Definition:
Transliteration is typing a language in another language's alphabet, or in phonetics.
Types of Transliteration:
Many languages, either used the alphabet of another language directly to write their language or sacrificed their own alphabet for another language. The major alphabets that influenced the world are the Greek, Latin, & Arabic alphabets
Greek:
Greek alphabet is believed to be a derivation & enhancment of Heiroglyphs that were brought to Ancient Greece by Phoenicians. The Greek alphabet won great popularity during the era of Alexander the Great that resulted in the Hellinization process of many countries.
Amongst the languages that used Greek transcription
Amongst the languages that
used Latin transcription
English, French, German,
Italian, Portouguese, Spanish, Turkish (modern), Afrikaans
Arabic
The Script of Ancient Yemen
& Saudi Arabia, spreaded by the spread of Islam & developed enormously
to containt dotting to differentiate letters & other developments
Amongst the languages that used Arabic transcription
1. Coptic (Coptic scipt after Demotic) :
a) Simplification2. Turkish (Latin script transliteration after Arabic)
b) Bondage cutting with Pagans, & Pagan script themes
c) Commercial (to sell their magic spells to thse who can not read Heiretic or Demotic)
d) Preservation of written language from loss under the pressure of Hellinization
e) Practical facing of Demotic illetracy
f) Preservation of Identity
a) Cutting bondage between ancient Ottoman era, & new Liberal Turkey3. Amazigh: ( Berber script after Arabic)
b) Identity shifting from Ottoman Middle East, to Turkish European
a) Rediscovery of the Barbarian Identity4. Russian (from Classical to nowadays)
a) Identity purposes
Introduction:Any Script of any language is a form of transliteration in the context of : that there is a shift from the language as heared to be converted into visual symbols to symbolize the meaning &/or the pronounciation of the word.
Historical Background:
Details:- Egyptian Language was first not written then it was written almost only in Ideograms.
- Written Egyptian Language, further developed to include letters together with Ideograms (Heiroglyphs)
- Priests developed a writing system more simplified stemming from Heiroglyphs & was named Heiretic
- People developed more simplified form of writing & was named Demotic
- Priests developed a script to sell magical spells written in Egyptian language & Greek Letters, named as Proto-Coptic
- Egyptians developed Proto-Coptic, & added many Demotic letters to start Christian missionaries
- Egyptians reduced number of Demotic letters to 7 letters forming Coptic language
- Coptic Language was written in Arabic letters to facilitate reading
- Coptic Language was written in Egnlish letters for Copts abraod to facilitate reading
The first phases of writing Egyptian in Heiroglyphs, Heiretic & Demotic were for reasons of simplification time
Internal Factors:1. Simplification: the Demotic script was composed of about 400 hundered character including some ideograms & non-pronouncible items. The Greek script was much more simplified as it has only 24 characters & all pronouncable.
a) Getting rid of complicated ideograms2. Spread : Pagan Egyptian priests found their script unamenable to reading at that time, inorder to make their spells again readable they re-wrote it in Greek letters to sell them to Greeks, & other foreigners to be sold world wide
b) Using limited number of characters 24
c) Benefiting writing vowels for the first time in Egyptian Language
d) Benefiting a standard direction that is left to right, in contrast to any direction of previous scripts3. Communications: when Christianity was first brought to Egypt, the Gospels were written in Greek, a language that's understood by Hellinized Egyptians of Alexandria but not all Egypt. Missionaries of preaching Christianity were a combination from Egyptians, Hebrews, Greeks. The Egyptian language was meant to be used in writing the messages, but the script is niether familiar to Greeks nor to the Jew. So, the Greek script was used as most of them know at least the Greek alphabet
4. Facilitate borrowing: using Greek letters was also meant to facilitate borrowing of words &/or expressions as such without the need of transliterating them to another language e.g. pneuma, parthenos, Theos, prophet, angel etc.
5. Rediscovery of Egyptian Identity:
External Factors- Cutting bondage with pagan worship. The Egyptian Scripts, stemmed from the Egyptian beliefs tha Ka & Pa were symbols of the soul & psyche, many ideograms had these religious roots. So, inorder to differentiate Christianity as a religion another script was implied to fit these changes.
