Luka Trkanjec To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: AEL Talk Like An Egyptian Date: Tue, 10 Nov 2009 12:00:57 +0100 Hi. >Wasn't "neb" pronounced "nib", as in Nibmuarya from Amarna archive? In Coptic, I found both "nib" and "neb". I don't think there's so much difference. But, I believe what was written was "Nimmuarya". Next to an /m/, I don't think /b/ was pronounced because the labials tended to elide into one another. Marianne Luban ============================================================================== From: Subject: Re: AEL Talk Like An Egyptian To: "Ancient Egyptian Language List" Date: Tue, 10 Nov 2009 12:30:15 -0600 (CST) Luka Trkanjec wrote: >Hi. > >Wasn't "neb" pronounced "nib", as in Nibmuarya from Amarna archive? I believe it's nib or nim, depending on how you read the cuneiform. However, it comes into Sahidic Coptic as neb (nu eta beta), perhaps pronounced *nayb. Marianne Luban wrote: >It could be that, in pronuniation, "m" just superceded "n" for some reason. Probably so. In Late Egyptian and Demotic texts, m and n are frequently interchanged, and the choice of one over the other in a particular word was apparently often dialectical. In some of the early LE texts, the scribes attempted to deal with the problem by writing certain words with an m AND an n (although only one or the other was probably pronounced) -- thus the independent pronouns are written mntf, mntk, etc. The consonants b, l, m, n and r (called "the blemners") in particular were very fluid and were always being swapped around, depending on factors of dialect, time period, etc. N in particular would assimilate to other blemner consonants in Coptic (the particle n + b- = bb-, for example; tempistis is sometimes written instead of tenpistis). Another interesting factor to take into account is that word-final r and t were very weak, and were already being dropped from pronunciation in Middle Egyptian. The word swr (to drink), for example, is sometimes spelled swri, which reflects both the traditional spelling and the actual pronunciation (swi, or, by the time of Sahidic Coptic, simply so or sou). These dropped consonants would sometimes reappear if reinforced by a suffix or some other element. -Megaera Lorenz ============================================================================== Date: Wed, 11 Nov 2009 13:53:30 -0600 From: Robert Myers To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: AEL Talk Like An Egyptian Luka Trkanjec wrote: > > Hi. > > Wasn't "neb" pronounced "nib", as in Nibmuarya from Amarna archive? Hi; Just speaking as an amateur who may or may not be bringing enough observation to the issue, it seems to me that scholars have embraced a real red herring when trying to use Akkadian and Coptic to "restore" Middle Egyptian. I just don't think that this idea takes a big enough picture into account. Imagine that some time in the future, the pronunciation of today's English had fallen into doubt, and someone used Japanese to "restore" the phonemes. We have two fairly unsympathetic systems: one where consonants are often found side by side, and one where they almost never are. Also, the selection of sounds is different. Thus, we may arrive at the assertion that Coca Cola was actually pronounced "koka kora". Just look at how antagonistic Greek and English are to the pronunciation of loan words. There is little hope of establishing how some words rendered in French from listening to the English version. The first thing to change with regional dialects is the vowel. In Louisville, Kentucky, natives say "lou-uh-vuhl", whereas everywhere else in the US, it is pronounced "lou-i-vil". Being alert to this, Egyptians dispensed with the writing of many vowel sounds, leading to the assertion that they did this with all of them. Yet, we find rare spellings like mwdw instead of mdw that give us hints, and iaHw instead of iaH. Today in Egypt, just look at the regional difference, though, between balad and beled, depending if you are in the north or south, city or rural area. Old Egyptian was written in a new orthography. We can assume with just about any such system, whatever the phonemes were, they system would have been fairly free of peculiar affectation and perverse construction. Thus, whatever the sounds were in OE, we are in all likelihood looking at a script that was spelled the way it sounded and sounded the way it was spelled. With later versions of Egyptian, we have the intrusion of change and external modification, but with Coptic, we see a culture in the very throes of suicide from external pressure, embracing all kinds of fashions. Anyway, even if something in the above may be flawed, I do think that the Shipwrecked