The Coptic alphabet is an alphabet used for writing the Coptic language. It is based on the Greek alphabet, but contains some extra letters for sounds used in Coptic but not in Greek. Those letters are derived from the Demotic script, a highly cursive writing system used to write the Egyptian language.

The Coptic alphabet came into general use in Egypt during the 4th century AD. It is still used by the members of the Coptic Church to write their religious texts. All the Gnostic codices found in Nag Hammadi used the Coptic alphabet.

The Coptic alphabet did not appear overnight. There was a long history, going back to the Hellenistic period, of using the Greek alphabet to transcribe Demotic texts, with the aim of recording the correct pronunciation of

The Old Nubian alphabet—used to write the Old Nubian language —is written mainly in a uncial Greek alphabet, but it borrows Coptic and Meroitic letters of Demotic origin into its inventory. It is often, though incorrectly, thought that Old Nubian used the entire Coptic alphabet directly, but this is not the case.

In Unicode, most Coptic letters formerly shared codepoints with similar Greek letters, but a disunification has been accepted for version 4.1, which appeared in 2005. The new Coptic block is U+2C80 .. U+2CFF. See also: , (which includes 7 Coptic letters derived from Demotic, and need to be included in any complete implementation of Coptic).

Alphabet table

Note: the letter sou was used only for its numerical value, 6.

The Old Bohairic pronounciation

In the 1858-1860, there was a trial to merge the Coptic Church with the Greek Church so that one Patriarch be the head of both Churches in Egypt, but the trial did not succeed till now. The union of pronounciation of Coptic & Greek was one of the demanded requests as was witnessed. The teacher of Coptic in the Patriarchal Church at that time was Arian effendi G. Moftah, he was very enthusiastic to the change of Coptic sounds, he made a project & applied it to do so. He thought that as long as Coptic & Greek have almost the same alphabet so they share the same pronounciation, thus any change of Coptic pronounciation towards Greek is a reform. This was his hypothesis.Also, the expected union between the 2 churches was a co-factor, to proceed.The Egyptians were at that time suffering stresses, & inferiority complex, due to the appearance of the French expedition (1798-1801) & the scientists of the expedition who stayed many years after the expedition left Egypt. Many people turned out thinking that whatever European is correct, due to the vast difference that was between Egyptians & French people.

The pronounciation of Arian effendi G. Moftah was spread by the central power of the Klirikia (Theological Seminary), Patriarchal School and it took about 50 years to be generalized all over Egypt & used till now by almost all Churches except for a very few minority in upper Egypt that refuses any priest from outside their village. Along course of spread, the Old Bohairic (B) pronounciation was mistakenly named by Arian's scholars as Sahidic, or that the change would help an expected merge. It was generalized after that.

Original (old) Alphabet table

References

• Loprieno, Antonio. 1995. Ancient Egyptian: A Linguistic Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 24–26.
• Quaegebeur, Jan. 1982. "De la préhistoire de l'écriture copte." Orientalia lovaniensia analecta 13:125–136.
• Ritner, Robert Kriech. 1996. "The Coptic Alphabet". In The World's Writing Systems, edited by Peter T. Daniels and William Bright. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. 287–290.

Old (Original) coptic References

• copts and them language by Emil Maher Ph.D.
• Cagi by Emil Maher Ph.D.

Old (original)



coptic External links

Koptisches Alphabet Koptisches Alphabet Alfabeto copto Alphabet copte Alfabeto copto Koptisch alfabet Коптский алфавит