- Ensurance of Survival : Egyptians were too curious to ensure survival of the written Egyptian language in defence of Hellinistic Culture, the main problem was the complication of Demotic, ignorance of Demotic script, so, on balancing sacrificial the script vs. the written language the script was sacrified
- Reflection of new Egyptian Identity : there are general constiuents of Identity: Race, Land, Religion, Language, Culture & personal constiuents Education, Work, Socioeconomic standard, & hobbies.
The language is one of the major cosntituents of Identity. The shape of language (script) also reflects paritally part of the identity. By adopting Christianity, Egyptians reflected this by re-modelling Egyptian language, with Greek alphabet the script of Gospels & St.Mark. That was to announce a change of another major constituent of identity that's Religion
- Governemental pressure : Greek rulers wanted all the time to decipher the Egyptian language, to make everything clear in their eyes. Thus, a pressure was exerted on educated Egyptians to develop a method to make written Egyptian understood by Greeks
- Hellinistic Culture pressure : The culture itself rendered any one who does not know Greek as an ignorant, also, Greek was believed to be the language of the world, the media of communication, & the language of Philosophy & Literature.So, any language using this script would be regarded as modernized language or up-to-date language as it uses the Greek Script
- Inferiority complex : Greeks tended to exert a pressure on other nations by considering them inferior to Greeks. Greeks in Egypt had struggled to convince Egyptian with their inferiority at everything the same was done by Egyptians as a defensive mechanism. The written language, was a field were Greeks proved to be superior, & Egyptians adopted Greek text so as not to be inferior no more.
Drawbacks of adopting the Greek scriptThe major drawback of such a process can be summarized in loss of Human Cumulative Cultural Diversity. As, many things vanished or perished or became vague. This is here discussed in details
- Discontinuity of the Script linkage : the frequent change of the letters, Heiroglyphic, Heiretic, Demotic, Greek, Proto-Coptic, Coptic, resulted in a major problem, that the cumulative Literary Heritage is cleaved by these marks & it became a major trouble in reading, it might even need deciphering as happened with Heiroglyphs. The change was too much to an extent that Heiroglyphs became totally an unknown script. So, for an Egyptian to read the Egyptian Literary Heritage he ought to learn all previously mentioned scripts
- Loss of Script cumulative development : adopting the Greek script lead to loss in the expected development in of Egyptian script, thus a script became extinct. i.e. one can never expect the Egyptian Heiroglyphs how would they have developed to fit to PC for example
- Loss of Calligraphic cumulative development: the expected development of Egyptian script & calligraphy were arrested by the adoption of Greek script.
- Loss of vocubulary : Egyptian in its Greek dress. losed many of its vocubulary due to the continious easy borrowing from Greek Language. Thus it resulted in poverty of Coptic Dictionary (about 3200 words) that's is less then a normal dictionary of any language (4000 words at least). Words like Ka, Pa, Roawni, Faishini were replaced by pneuma, psyche, parhtenos, angel
- Loss of pronounciation: pronounciation of phones like the arabic 'ain ('abd), 'haa(habib), became unceratin in coptic due to loss of their special symbol that was present in Heiroglyphic. Also, phones as (p) became controversary to some authors whether it was present in Egyptian or not, & why did they adopt it from Greek, whether its approximate value was adopted or the same phonetic value, the same applies for many other consonants & also vowels
- Identity Crack: the Coptic script meant & suffered indentity change because the change lead to the idea that Christianity is a Greek religion it offered prayers in Greek, Greek Gospel even the country that embraced it , it embraced Greek script to do it. Therefore, it took long time to conqurer Hellinization of Coptic Church
- Misunderstanding : the frank borrowing from Greek, Syriac, Assyrian, Hebrew due to application of expressions from these languages, facilitated by the usage of Greek letters, lead to a problem tat there are some words that are vague or their meaning is not certain, so one has to look over these diciotnaries to find it, some times this is too crippling to identify a word.
Definition:English/Arabic transliterations of Coptic language are relatively new transliterations about 250 years almost for Arabic transliteration & 50 years for English ones. The reason for dealing with both together is that they are both stemming from the same idea, have more or less equal goals & both are not standardized till now.
