Taddakia

Marmoura99

What is a Taddakia? I've only just read this term in one of HH Pope Shenouda's books and I have no idea what it is!

Thanks

minatasgeel

[quote author=Marmoura99 link=topic=8912.msg111547#msg111547 date=1267682259]
What is a Taddakia? I've only just read this term in one of HH Pope Shenouda's books and I have no idea what it is!

Thanks


arabic word for Theotokia.....even though i personally still use"ثيؤطوكية"....which is used in many arabic psalmodies....not something i made up  :)

epchois_nai_nan

Wow, I've never heard of this before, but interestingly, that's very close to how you would pronounce the word:

[coptic]:eotokia[/coptic]

in Old Bohairic: "Ta-odokia"

Even though it is a Greek word, it appears as though it was pronounced with the values of the Egyptian Coptic alphabet for a while, even though it was changed to match modern Greek with the pronunciation reform of the 1850s.

Marmoura99

Thanks! I always referred to them as Theotokias too...didn't know there was another word for them!

ilovesaintmark

It is a similar process of evolution for another term:  Ga-Banyout, which is the Sahidi Arabic term for an engagement ceremony.  Ga-Banyout' is the arabic interpretation of the Coptic:  Je Penyot, which are the first words of the Lord Prayer, i.e., "Our Father".

There are a whole lot of these oddities of linguistics.

jydeacon

Another word similarity is the word Tarabeza which is table in egyptian arabic, while in coptic it is [coptic]`Trapeza[/coptic]. Another corruption of the coptic words would be the name Bola-Paul, while in proper arabic its Bolous, and in Coptic its [coptic]Pauloc[/coptic] (which actually could prove the theory behind Old Bohairic) ;)

minatasgeel

wait......i got the best one ever,
i was searching for "fool medammes" and according to wikipedia (or whoever added the info there), "and medames is a Coptic word meaning 'buried.'"

did you ever think that?!

jydeacon

Hmm that may be a bit far fetched, I looked up bury and buried in the coptic dictionary i have and it wasn't in there as mademes. Maybe it could be a sahidic or fayumic thing?

ilovesaintmark

eating fava beans buries me

Marmoura99

hmm... I just got a little confused! I know these are different dialects, but what's the difference between Sahidic, fayumic, and old bohairic?

minatasgeel

[quote author=Marmoura99 link=topic=8912.msg111574#msg111574 date=1267766096]
hmm... I just got a little confused! I know these are different dialects, but what's the difference between Sahidic, fayumic, and old bohairic?


- Sahidic refers to the Se'eedi (Se3eedi) dialect. In english is whoever in upper egypt, from Giza to the south.
- Fayumic refers to the dialect in and around Fayoum and it is very distinct and important because in that area many coptic manuscripts of coptic book were kept--that includes litirgical books like kholagi, psalmodies..etc.
- Old Bohairic, or atleast Bohairic in general refers to the "Behere" area of egypt, north of Giza or you can just say the Delta and area around it. Old Bohairic is the dialect that Fr. SHenouda Maher proved with his thesis (phd from oxford i think) to be the original dialect of Coptic handed down. Whatever is still called "Bohairic" or even Greco-Bohairic is the one that you normally hear us sing with in church--the one that is based more on the Greek pronunciations of the letters.

Marmoura99

Thanks for the clarification, Mina. I thought they were all dialects of Coptic at first!

ilovesaintmark

They are.  These are the principle three.  There are others, including:  Akhmimmic.

peterfarrington

Are the dialects as different as English and American, or more distantly related like Dutch and German?

Father Peter

ilovesaintmark

In some regards similar to the ill-kinship of American and English.  The American dialect is barabaric and detracting from any linguistics intent.  Also, in the same regard to Mandarin and Cantonese Chinese--the charactures are the same, but the pronunciation radically different.

I would put Dutch and German as being quite similar but in essence two languages from the same family, similar to the kinship of French, Italian, Rumanian, Portuguese, Spanish, as Romance languages.

I hope that this helps.

jydeacon

[quote author=peterfarrington link=topic=8912.msg111591#msg111591 date=1267817579]
Are the dialects as different as English and American, or more distantly related like Dutch and German?

