The Story of the Ancient Coptic Language
Dead Language or Key to the History and Culture of Ancient Egypt?
Jun 27, 2009
It is well known in linguistic circles that languages change constantly, adding new words to the vocabulary, losing others, and even sometimes having major shifts in grammar and punctuation. Sometimes they even die, leaving no native speakers but only a written record or family stories to show that the language ever existed. Latin, for example, still exists in written form and even in medical and legal terminology, but it is no longer used as a language for daily communication. In Egypt, the Coptic language is in a similar situation, used in some functions of the Orthodox Church but no longer a part of everyday life. Nevertheless, the language remains an important part of Egyptian heritage.
Hieroglyphics and the Demotic Script
According to official information from the Egyptian church, the term “Coptic” refers to the final written version of the ancient Egyptian language of the pharaohs, although the term is often used to refer to the spoken language as well. Egyptians first wrote in hieroglyphics, a complicated system of picture writing which developed into a phonetic, or sound-based, collection of symbols. Priests developed a kind of shorthand for the intricate drawings, and the simpler “hieretic” script was the result.
Even with then, writing was difficult and time-consuming, and the development of an even simpler method of writing called “demotic” helped make writing easier. Developed in the fifth century BC, demotic script was used extensively for daily use but never used on the walls of tombs or temples. The Ethnologue website of the Summer Institute of Linguistics describes two main dialects, the Bohairic, which is still used in the Coptic Orthodox Church, and the Sahidic variety, both sometimes referred to as neo-Egyptian.
Greek Influences on the Coptic Language
In the fourth century BC, when the armies of Alexander the Great began to conquer countries around the Mediterranean and Greek became the lingua franca, or common language, of the region, Egyptians traded their unwieldy and inelegant system of writing for the simpler twenty-four letter Greek alphabet. As the Coptic church information indicates, the new alphabet required six or seven additional letters taken from the demotic script for sounds not used in Greek. In the first century AD, missionaries bringing Christianity to Egypt also adopted the new alphabet to help relay their message. The language and its script flourished for hundreds of years afterwards, especially in the time of great literary achievements in the fourth and fifth centuries. Even after the Greeks were long gone from Egypt, their influence lived on; even the name “Coptic” comes from the Greek word for Egypt, “Aiguptos.”
The Decline of Coptic and the Rise of Arabic in Egypt
Political changes in the world had shaped the Coptic language with the use of the Greek alphabet, and the rise of the Arab world in the seventh century. With Arabs ruling Egypt, the Copts found their own language declining as commerce and high-level jobs increasingly required Arabic. Pressures on the Christians of Egypt led to a further decline in the use of Coptic, until finally the language was essentially extinct, with no first-language speakers left. This Afro-Asiatic language, as Ethnologue describes it, is now used almost exclusively in the church, with Arabic having largely taken its place.
Despite its decline, Coptic remains an essential part of Egyptian life. With its long history running from the age of the pharaohs to modern times, the Coptic language gives valuable insights into the story of one of the world's oldest civilizations.
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