Historical Backgroud
One of the oldest manuscipts showing Coptic in Arabic letters is a manuscript dating to 1722. As for the English was started by the emigration of Copts to countries as USA, Australia & others.
The first organized transliteration systems were published electronically on the internet.
The Copnet transliteration is totally shape-oriented. It searches them most morphologically similar Latin character to stand for a Coptic letter.
The transliteration introduced by Dr. Kamal F. Isaac (Isaac's Transliteration) which is pronounciation oriented to big extent.
The modification of Isaac's Transliteration made by Dr. Kamal F. Isaac himself It is not a way to assume how this word looks in Coptic figures, it deals with transliteration a new method to write Coptic language as it is spelled.
Other transliterations are made other copts (MBT) & coptologists Geoffroy Graham & AEL transliteration.
Internal factors1. Educational Simplification: the Coptic language's letters are not considered to be hard or as complicated as Demotic, the simplification here is that there's a deficiency in education of Coptic, therefore there are many Copts in Egypt & abroad who can read Arabic and/or English well, but they could not learn Coptic simply because there's no education.
2. Spread : the use of Latin letters facilitates spread of Coptic language, due to the fact that the script is already known
- There are many barriers to learning Coptic language, one of the barriers is the shape of letters which is not familiar to many eyes or might be confusing due to the same letter shape & different pronounciation form English e.g. ro vs. p, eta (hada) vs. hatch (H), Chey vs. X, Omega vs. w, sima vs. C etc.
- Linguistic simplification: there are many letters in Coptic that posses more than one pronounciation e.g. gamma, wida (beta) etc. & other letters that share the same phonetic value e.g. phey & fai (demotic). etc. These letters are trouble some in both education & dictation. they give rise to numerous spelling mistakes with beginners. Therefore simplifying pronounciation with new alphabet would help much in making the language easier
- Latin alphabet comprises of 26 characeters while Coptic is 33 so the use of latin will decrease the number of letters
3. Communications : Copts abroad & sons of Copts abroad use mainly English language in daily life. so, the usage of English letters in writings & letters will facilitate mutual communications if meant to be in Coptic
4. Facilitation of borrowing: nowadays, many of new inventions are named in English so the usage of English alphabet will facilitate the borrowing of names of new inventions to be added simply to the Coptic Language
5. Ensurance of revival: Coptic language is in need of moulding & getting rid of whatsoever possible that might obstruct its way to people, to bypass this sacrifice of letters seems one of dues to be payed for it.
6. Time factor: due to decreased demand on Coptic language & the fact that most of those who study Coptic are students who take Coptic on Summer vacation (3 months at most), so, wasting time in learning new shapes of letters delays back the education of the core of language.
7. Linguistic correction: with the emergence of the new ecclesiastical pronounciation (1858) by Arian Guirguis Moftah, many aspects of pronounciation are considered to be scientifically incorrect. Also, the lack of education lead to the emergence of some public errors in pronounciation that are considered by no means development. The use of a new alphabet would help much in restoration & correction of many phonetic values.
8. Historical follow up: Copts used Greek to write their alphabet. Conversion to Latin letters seemes to be the same manner in which ancestors should have done the same in present circumsances.
9. Prayer follow up: many of Coptic Orthodox Church members nowadays are illeterate at Coptic. So, one of the reasons is to invite people to share in prayers, even those in Coptic language, this is done via transliterating Coptic to either Arabic or English
Members who use transliteration are classified into
10. Commercial reasons: the emergence of Arabicized Coptic met a demand that people need so much, that's why Coptic books written in Arabicized Coptic are sold more than those using Coptic script alone, or Coptic + Arabicized Coptic (money wise this is more expensive)
- Priests : many of them can not read Coptic thus they tend to use Arabicized Coptic
- Cantors/Deacons & Sub-Deacons: many of them can not read Coptic though they use it widely in Church services
- Congregation of people: few minority of those who can read, can read Coptic.
11. Reinassance marker: Coptic has been dormant for centuries, Pope Cyril IV Father of reform is the initiator of the Reinassance of Coptic Language in 19th Century, this reinassance needs a marker to denote changes allow appearing of new waves in the language. There is an urge to mark this revolution & stamp it over the language in comemoration of this generation.