Sailor sound files are consistent, elegant, understandable, and do not depart too much from what can really be established. The sounds we hear could probably have been at least understood by a scribe of the Middle Kingdom, even if he chuckled at some of the particulars. But, even if this is not the case, I think the reading raises the bar for spoken Egyptian in the classroom, for sure. If we were to imagine how New Egyptian sounded on the strength of Akkadian, I think we would get a chimaera that held untrue for all periods. Bob ============================================================================== Date: Tue, 10 Nov 2009 21:31:54 +0100 From: marwan kilani To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: AEL Shipwrecked Sailor.mP3 audio version Marianne Luban wrote: > > >---------- Original Message ---------- >From: marwan kilani >To: Ancient Egyptian Language List >Subject: Re: AEL Shipwrecked Sailor.mP3 audio version >Date: Tue, 10 Nov 2009 16:05:20 +0100 > > > > > >>Indeed, there is only one thing, a fun detail: when I heard you, >>suddenly I thought: you're from Italy! Am I right? Your pronounciation >>is quite "italian", and mainly your vowel, sound like italian ones.. I >>think that if one listenes it with more attention, can also the region >>you are from.. ;-) >> >> > >LOL---you talk like Professor Higgins from "My Fair Lady". ;-) > > I don't know "my fair lady", but I hope it's a compliment.. ;-) >>I think that a more "semitic" (or at least less "italian") way to >>pronounce vowels would have been better, but it's only a detail.. Your >>work is very cool!!! >> >> > >Well, I don't think there is a more Semitic way to pronounce the vowels. Some are longer and some shorter, according to Coptic. > well yes.. but the semitic vowels' system is more complex that the italian one.. thinking to the arabic exemple, theorically there are only 3 vowel, but actually there are many more, because there are a lot of allophones, and therefore there are a lot of nuances in the pronunciation of the 3 vowels depending on the context (that is depending on the close consonants). Aramaic and sephardi hebrew are similar.. Standard Italian (note: not the dialects), instead, has a quite rigid vowel system, with 5 vowels and only two allophones (for "e" and "o") that are well distinguished. There is almost no "nuanced" vowels, thea are too "strong", and indeed often you can "feel" it very well when an italian person speak english or french (two languages with more complex vowel systems, standard english for instance has 13 vowels, and 7 diphtongs..). Moreover (but this is a personal opinion) I'm a "partisan" of the use of the "shwa", that is, considering coptic (where "shwa" is everywhere) and considering the "neutrality" of the "shwa", I think that it would be better to use it instead of the conventional "e". And pronouncing stp /s@t@p/ (with shwas) appears to be closer to the coptic /so:t@p/ than the standard pronunciation /setep/ or /setEp/ and, once again, Italian doesn't have the sound "shwa".. This is what I meant with "semitic" way, a more "nuanced" way of prononcing vowels.. But I repeat, these are only personal opinions, and are only little details, as I said I think his work is very great ciao! P.S. no, it doesn't seem to me that it pronounce the ayin, but it's not a big problem, I think.. P.P.S. Toscan dialects have something similar to the egyptian "kh" (the "gorgia"), as well as some lombard dialects spoken in italophone part of switzerland. ============================================================================== Date: Wed, 11 Nov 2009 14:08:31 +0100 From: marwan kilani To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: AEL Talk Like An Egyptian Marianne Luban wrote: >---------- Original Message ---------- >From: Luka Trkanjec >To: Ancient Egyptian Language List >Subject: Re: AEL Talk Like An Egyptian >Date: Tue, 10 Nov 2009 12:00:57 +0100 > >Hi. > > > >>Wasn't "neb" pronounced "nib", as in Nibmuarya from Amarna archive? >> >> > >In Coptic, I found both "nib" and "neb". I don't think there's so much difference. >But, I believe what was written was "Nimmuarya". > > Loprieno suggests (p36) */nib/ in earlier egyptian, and considering that he suggests the change */'i/ > */'e/ from earlier to later egyptian, I think we can suppose a pronunciation */neb/ for later egyptian ============================================================================== From: "Marianne Luban" Date: Tue, 10 Nov 2009 20:16:39 GMT To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.org.uk Subject: Re: AEL Shipwrecked Sailor.mP3 audio version Aurelio wrote: > Hi Marianne, > > There is a book you may like - are you aware of Carsten