Father Peter


I would agree with ilovesaintmark, it is somewhat related to English the way americans speak and how british speak. However, its not only pronunciation but spelling of words and use for things change as well. I can't think of an example in coptic off the top of my head, but something like theater and theatre, except in coptic the pronunciation is different and some words you would only find in a sahidic/fayumic/bohairic text depending on which of the dialects you are looking at.

epchois_nai_nan

They are only about as different as the Arabic spoken in Upper and Lower Egypt. There were small differences in vocabulary (e.g. people around Alexandria would have used 'em-ep-redi' to mean 'like/as' whereas people in the Sahid wouldve said 'en-te-he') and some more obvious differences in the pronunciation, which some scholars believe have survived in the different pronunciations of Arabic throughout Egypt. Overall though I think someone in the Sahid could have easily carried on a conversation with someone in Akhmim or Alexandria, despite trying to quash their smirks at the strange way they spoke some words :) That said, the Coptic we use in Church (Greco Bohairic) sounds quite different from all the other Coptic dialects, even Bohairic itself as it was last spoken. This is because in the 1850's Pope Kyrillos IV instituted a pronunciation reform where he changed the values of many Coptic letters to match those of Modern Greek, even though Coptic words were first spelt with Greek letters more than 2000 years ago. The result has been that the Coptic we use in Church is a sort of hybrid between Modern Greek and Coptic, and thus sounds much
different to the other Egyptian dialects and the way Coptic was used for 1900 years before
that. I would say that about half thewords in Bohairic were affected significantly by the pronunciation change, some of which are now pronounced in a way that is barely reminiscent of the original pronunciation.

E.g. - 'the heavens'
Sahidic: pewe
Old Boharic: pewi
Greco Bohairic: fee-owi

'because'
S: et-be
OB: et-be
GB: ethve   

jydeacon

Epchois_nai_nan, I am amazed at your knowledge, do you have a specific source besides Abouna Shenouda Maher? I have been looking into these difference but have not found much.

On a side note, I have a recording with people using Old Bohairic during tasbeha if anyone would like it PM and I will try and get it to you.

epchois_nai_nan

Most of my information comes simply from comparing Bohairic words with their equivalents in Sahidic and Demotic (which was the last stage of Egyptian writing before Coptic, a very simplified set of hieroglyphics). The main problem with Bohairic is that it uses several letters which have different values at different times (e.g. [coptic]j[/coptic] 'djundja' which is either a 'g' or a 'dj') and also uses several letters for the same sound (e.g. [coptic]p[/coptic]  and [coptic]v[/coptic] which both represent a 'p' sound (but not in Greco Bohairic)). The thing is, Coptic was a writing system invented for people who already knew the language, so these inconsistencies didn't bother them. For us however, having lost the original pronunciation, they can be very confusing. Luckily in Sahidic these problems don't exist, the spelling system is MUCH simpler and each letter has only one value. That's why comparing them has been very useful.

To give an example, the definite article ('the') for a male noun in Bohairic is either [coptic]pi[/coptic], [coptic]`p[/coptic] or [coptic]`v[/coptic]; there is no debate about the first two, they are 'pi' and 'ep' respectively. However according to GB, the last one is pronounced 'ef' (as in Efnouti), which doesn't seem to make much sense. When you look at Sahidic (and all the other dialects for that matter), the only definite articles for a male noun are [coptic]pe[/coptic] and [coptic]`p[/coptic]. When you compare that with the fact that almost every single Bohairic word that uses a '[coptic]v[/coptic]' is spelt with a [coptic]p[/coptic] in Sahidic (I've included some more examples at the bottom of this post), it becomes clear that the most likely original pronunciation of the '[coptic]v[/coptic]' was a 'p'. On top of that, I found out recently that during the period when Greek letters were first being used to write Egyptian, the letter '[coptic]v[/coptic]' was pronounced as a 'p' even in Greek!


Examples:
'heaven'
Sahidic: [coptic]pe[/coptic]
Bohairic: [coptic]ve[/coptic]


'to beget'
Sahidic: [coptic]jpo[/coptic]
Bohairic: [coptic]`jvo[/coptic]


'cup'
Sahidic: [coptic]apot[/coptic]
Bohairic: [coptic]avot[/coptic]


'to heal'
Sahidic: [coptic]pahre[/coptic]
Bohairic: [coptic]vaqri[/coptic]

Abouna Shenouda's pronunciation seems to get a lot right, but it seems that he makes several mistakes as well. I've asked a professor of Coptology and one or two other experts and all of them pretty much agree that Abouna Shenouda's pronunciation is not completely accurate - there's still a lot of work to be done in this area.

