Coptic alphabet

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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.

1 History of the Coptic Alphabet
2 Coptic in Unicode
3 Alphabet table
4 "Old Bohairic" Alphabet table
5 See also
6 References
7 External links

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History of the Coptic Alphabet

Template:Alphabet 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 Demotic. During the first two centuries of the Common Era, an entire series of magicial 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 Old Nubian alphabet—used to write the Old Nubian language [unrelated to the Coptic 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 incorrectly thought that Old Nubian used the entire Coptic alphabet directly, but this is not the case.

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Coptic in 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 ... U+2CFF. See also: Coptic block in Unicode (PDF), Greek block in Unicode (PDF) (which includes 7 Coptic letters derived from Demotic, and needing to be included in any complete implementation of Coptic).

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Alphabet table

Image:Coptic.gif

Letter	Name	Transliteration
Ⲁⲁ	alfa	a
Ⲃⲃ	vida/beta	b, v
Ⲅⲅ	gamma	g
Ⲇⲇ	delta	d
Ⲉⲉ	eie	e
Ⲋⲋ	sou	(so)
Ⲍⲍ	zeta	z
Ⲏⲏ	eeta	ee
Ⲑⲑ	theta	th
Ⲓⲓ	iota	i, y
Ⲕⲕ	kapa	k
Ⲗⲗ	laula/lavla	l
Ⲙⲙ	mi	m
Ⲛⲛ	ni	n
Ⲝⲝ	exsi	x, ex
Ⲟⲟ	o	o
Ⲡⲡ	pi	p
Ⲣⲣ	ro	r
Ⲥⲥ	sima	s
Ⲧⲧ	tav	t
Ⲩⲩ	epsilon	v, u, y
Ⲫⲫ	fi	ph, f
Ⲭⲭ	ki	kh
Ⲯⲯ	epsi	ps
Ⲱⲱ	oou	ooo
Ϣϣ	shai	sh
Ϥϥ	fai	f
Ϧϧ	khai	خ, (kh)
Ϩϩ	hori	h
Ϫϫ	janja	g, j
Ϭϭ	chima	ch,
Ϯϯ	ti	ti

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

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"Old Bohairic" Alphabet table

Alpha (a, a) as in far & at
Wida or Bida (b,w) as in bad, was
Gamma (g,n,gh) ...
Dalda (d) as in duck
Eia (a) as in at
So (6)
Zada Or Zida (z)
Hada Or Hida (h) (a, ee) as in at, teen
Tita Or Tida (t) as in town
ioda (i) as in pin
Kabba (K)
Laula (L)
Mei (M)
Nei(N)
Eksi (X)
O (o,oa) as in off, oat
Bei (b) as in boat
Ro (R)
Sima (S)
Dau (D,T) as in do, wet
ha ( i, w) as in pin, how
Fi (F,B) as in fat, bat
Kei (K,sh, kh)
Ebsi (bs)
Omega (oa) as in boat
shaay (sh)
faay (f)
khaay (kh)
hoary (h, h) as hat & occasionally, like haa (7a) in Arabic as in temsa7, 7arb
jandja (j) as in job
shima or gshima (sh)
de (de) as in dig

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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.

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External links

Learn the Coptic language online (in English, Arabic including video tutorials): from Saint Takla Haymanout Coptic Orthodox Church - Alexandria, Egypt
Download Free Coptic Fonts
The Coptic Alphabet
Coptic Fonts Standard; a movement of Coptic Christians to standardize ASCII-based Coptic computer typefaces with a long term goal of designing Coptic Unicode fonts after disunification with the Greek block.
http://ra.dkuug.dk/JTC1/SC2/WG2/docs/n2636.pdf Rare charts showing derivation of the added letters from Demotic are on pp.7 and 8 of this document.