Peust's > *"Hieroglyphisch > Wort fuer Wort"*? It's a New Kingdom Egyptian phrasebook, written in the > style of a modern travel guide with sentences like *"eyuk tane? - eyuy m pe > ta n kume"* (where're you from? - I'm from Egypt) and *"eye ire she n suw > chmane e suw mute tey"* (I'd like to stay from the 8th to the 10th of this > month) - you get the picture :-) The book sounds interesting but already I can't believe "kume" for Egypt! >If you don't mind the German, you can pick > it up at amazon.de for EUR 7.90 + shipping ( > http://www.amazon.de/Kauderwelsch-Hieroglyphisch-Wort-f%C3%BCr/dp/3894163178). > BTW: Peust gives *"an=E1k pek san"* for the sentence in question, which is > certainly reasonable for the NK, judging from the Coptic. I grew up with German--lucky for me when it comes to Egyptian studies. What Peust has is not so radicallly different from my own. He indicates, I suppose, a short vowel before the "k" in "ink"---but if Coptic has "anok" and the Hebrew Bible has "anoki" and what we transcribe as "ink" is written with the "nw" pot, then there is a reason "anok" or "anoki". Since it is God, himself, who supposed says this Egyptian word in an otherwise Hebrew phrase, maybe a very grand individual would say "anoki'--also a prince or king?? I know why Peust has "pek" but I don't argree with it for an 18th Dynasrty time frame. Coptic has variations on what was "pAyk" but, since it still uses "pai" as well as "pe" for the masc. article, I decided to retain the values I would think "pAyk" had at the time. It is a matter of making choices, sometimes not very easy. As for "sn", Coptic writes it with an Au, which is close to a short "o" but I wrote "sawn" to distinguish it from a long "o"--so no disagreement with Peust there. > Now, for trying to vocalize the literature itself: I have tried this for > Sinuhe - it was both a rewarding and a sobering experience. Rewarding, > because once in a while I would get an entire string of words vocalized > (building mainly on Loprieno and Peust's more serious "Egyptian > phonology"). > Line III, for example, turns from *"jnk Sms Sms nb=f b3k n jp.t nswt"* into > *"jan=E1k sh=FAmsuw sham**=ED:sij n**=EDbef, b=E1:'ak n j=E1pet =E9nse(wt)"*. That one from Peust is online--but a very large file. Why "janak" now? And why "japet" when so far "ope"? And I am doubtful about his rendition of "nswt", too. Why even indicate (wt)? Although, admittedly, that one gives me pause, too. Marianne Luban http://thetimetravelerreststop.blogspot.com/ ============================================================================== Date: Thu, 12 Nov 2009 10:36:17 +0100 From: Serge Rosmorduc To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: AEL New version of JSesh available Dear list, Version 2.13.2 of my free hieroglyphic editor JSesh is out. New features: * S. J. P. Thomas have sent me a nice complement for the "K" family, which is now complete. * Ff4 sign : the "hear with hair" variant of F21 is available. * huge improvement in the rendering of editorial parenthesis ([..], {..}, etc...) The size of the parenthesis is now computed from their environment. That is, [[p]]*t:pt should display reasonably well. There might be a number of small problems with old Tksesh files. I'll fix this later. * features to support the MacScribe-to-JSesh converter: short bits of texts can be manipulated as glyphs. They are encoded between ".." in the Manuel de Codage encoding (there is no user interface for this feature yet). Individual signs can be shaded with the \shading modifier. Example : t:A\shading12 will have the top of the aleph sign shaded, but not the "t". There is no user interface for this feature yet. * a few bug fixes (quarter-shading symbols where incorrectly saved, for instance). * PDF cut and paste on mac is now much faster (I have removed a large bunch of useless slow code there) Best regards, S. Rosmorduc ============================================================================== From: "Marianne Luban" Date: Thu, 12 Nov 2009 17:38:32 GMT To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.org.uk Subject: Re: AEL Talk Like An Egyptian ---------- Original Message ---------- From: marwan kilani To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: AEL Talk Like An Egyptian I wrote: >>In Coptic, I found both "nib" and "neb". I don't think there's so much >>difference. But, I believe what was written was "Nimmuarya". >Loprieno suggests (p36) */nib/ in earlier egyptian, and considering that >he suggests the change */'i/ > */'e/ from earlier to later egyptian, I >think we can suppose a pronunciation */neb/ for later egyptian The "nb" in "Nimmuarya" [Amenhotep III] means "lord". The "nb" in the section