COPTIC ALPHABET

The 'Coptic alphabet' is the script used for writing the Coptic language. The repertoire of glyphs is based on the Greek alphabet augmented by letters borrowed from the Demotic. There are in fact several Coptic alphabets as the coptic writing system may vary greatly among the various dialects and subdialects of the Coptic language.

Contents

History

Unicode

Alphabet table

See also

References

External links

History

The Coptic alphabet has 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 Demotic. During the first two centuries of the Common Era, an entire series of magical texts were written in what scholars term ''Old Coptic'', Egyptian language texts written in the Greek alphabet. A number of letters, however, were derived from Demotic, and many of these (though not all) are used in "true" Coptic writing. With the spread of Christianity in Egypt, by the late 3rd century AD knowledge of hieroglyphic writing was lost, as well as Demotic slightly later, making way for a writing system more closely associated with the Christian church. By the 4th century the Coptic alphabet was "standardised", particularly for the Sahidic dialect. (It should be noted that there are a number of differences between the alphabets as used in the various dialects in Coptic.)
The alphabet 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 Old Nubian alphabet—used to write Old Nubian, a Nilo-Saharan language —is written mainly in an uncial Greek alphabet, which borrows Coptic and Meroitic letters of Demotic origin into its inventory.

Unicode

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 to U+2CFF. The Greek block includes seven Coptic letters derived from Demotic, and need to be included in any complete implementation of Coptic.

Alphabet table

image	majuscule	minuscule	numeric value	name	translit. (IPA)
Copte_a.png			1	alpʰa	a ([, , ])
Copte_b.png			2	bēta	b, v, w
Copte_g.png			3	gamma	g (/k/, /g, ŋ, ɣ/)
Copte_d.png			4	dalda	d (/d, ð/)
Copte_e.png			5	ei	e
Copte_soou.png			6	sou	–
Copte_z.png			7	zēta	z (/s/, /z/)
Copte_ee.png			8	ēta	ē (/eː, ɛː, i/)
Copte_th.png			9	tʰēta	tʰ (/tʰ, θ/)
Copte_i.png			10	iōta	i (/i, j/)
Copte_k.png			20	kappa	k, q
Copte_l.png			30	laula	l
Copte_m.png			40	mē	m
Copte_n.png			50	nē	n
Copte_ks.png			60	kˢi	kˢ (/ks/)
Copte_o.png			70	ou	o
Copte_p.png			80	pi	p, b
Copte_r.png			100	rō	r
Copte_s.png			200	sēmma	s
Copte_t.png			300	tau	t (/t, d/)
Copte_u.png			400	he	u (/u, w, i, v/)
Copte_ph.png			500	pʰi	pʰ (/pʰ, f/)
Copte_kh.png			600	kʰi	kʰ (/kʰ, χ, ʃ/)
Copte_ps.png			700	pˢi	pˢ (/ps/)
Copte_oo.png			800	ō	ō (/oː/)
Copte_sh.png				šai	š (/ʃ/)
Copte_f.png			90	fai	f
Copte_x.png				ḫai	ḫ (/x/)
Copte_h.png				hori	h, ḥ
Copte_dj.png				ḏanḏia	ḏ (/ʤ, g, ɟ/)
Copte_tsh.png				čima	č (/q, ʧ, gʲ, ʃ/)
Copte_ti.png				ti	ti (/ti, c/)
Copte_r_barre.png			900	pˢis ənše

Letters derived from the demotic:

hieroglyph		demotic		coptic
SA	→		→	š
f	→		→	f
M12	→		→	ḫ
F18:Y1	→		→	h
U29	→		→	ḏ
k	→		→	č
D37:t	→		→	ti

See also

★ Coptic pronunciation reform

★ Institute of Coptic Studies

★ Coptic Orthodox Church

References

★ 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.

★ Kasser, Rodolphe. 1991. "Alphabet in Coptic, Greek". In ''The Coptic Encyclopedia'', edited by Aziz S. Atiya. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, Volume 8. 30–32.

★ Kasser, Rodolphe. 1991. "Alphabets, Coptic". In ''The Coptic Encyclopedia'', edited by Aziz S. Atiya. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, Volume 8. 32–41.

★ Kasser, Rodolphe. 1991. "Alphabets, Old Coptic". In ''The Coptic Encyclopedia'', edited by Aziz S. Atiya. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, Volume 8. 41–45.

External links

★ The Coptic Alphabet (omniglot.com)

★ Michael Everson's Revised proposal to add the Coptic alphabet to the BMP of the UCS

★ Coptic Unicode Fonts Unicode 4.1.0 compliant fonts

★ Download Free Coptic Fonts