Hope that helps

PFM

Remnkemi

[quote author=minagir link=topic=8912.msg111570#msg111570 date=1267756705]
wait......i got the best one ever,
i was searching for "fool medammes" and according to wikipedia (or whoever added the info there), "and medames is a Coptic word meaning 'buried.'"

did you ever think that?!


Hello all, I know for sure medames does not mean buried. "medames" is a Coptic derivative of the Greek word [coptic]matame;eia[/coptic]. Coptic commonly borrowed Greek words and removed certain suffixes or endings (and sometimes it removed prefixes or the beginnings of words).  In this case, the Greek word [coptic]matame;eia[/coptic] entered Coptic as [coptic]matame;[/coptic]. Using Old Bohairic pronunciation (t=d, th=s), you pronounce it as medames.

So what does [coptic]matame;[/coptic] mean? It is the adverb form of mixed meaning "mixedly". So "foul medames" means beans mixedly, or beans baked and soaked mixedly. Nothing is buried.

Hope this helped.
George

Addition: After thinking about it for a little, I think the Coptic borrowed word is still [coptic]matame;eia[/coptic], not [coptic]matame;[/coptic]. Both words are not found in any Coptic dictionary. [coptic]matame;eia[/coptic] pronounced in Old Bohairic would be "medamesaa". My guess is that after awhile, under the influence of Arabic linguistics, the last syllable sounded like the Arabic fat-ha accent. In colloquial Egyptian Arabic, the fat-ha accent is not always pronounced but converted into a sakoot (a silent syllable). So medamesaa would be converted into medames. Sorry about the confusion.

Marmoura99

You all have such knowledge of the Coptic language... God Bless! How can I learn about the Coptic language? Are there any books you would suggest reading?

thanks.

jydeacon

The book "so you want to learn Coptic" is a great start. After that it is mostly something you have to work on with liturgical texts which will give you a much better understanding than you would think, understanding something in it's original language is much deeper than English or Arabic.

ophadece

[quote author=minagir link=topic=8912.msg111549#msg111549 date=1267683453]
[quote author=Marmoura99 link=topic=8912.msg111547#msg111547 date=1267682259]
What is a Taddakia? I've only just read this term in one of HH Pope Shenouda's books and I have no idea what it is!

Thanks


arabic word for Theotokia.....even though i personally still use"ثيؤطوكية"....which is used in many arabic psalmodies....not something i made up  :)

This is not an Arabic word - it is the word[coptic] ;eotokia [/coptic]in authentic Coptic. The vowels "[coptic]eo[/coptic]" used to be fused in every day language - take as examples the names [coptic]:eodroc [/coptic]which is pronounced as /tadros/ and [coptic]Vilo;eoc [/coptic]as /Faltas/

[quote author=epchois_nai_nan link=topic=8912.msg111551#msg111551 date=1267685061]
Wow, I've never heard of this before, but interestingly, that's very close to how you would pronounce the word:

[coptic]:eotokia[/coptic]

in Old Bohairic: "Ta-odokia"

Even though it is a Greek word, it appears as though it was pronounced with the values of the Egyptian Coptic alphabet for a while, even though it was changed to match modern Greek with the pronunciation reform of the 1850s.


Well done Ebshois_nai_nan

[quote author=ilovesaintmark link=topic=8912.msg111568#msg111568 date=1267753028]
It is a similar process of evolution for another term:  Ga-Banyout, which is the Sahidi Arabic term for an engagement ceremony.  Ga-Banyout' is the arabic interpretation of the Coptic:  Je Penyot, which are the first words of the Lord Prayer, i.e., "Our Father".

There are a whole lot of these oddities of linguistics.


"je peniot" is not a true Coptic pronunciation. That is what people now call Greco-Bohairic because it was introduced in the latter half of the nineteenth century after 80 - 90% of Copts starts forgetting their language. /gabania:d(t)/ is probably a Sa'idic pronunciation for /jabania:d/ the Bohairic

[quote author=minagir link=topic=8912.msg111570#msg111570 date=1267756705]
wait......i got the best one ever,
i was searching for "fool medammes" and according to wikipedia (or whoever added the info there), "and medames is a Coptic word meaning 'buried.'"

did you ever think that?!