I gave from the Kamose text means "each" [in that case]. Marianne Luban ============================================================================== From: "Marianne Luban" Date: Thu, 12 Nov 2009 18:43:18 GMT To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.org.uk Subject: Re: AEL Talk Like An Egyptian ---------- Original Message ---------- From: Robert Myers To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: AEL Talk Like An Egyptian Date: Wed, 11 Nov 2009 13:53:30 -0600 >Just speaking as an amateur who may or may not be bringing enough >observation to the issue, it seems to me that scholars have embraced a >real red herring when trying to use Akkadian and Coptic to "restore" >Middle Egyptian. I just don't think that this idea takes a big enough >picture into account. Imagine that some time in the future, the >pronunciation of today's English had fallen into doubt, and someone used >Japanese to "restore" the phonemes. Coptic is Egyptian and the use of in order to ascertain THE VOWELS [I write it in caps because that is the main point] of older Egyptian, those being unwritten. Really, when you look at the Coptic words, the consonants are, in the main, the same as they were in the earlier spellings. So your analogy is not very good. It looks like, then, what mostly changed was the syntax, the word order, not the actual words, themselves. But that had already changed centuries before because the syntax of Neo-Egyptian is not the same as Middle Egyptian, either. That's why I have pointed out that, in otherwise Middle Egyptian historic or royal inscriptions, whenever there is a bit of speech like that of Kamose in the disgruntled passages I have mentioned, it is Neo-Egyptian. So, already in the time of the 17th Dynasty, nobody was speaking Middle Egyptian and I can't say when anyone last did. It is not much different from Old Egyptian and there are various theories about it, when and why it came into being. I, myself, would prefer not to consider it in pronunciation at all. By the time of the Akkadian correspondence, such as the Amarna Letters, no foreigner was going to hear any Egyptian speak in anything but Neo-Egyptian. I don't understand why you would want to discount a contemporary attempt to put, within the cuneiform syllabic system, the sounds the foreigners heard the Egyptians utter or saw them transliterate. For the most part, these foreigners knew *nothing* about how the Egyptians spelled their own language. The entire correspondence was in Akkadian, the diplomatic language of the time. But, since there was no way to write the name of the pharaoh except using the syllabic system EVEN BY THE EGYPTIANS--you can safely bet that the foreigners got "Nimmuarya" from the Egyptians, themselves. And that goes for any other word or name. The challenge to put Egyptian sounds into cuneiform did not belong to the foreigners alone. There are other avenues to consider, as well. There is some Egyptian in the Hebrew Bible and there are numerous toponyms right in Egypt that still reflect their pronunciation in pharaonic times. There is never going to be any perfection in the reconstruction of pre-Coptic Egyptian on a large scale. But, if Orlando and others make an attempt to resurrect it in experimentation, what they say will be correct some of the time and that. in my opinion, is pretty wonderful or "cool" as some have said. Marianne Luban ============================================================================== Date: Fri, 13 Nov 2009 11:57:47 +0100 From: marwan kilani To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: AEL Talk Like An Egyptian Marianne Luban wrote: > >There is never going to be any perfection in the reconstruction of pre-Coptic Egyptian >on a large scale. But, if Orlando and others make an attempt to resurrect it in experimentation, >what they say will be correct some of the time and that. in my opinion, is pretty wonderful or >"cool" as some have said. Yes I agree, and actually I've an idea dwelling in my mind since quite sometime (and I'm already doing some little experiment), that is to play this game in another way, or better, try to play it from the opposite way. What I mean is: we are trying to reconstruct ancient egyptian vowels starting from the top of the evolution, that is from Coptic, but I think that it could also be possible to reconstruct egyptian vowel (with less certainty of course) starting from the base of the evolution, that is from proto-Afroasiatic. If we reconstruct the vowels' structure in a proto-afroasitic roots starting from the afroasiatic languages whose we now the vocalisation, and if we are able to establish some evolution rule from afroasiatic vowels to egyptian