| Also Known As: Neo-egyptian
Description:
Coptic or Coptic Egyptian (Ⲙⲉⲧⲣⲉⲙ̀ⲛⲭⲏⲙⲓ Met.Remenkīmi) is the final stage of the Egyptian language, a northern Afro-Asiatic language spoken in Egypt until at least the seventeenth century. Egyptian began to be written using the Greek alphabet in the first century. The new writing system became the Coptic script, an adapted Greek alphabet with the addition of six to seven signs from the demotic script to represent Egyptian sounds the Greek language did not have. Several distinct Coptic dialects are identified, the most prominent of which are Sahidic and Bohairic.
Coptic and Demotic are grammatically closely akin to Late Egyptian, which was written in the hieroglyphic script. The main difference is in the writing. Coptic flourished as a literary language from the second to thirteenth centuries, and its Bohairic dialect continues to be the liturgical language of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria. It was supplanted by Egyptian Arabic as a spoken language toward the early modern period, though revitalization efforts have been underway since the nineteenth century. The number of people who speak Coptic today reaches around 300.
The native name of the language is ⲙⲛⲧⲣⲙⲛⲕⲏⲙⲉ..... full article at Wikipedia |