I believe it comes from the word [coptic]matwmcc[/coptic] (probably the word [coptic]vel [/coptic]is feminine). That is the imperative form of the English verb "immerse" which means that the beans are to be immersed in their water (juice, broth, brine, or whatever - sorry zero in my cooking skills :)). Can't remember where I read this piece of information.

ophadece

[quote author=peterfarrington link=topic=8912.msg111591#msg111591 date=1267817579]
Are the dialects as different as English and American, or more distantly related like Dutch and German?

Father Peter


I don't know the exactly difference between German and Dutch but I would liken the differences to such, rather than British and American. Apparently, letters used to be pronounced differently across the dialects and also pronunciation was much much different especially in the case of Bohairic and Sa'idic. [coptic]qen [/coptic]in Sa'idic is [coptic]h=n [/coptic]and the use of the [coptic]jinkim [/coptic]is almost nil in Sa'idic as compared to Bohairic.
[coptic]`trapeza [/coptic]is interesting, because it seems that in some dialects the [coptic]jinkim [/coptic]strangely affected the letter next to the one on which it is placed as in /tarabeiza/ and [coptic]`ctauroc[/coptic] /sedaros/ [coptic]`triac [/coptic]as /derias/.

[quote author=epchois_nai_nan link=topic=8912.msg111623#msg111623 date=1267827532]
They are only about as different as the Arabic spoken in Upper and Lower Egypt. There were small differences in vocabulary (e.g. people around Alexandria would have used 'em-ep-redi' to mean 'like/as' whereas people in the Sahid wouldve said 'en-te-he') and some more obvious differences in the pronunciation, which some scholars believe have survived in the different pronunciations of Arabic throughout Egypt. Overall though I think someone in the Sahid could have easily carried on a conversation with someone in Akhmim or Alexandria, despite trying to quash their smirks at the strange way they spoke some words :) That said, the Coptic we use in Church (Greco Bohairic) sounds quite different from all the other Coptic dialects, even Bohairic itself as it was last spoken. This is because in the 1850's Pope Kyrillos IV instituted a pronunciation reform where he changed the values of many Coptic letters to match those of Modern Greek, even though Coptic words were first spelt with Greek letters more than 2000 years ago. The result has been that the Coptic we use in Church is a sort of hybrid between Modern Greek and Coptic, and thus sounds much
different to the other Egyptian dialects and the way Coptic was used for 1900 years before
that. I would say that about half thewords in Bohairic were affected significantly by the pronunciation change, some of which are now pronounced in a way that is barely reminiscent of the original pronunciation.

E.g. - 'the heavens'
Sahidic: pewe
Old Boharic: pewi
Greco Bohairic: fee-owi

'because'
S: et-be
OB: et-be
GB: ethve   


There is no such a sound as "p" in Coptic, and probably the only few words that were used with an aspirated "b" were abandoned from Demotic due to their link to magic and sorcery with the prior Egyptians.

[quote author=epchois_nai_nan link=topic=8912.msg111679#msg111679 date=1267929943]
Most of my information comes simply from comparing Bohairic words with their equivalents in Sahidic and Demotic (which was the last stage of Egyptian writing before Coptic, a very simplified set of hieroglyphics). The main problem with Bohairic is that it uses several letters which have different values at different times (e.g. [coptic]j[/coptic] 'djundja' which is either a 'g' or a 'dj') and also uses several letters for the same sound (e.g. [coptic]p[/coptic]  and [coptic]v[/coptic] which both represent a 'p' sound (but not in Greco Bohairic)). The thing is, Coptic was a writing system invented for people who already knew the language, so these inconsistencies didn't bother them. For us however, having lost the original pronunciation, they can be very confusing. Luckily in Sahidic these problems don't exist, the spelling system is MUCH simpler and each letter has only one value. That's why comparing them has been very useful.