vowels (the ones that we are able to reconstruct from coptic, hebrew akkadian or any other way), then we could try to use these rules to reconstruct also the vocalisation of the other egyptian words (the ones we can't reconstruct from later sources) starting from the vocalisation of they original proto-afroasiatic roots (vocalisation obtained from the other afroasitic languages). Yes I know, it sounds a little bit complicated, and maybe it's still too early to try this solution, but I think it could work and I believe that in the (near) future, when we'll have a little bit more complete proto-afroasiatic language (and more detailed rules), it will be possible to reconstruct egyptian vowels in this way. Regards ============================================================================== Date: Fri, 13 Nov 2009 06:16:19 -0600 From: Robert Myers To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: AEL Talk Like An Egyptian Marianne Luban wrote: > > > you can safely bet that the foreigners got "Nimmuarya" from the Egyptians, themselves. > And that goes for any other word or name. Hi; I have rejected this assertion before, and have seen no new evidence that makes sense in light of the phenomenon of what I have called "listening with an accent". The formating of Akkadian and Egyptian are phonetically different. But, even if they were not, we often see the Greeks rendering their versions of Egyptian words with conventions that they felt accustomed to and comfortable with, with the result being an obvious distortion even at the time of direct transmission. Bob ============================================================================== Date: Fri, 13 Nov 2009 16:36:33 +0100 Subject: Re: AEL Talk Like An Egyptian From: Luka Trkanjec To: Ancient Egyptian Language List A fairly unsound idea, if I may say so - double the work and half the results. First, the only living relative of Egpytian today is Coptic. Egyptian did not generate more descendant languages like, for instance, Latin, which evolved into entire romance branch. Egyptian was always a fairly localised (and somewhat isolated) language of the Nile valley and had limited influence and no descendants outside of the area of its civilisation. Hence, in reconstruction of the original proto-afroasiatic language, if you go down via the Egyptian branch (as you must), you still have to rely only on Coptic for vowels. Second, the logic of such and undertaking is pretty questionable. Any such proto-language reconstruction is by its ver nature hypothetical. There are no records whatsoever of proto-afroasiatic language. It may be reconstructed from whatever relics and traces it left the languages which evolved from it, in a way similar that proto-indoeuropean was reconstructed. Yet after almost two centuries of search for proto-indoeuropean, despite the fact we now have a basic outline of how that lanugage worked and sounded, there are still considerable differences and open questions left in its reconstruction(s). The same thing can be said for proto-afroasiatic. We have no direct samples whatsoever of those truly ancient languages and thus any reconstruction of them will be, at its core, always somewhat of a guesswork. On the other hand, there are plenty of records and samples of Egyptian language, left in writting - true, they are consonantal skeletons, and the true vowels have to be reconstructed. But even without vowels, from Egyptian literature one can get some feeling of how that language might have sounded. Thus, the attempt to reconstruct an unknown feature of otherwise fairly well known language via hypothetical reconstruction of a completly unknown language, which in itself has to be reconstructed also partly through before-mentioned well known language is, IMHO, a circular logic. You'll end up drown in your own asupmtions. -- best regards, Lucius ============================================================================== Date: Fri, 13 Nov 2009 17:42:25 -0500 (GMT-05:00) From: "Oscar H. Blayton, Atty. At Law, Inc." To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: AEL Talk Like An Egyptian Any cogent argument to the contrary, I believe that I would have to agree with Luka. Best regards, Oscar ============================================================================== From: "Marianne Luban" Date: Fri, 13 Nov 2009 19:37:21 GMT To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.org.uk Subject: Re: AEL Talk Like An Egyptian ---------- Original Message ---------- From: Robert Myers To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: AEL Talk Like An Egyptian Date: Fri, 13 Nov 2009 06:16:19 -0600 I wrote: > >you can safely bet that the foreigners got "Nimmuarya" from