Does Ancient Egyptian and Coptic live on in Egyptian Arabic?

posted on: Jul 16, 2021

By Evan Ploeckelman / Arab America Contributing Writer

Egyptian Arabic is one of the most well known dialects of Arabic around the world, as many Arab films and music are made in this dialect. However, before the introduction of Arabic to Egypt, the Egyptians spoke Coptic, a descendent of the languages of Ancient Egypt. These people would have had to learn a new language, Arabic, which would not have proved easy for many speakers. They may have brought the way they spoke previously into the new language they had to learn to speak. However, the specifics of how this process happened are still up to debate by experts on Egyptian Arabic.

Pronunciation:

Along with many other dialects of Arabic, the pronunciation of Egytian changed upon its introduction. For example, the sounds made by the letters ث, ذ, and ظ ( dh, th, and 6’) did not exist in Coptic, and so in Egyptian Arabic, they became pronounced as the letters د , ت, and ض (t, d, and 9’). Other letters, such as ق, (q or 8) became ء (‘ or 2). Furthermore, while not represented in the arabic script, Egyptian Arabic has an emphatic ر (r ) sound (other emphatic sounds include ص ض ط ظ), which is a sound that also appeared in ancient Egyptian. Additionally, many vowel sounds were added to Egyptian Arabic that were not present in classical Arabic. However, many of these changes are also present in other Arabic dialects as well, such as the Levantine dialect. As such, these changes are not solely because of Arabic.

Grammar:

In terms of grammar, there are some features of Egyptian Arabic that were clearly impacted by Coptic and other Egyptian languages, but many are up for debate. For example, in Egyptian Arabic, question words are placed in their “logical” spot in the sentence, unlike standard Arabic which moves them to the front. Consider these two sentences, first in Egyptian and then standard Arabic, that say “When did he go to the city?”: “ra7 el-medina imta?” and “mata dhahaba ila al-madina?”. In these sentences, “imta” and “mata” both mean when, are are placed differently within each sentence, showing a clear difference between the two varieties.

Another influence from Coptic and Ancient Egyptian occurs in one of the past tenses. In Egyptian Arabic, one way to form a past tense that does not occur in other dialects is to put ع, or 3a, before the pronoun and the verb stem, such as in the phrase “3a huwa sama3,” meaning “he heard.” This appears in no other dialect of Arabic but does occur in Coptic, such as in this phrase that means the same thing, “afsotm”), with the prefix ‘a, plus “f” which means “huwa,” and then “sotm,” meaning “sama3.”

While there are more examples of grammar taken from Coptic and Ancient Egyptian, they are fairly minor and technical. In general, Egyptian Arabic grammar has not been influenced that extensively by Coptic or Ancient Egyptian. Many other features of Egyptian Arabic, such as the “b-” prefix before verbs or the “m- -sh” circumfix (i.e. goes on both sides of the word) to negate a verb are developments independent of any predecessor language. It is also worth noting that some of these usages may be seen as “incorrect” by Egyptians educated in Arabic, so they may be avoided in some contexts.

Vocabulary:

Egyptian Arabic did borrow some vocabulary from Coptic and Ancient Egyptian. Some of these words have informal or childish connotations, such as “nannus” for baby, “embu” for water, “haba-haba” for bit by bit, “nunu” for little, and “bo3bo3” for ghost. Other phrases are influenced by Ancient Egyptian as well; “tuta tuta,” for example, comes from Ancient Egyptian “twt,” and marks the end of a story.

Overall, however, the long history of Egyptian and Coptic have not made major impacts on the Egyptian dialect of Arabic, at least compared to other Arabic dialects. In spite of this fact, Coptic, the final stage of the Egyptian language, still exists today and is used by many Egyptians, particularly Coptic Christians. Even if the Ancient Egyptian language does not live on in the majority of the speech of those who speak Egyptian Arabic, it still hides in small pockets of the dialect, and further survives in Coptic, preserved by those who use it to read their sacred texts. In this way, Ancient Egyptian has not died.

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