To give an example, the definite article ('the') for a male noun in Bohairic is either [coptic]pi[/coptic], [coptic]`p[/coptic] or [coptic]`v[/coptic]; there is no debate about the first two, they are 'pi' and 'ep' respectively. However according to GB, the last one is pronounced 'ef' (as in Efnouti), which doesn't seem to make much sense. When you look at Sahidic (and all the other dialects for that matter), the only definite articles for a male noun are [coptic]pe[/coptic] and [coptic]`p[/coptic]. When you compare that with the fact that almost every single Bohairic word that uses a '[coptic]v[/coptic]' is spelt with a [coptic]p[/coptic] in Sahidic (I've included some more examples at the bottom of this post), it becomes clear that the most likely original pronunciation of the '[coptic]v[/coptic]' was a 'p'. On top of that, I found out recently that during the period when Greek letters were first being used to write Egyptian, the letter '[coptic]v[/coptic]' was pronounced as a 'p' even in Greek!


Examples:
'heaven'
Sahidic: [coptic]pe[/coptic]
Bohairic: [coptic]ve[/coptic]


'to beget'
Sahidic: [coptic]jpo[/coptic]
Bohairic: [coptic]`jvo[/coptic]


'cup'
Sahidic: [coptic]apot[/coptic]
Bohairic: [coptic]avot[/coptic]


'to heal'
Sahidic: [coptic]pahre[/coptic]
Bohairic: [coptic]vaqri[/coptic]

Abouna Shenouda's pronunciation seems to get a lot right, but it seems that he makes several mistakes as well. I've asked a professor of Coptology and one or two other experts and all of them pretty much agree that Abouna Shenouda's pronunciation is not completely accurate - there's still a lot of work to be done in this area.

Hope that helps

PFM



Have you ever stopped to think how strange it is when we say "[coptic]tai`trapeza ;ai[/coptic]" and "[coptic]paiehoou vai[/coptic]" and how in the Greco-Bohairic this is spoilt?

[quote author=Remnkemi link=topic=8912.msg111683#msg111683 date=1267935363]
[quote author=minagir link=topic=8912.msg111570#msg111570 date=1267756705]
wait......i got the best one ever,
i was searching for "fool medammes" and according to wikipedia (or whoever added the info there), "and medames is a Coptic word meaning 'buried.'"

did you ever think that?!


Hello all, I know for sure medames does not mean buried. "medames" is a Coptic derivative of the Greek word [coptic]matame;eia[/coptic]. Coptic commonly borrowed Greek words and removed certain suffixes or endings (and sometimes it removed prefixes or the beginnings of words).  In this case, the Greek word [coptic]matame;eia[/coptic] entered Coptic as [coptic]matame;[/coptic]. Using Old Bohairic pronunciation (t=d, th=s), you pronounce it as medames.

So what does [coptic]matame;[/coptic] mean? It is the adverb form of mixed meaning "mixedly". So "foul medames" means beans mixedly, or beans baked and soaked mixedly. Nothing is buried.

Hope this helped.
George

Addition: After thinking about it for a little, I think the Coptic borrowed word is still [coptic]matame;eia[/coptic], not [coptic]matame;[/coptic]. Both words are not found in any Coptic dictionary. [coptic]matame;eia[/coptic] pronounced in Old Bohairic would be "medamesaa". My guess is that after awhile, under the influence of Arabic linguistics, the last syllable sounded like the Arabic fat-ha accent. In colloquial Egyptian Arabic, the fat-ha accent is not always pronounced but converted into a sakoot (a silent syllable). So medamesaa would be converted into medames. Sorry about the confusion.


Please refer to my post George, and let me know your opinion. By the way, I am aware that the vowels in Coptic are pronounced liberally as in the word "[coptic]vel[/coptic]" /fo:l/, and the word "[coptic]wik[/coptic]" which is actually pronounced /3eish/ to this day in Egypt.

Marmoura99

jydeacon, do you know where I could get that book?

I feel so lost with everyone discussing this and I really want to learn more!

thanks

jydeacon

www.orthodoxbookstore.org is the only place i know of that sells it, check your church bookstore it maybe there you never now. If not I know they(orthodox bookstore) have it as that is where i myself got it.

Marmoura99

Thank you! The problem with that is that S&H is usually much more expensive than the book itself. I once tried to order books from there, to which the total was approximately $20 and S&H was almost $30!! I'm not sure why it's so expensive since I live in the same country as it's manufactured...

I'll try to find it elsewhere though... or maybe something similar!

thanks again.

jydeacon

Check amazon.com as well they might have it for less?

Marmoura99

I've never tried amazon before... is it reliable?

Thanks for all your help!

jydeacon

Yeah they are pretty legit.