the Egyptians, > >themselves. And that goes for any other word or name. >I have rejected this assertion before, and have seen no new evidence >that makes sense in light of the phenomenon of what I have called >"listening with an accent". The formating of Akkadian and Egyptian are >phonetically different. But, even if they were not, we often see the >Greeks rendering their versions of Egyptian words with conventions that >they felt accustomed to and comfortable with, with the result being an >obvious distortion even at the time of direct transmission. Here is a fuller quote from me, as it makes more sense: "But, since there was no way to write the name of the pharaoh except using the syllabic system EVEN BY THE EGYPTIANS--you can safely bet that the foreigners got "Nimmuarya" from the Egyptians, themselves. And that goes for any other word or name. The challenge to put Egyptian sounds into cuneiform did not belong to the foreigners alone." And that is correct. How could it be otherwise? Even if some foreign scribe could read Egyptian, he would not be able to know how to put it into a syllabary, which does contain vowel sounds, unless he had heard the pronunciation or seen something Egyptian put into the Akkadian syllabary by an Egyptian at the other end of the correspondence. The Greek alphabet was a limited one. It was not a question of comfort but the inability to render certain sounds of Egyptian with that alphabet. Even so, the Greeks, not being able, for the most part, to read the Egyptian graphic system, had to go by what they heard. Akkadian was not written with an alphabet but has about 1,000 signs in its completeness. Nevertheless, it also did not have all the sounds of Egyptian. So, that was the challenge I wrote about--on both sides of the correspondence--to string together those signs that best conveyed the spoken Egyptian. And it had to be the spoken--think about it. You can't transliterate a graphic system that uses only consonants into a syllabic system which uses "ga, ba, da, ", etc.. Marianne Luban ============================================================================== From: "A.K. Eyma" To: "Ancient Egyptian Language List" Subject: Re: AEL Talk Like An Egyptian Date: Fri, 13 Nov 2009 13:42:30 +0100 Marianne wrote: >The "nb" in the section I gave from the Kamose text means >"each" [in that case]. **nb, "any, every", survives in Coptic as nim (S), niben (B), nibi (F). Cf Peust, Phonology, p. 16, Hence Peust, Kauderwelsch, p. 145, reconstructs *nib Aayko ============================================================================== Date: Sun, 15 Nov 2009 07:28:43 -0600 From: Robert Myers To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: AEL Talk Like An Egyptian Oscar H. Blayton, Atty. At Law, Inc. wrote: > > Any cogent argument to the contrary, I believe that I would have to agree with Luka. > > Best regards, > > Oscar > =============================== > Hi; Some years ago, a friend who had studied ancient Egyptian with Gardiner and speaks fluent modern Egyptian Arabic said to me, "There are no vowels in Egyptian." It seemed rather dramatic and extreme, but it made me think that the sound of Egyptian is not dependent on vowels in the same way that many other languages are. Between two rich consonants, they often have a way of recommending themselves. It may be that in a language ancestral to Egyptian, vowels simply did not play the very conspicuous role that we expect in modern tongues. So, I asked an Egyptian friend about the lack of written vowels in modern Egyptian Arabic. He said that if one is intimate with the tendencies within the language, one can most of the time read a word in such a way that it will at least be understandable, even though nuance and fashion would not be served. He then spoke a word for incense, sounding like bxwr, for me. It only had one real syllable to it, and the melody was carried by the consonants, the w being largely generated by its occurrence between the x and the r. My guess is that Middle Egyptian was of a similar character, in this regard. The vowels were not written because there was no real need: the important phonetic information was still mostly there. Bob ============================================================================== Date: Sun, 15 Nov 2009 06:58:39 -0600 From: Robert Myers To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: AEL Talk Like An Egyptian Marianne Luban wrote: > "But, since there was no way to write the name of the pharaoh except > using the > syllabic system EVEN BY THE EGYPTIANS--you can safely bet that the foreigners got > "Nimmuarya" from the Egyptians, themselves. And that goes for any other word > or name. The challenge