12. Addressing global changes: in 20th century Turkish language, adopted Latin alphabet (German variation) to write their language, Afrikaans also adopted Latin & many other African languages. Languages as Amazigh (Berber Language, North Africa), Kurdish have changed thier alphabet. So, to address this changes to cope with Coptic as a vivid language not a museum language, Coptic should be changed to the more pracitcal letter set.
External factors:
Drawbacks of adopting the Latin alphabet & argumentation against
- Technical difficulties: with the emergence of the era of typewriters then PC & other electronic devices e.g. organizers, Cellular phones, & PC related systems MS word, e-mail, internet etc. The use of Coptic letters seems to be impractical as mot of these machines & programmes support only Latin letters
- American civilization's pressure: the American civilization pressure is dominant world wide the American English is now wide spread, so, it seems that re-shaping Coptic might help in keeping up-to-date with world wide changes
- Educational deficiency: Coptic language is not taught in schools as it is considered to be a dead language. So, it is more practical to educate people via previous means to benefit previous knowledge & experiences
The major drawback of such a process can be summarized in loss of Human Cumulative Cultural Diversity. As, many things vanished or perished or became vague. This is here discussed in details
- Discontinuity of the Script linkage : the frequent change of the letters, Heiroglyphic, Heiretic, Demotic, Greek, Proto-Coptic, Coptic, Arabic & English results in a major problem, that the cumulative Literary Heritage is cleaved by these marks & it is a major trouble in reading, it might even need deciphering as happened with Heiroglyphs. The change was too much to an extent that Heiroglyphs became totally an unknown script. So, for an Egyptian to read the Egyptian Literary Heritage he ought to learn all previously mentioned scripts. Knowledge of late Egyptian language this way requires mastering Arabic/English & Coptic scripts.
- Loss of Script cumulative development : adopting the Latin script lead to loss in the expected development in of Coptic script, thus a script became extinct. i.e. one can never expect the Coptic letters how would they have developed to fit to PC for example
- Loss of Calligraphic cumulative development: the expected development of Coptic script & calligraphy will be arrested by the adoption of Latin script
- Loss of vocabulary : it is expected for Coptic to loose more words if a Latin script is implied & that the development of tranlslation of new words & expression will not go further
- Loss of pronounciation: pronounciation of phones like the arabic 'ain ('abd) slave, 'haa(habib) lover, kh (kholood) eternity Gk. Christos Christ, š as (she), gh as in arabic 'gharb' west are not available in Latin script. Thus technically many letters will be in a mess due to the fact that the no. & the structure of Coptic letters is different from Latin ones, if new characters were used or new values to known characters were used thus the problem will remain almostly the same
- Identity Crack: Coptic when it is written in Latin scipts resembles any african language - no offences - that has no literary written heritage. What porves that one knows a language is his/her ability to read/write its letters in its classical known form. This will be lost.
- Technical difficulties : adopting Latin script requires re-typing of the whole ecclesiastical & Coptic literary Heritage in the new script.
- Potential chaos: Historically when Copts adopted Greek script the language was very vivid & in its full vitality. The transitional period gave no rise to a Literary masterpiece due to the fact that alphabet itself was not settled. Nowadays, there's not a single standard system to transliterate Coptic to English or to Arabic & the language - conservatively speaking - is in a very critical situation. Thus such a change with all its implications; trial & error; developments; uncertainity; establishment of standardization; overcoming techincal difficulties; educating the new transliteration; retyping of books; all these might lead to collapse of the weak remaining part of the language.