to put Egyptian sounds into cuneiform did not belong to the foreigners > alone." > > And that is correct. How could it be otherwise? Because it is a forced fit. There is a significant difference between "getting it" and "getting it". Even between dialects of the same language between speakers who may be in regular contact, the way Dan Rather places his vowels and the way Reba McIntyre does will never agree. This is a product of their subcultural environment. > Even if some foreign scribe could read Egyptian, he > would not be able to know how to put it into a syllabary, which does contain vowel sounds, > unless he had heard the pronunciation or seen something Egyptian put into the Akkadian > syllabary by an Egyptian at the other end of the correspondence. The Greek alphabet was a > limited one. It was not a question of comfort but the inability to render certain sounds > of Egyptian with that alphabet. Even so, the Greeks, not being able, for the most part, to > read the Egyptian graphic system, had to go by what they heard. Akkadian was not written > with an alphabet but has about 1,000 signs in its completeness. Nevertheless, it also did > not have all the sounds of Egyptian. So, that was the challenge I wrote about--on both sides > of the correspondence--to string together those signs that best conveyed the spoken Egyptian. > And it had to be the spoken--think about it. You can't transliterate a graphic system that > uses only consonants into a syllabic system which uses "ga, ba, da, ", etc.. I did not mean to say that this or that rendering from Akkadian was of necessity incorrect. My intent was to contraindicate the certainty that what we are looking at gives us authentic information about vowels as spoken. I think we have a fair example of the relationship when we look at Japanese and English. Japanese kana identify all sounds in a syllabic way, and there is a much greater tendency in the vocabulary to stagger vowels and consonants. Thus, when we see an English word rendered into kana, we find Coca Cola has become koka kora between associates in frequent contact. From English into Mandarin, Wham becomes wei-ming. The scribes of the system into which the words are being carried are almost always distorted in some way, owing to what the scribe expects to hear. Thus, while it is not impossible that a pretty good rendering was made at the time, we can't really make the jump to "we know for sure from Akkadian" or "we know for sure from Coptic". What we can say is that we can make the best guess on the available evidence. I guess you could say that Coptic is still Egyptian, if you could say that Italian is still Latin. Greek is still Greek, but the vocabulary and vowels have migrated to an immense degree. Now, I understand that I am speculating when I entertain the notion that modern Egyptian Arabic still holds a lot of clues to the placement of Middle Egyptian. But, we will never know for sure. Yet, I think it is a really good idea to think about exercising what we do know, starting off simple, and seeing where that takes us when a significant number of people again become conversant in Middle Egyptian. Such a practice might generate a good bit of practical information via experimentation that couldn't be gotten otherwise, even if it isn't all that reliable. To me, it seems that the character of Egyptian suggests a very consonantal language where the vowels were not as arbitrary as in languages we are used to. I realize I am speculating, but it seems that the vowels of Egyptian may have very often been generated naturally by the juxtaposition of consonants, rather than by any additional contrivance. Egyptian friends have remarked to me that modern Egyptian in rural areas is often spoken with a real paucity of vowels. But at some point, when music with lyrics appeared, some modification was necessary for dialects where music was a common feature of the culture. Anyway, I have heard people speak Middle Egyptian among themselves because it was a measure they felt tribally empowering and increased the discretion of private conversation. When the state of Israel was reborn, the language had to undergo an overhaul where certain choices had to be made in bringing it up to standard and divest itself of Yiddish neologisms. But, these choices were largely the result of actually resuming use of the language in an artificially purer form that conserved morale. The same will happen with Egyptian. So, I think it important that we understand the true internal forces at work in the language, if we can, and defer magnifying the uncertain value of foreign renderings. ==============================================================================