- Public schism: with the emergence of any new idea there's oftenly a schism among an activist group enthusiastic to the idea & a conservative group against the idea. Such, a schism in Coptic language when introduced to be written in Latin script might cleave the minority that work together in teaching leading to subsequent deterioration of language
It is known that the Coptic script wrote Ancient Egyptian sounds in the Old Greek alphabet plus 7 demotic letters. Thus, the Coptic script perse could be named as a transliteration to Egyptian Language.The Coptic script is known as a strange development of Egyptian language that has emerged due to several factors. Today, English grew and spread to be the international language and all new devices are set to use its Latin letters. Moreover, most of people world wide get in contact to Latin letters either in English, French or Spanish. If we are to revive this old language, we have to find some system to write it in Latin letters as well beside its original script.Therefore Dr. Kamal F. Isaac the professor of Coptic Language at the Institute of Coptic Studies invented this transliteration system in order to enable people learn and write Coptic language in latin letters. This will enable also a widespread by writing it on all computers, mobile phones, typewriters, organizers...etc. Furthermore, it will facilitate to many people the process of learning for letters will not be new to their eyes. Therefore, this might decrease technical difficulties in handling the language, and facilitate its usage as a day to day language; resulting in increasing publicity of this language. The invention is not considered by the author as an invnetion but, he states that Egyptian language was first written in ideogram, then heiroglyphs, then heiratic, followed by demotic. Afterwards, Egyptian language started its first trial to be written in a Greek transliteration, so it was written in Greek letters, by time, the need for some special sounds was felt thus many demotic characters were borrowed to cover this deficit. Finally, the Coptic script was settled. In last two centuries Coptic, was written in Arabic letters in ecclesiastical books to facilitate reading. The idea was adopted also, by Dr.Emile Maher Ishak as an educational tool. So, writing Egyptian language in another scirpt does not sound like an invention because the same language has passed through many scirpts. It always fights for survival either by developing its script or sacrfycing it at all when needed. Dr. Isaac confirms that the language is never the script it is the grammar then the vocubulary, so introduction of a new transliteration is not a harm it is an addition that proves the elasticity and capability of a Egyptian to cope with time changes.
The transliteration started at the year 1990 first published in 1999 in "The Modern Egyptian Language, the language of ancient Egypt in its last stage written in Latin Letters". This transliteration is made fro Bohairic dialect due to its ecclesiastical use. It is mainly pronunciation oriented in contrary to morphologically oriented former transliterations. The pronounciation according to the transliteration is slightly different from the ecclesiastical pronounciation based on a theory of pronounciation, that he describes as both closer to original pronouncitation & easier in pronounication. The author also, believes that the base of any transliteration is to simplify reading & to decrease technical difficulties, In addition, numbers used in morphologically oriented transliterations for numbers should be preserved as numbers & not to be used in letters. The basic structure of transliteration is the establishment of simple pronunciation based transliteration, without the use of neither numbers nor real phonetic characters. This is because numbers are preserved for their regular usage, & phonetics is rather an academic approach in which many people can't handle easily, in addition, they are not available in many devices as cellular phones typewriters, organizers etc. Modifications are being made from time to time on basis of re-evaluation.
The aim of the transliteration is not to substitute the original script but, rather to apply it as an easier alternative in daily usage, for reasons of generalization & catching up with fast growing cultures. The title of the book indicates, that the author considers it the last stage of the development of the language. The author sets new simple nomenclature to the Coptic alphabet in its transliteration, plus, very few technical modifications in grammar to fit with the new stage. These when added together give a hint the transliteration exceeds being a mere alterantive to what might be called with caution a contemporary substitute.
The application of transliteration did not exceed the lessons downhere that were sent to people abroad, SMS, some e-mails. The idea was not discussed in public before or evaluated.
The MIT is a bit similar to what Kamal Ataturk has made to the old Ottoman language which is now written in Turkish script using Latin letters. It resembles also, other Lebanese & Syrian trials to write their Colloquial languages in Latin letters for similar reasons. It is worth to note that the Latin letters in the transliteration table down here do not necessarily reflect the same value letters have in Latin, English, French or Spanish... In order to learn the real pronunciation you may refer to the learning corner of the web site. The table down here is only the new script form and value in comparison to Coptic script.
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*Ph, Th, Ch combinations are only used in Greek words, so as to be closer to Latin spelling (but not pronounciation).The usage of these letters are modifications that are not related to the author.Example of the application of transliteration:
Amwini anau epiuwini ete`mmau
u pe pai ou pe pai
tirwuni ac'mnai
etbe pai pou ouxaiNihiomi nem nirwmi
uon niben hi Kemi
autxismu 'mpiuwini
'nte Mariam tirwuni
tenmenriti tirwuni
tenmenriti 'mmeini
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