Ok, unlike Copticuser20 I am really interested in those debates. Keep debating so I can keep learning lol. However, I think I am missing a big gap so would you please explain what are your views in each 'dialect' and BASIC history about each one of them.
P.S I donot want to interrupt your debate so if you want please start a new thread.
> I think I am missing a big gap so would you please explain what are your views in each 'dialect' and BASIC history about each one of them. <
Thanks to Google, anyone can find information about Coptic dialects and their systems of pronunciation. The GB and OB pronunciations were introduced in the 19th and the 20th centuries, respectively. Both are recent developments and, IMHO, they are inaccurate. The following brief article summarizes their basic history:
Sahidic pronunciation, on the other hand, is quite similar to the ancient Greek letters. I believe it should be readily applicable to Bohairic / liturgical Coptic, that it would correct many errors, and that it has the potential of unifying advocates of GB and OB since it contains features of both of them.
I disagree with your assessment. Sahidic is closer to GB than it is to Greek. Sahidic and GB differes in only in a handful of letters in the following ways: (1) There is no j in Sahidic. All words with j in Bohairic have their Sahidic equivalents with [. (2) Greek loan words in Sahidic with the letters ; x v , ' are pronounced as voiced stops, not voiceless stops. So ; for t + h, x for k + c, v for p + h, , for k + h and ' for p + c.
In Sahidic ;e is not pronounced /the/ but it is a contraction of the, pronounced in Sahidic as /(e)t he/. In Greek, these letters are pronounced like GB. For example, ;allaca which means sea is not pronounced /et hal las sa/ (as Sahidic would pronounce it) but /tha la sa/ (as GB would pronounce it).
Then of course, Sahidic and Bohairic have pronunciation not found in Greek. The aleph and ayin in Demotic and Old Coptic is found in Sahidic and Bohairic (both OB and GB), but not in Greek.
To reduce Sahidic pronunciation to a clone of Greek (or vice versa) simply ignores manuscript evidence of Sahidic and Greek bilingualism, as well as 50-100 years of Sahidic Coptic research.
The simple fact is Koine Greek is very close to GB at one end and Sahidic is close to GB at the other end, but Koine Greek is not closer to Sahidic than GB. OB is no where near Greek pronunciation and significantly different than Sahidic pronunciation.
Dear Remenkimi, First of all, I struggle to see where the ayin fits in Greco-Bohairic.. secondly, don't understand your statement of old Bohairic being much different to Sa'idic and GB. Not exactly sure to be honest Oujai
[quote author=ophadece link=topic=12394.msg151751#msg151751 date=1329035944] Dear Remenkimi, First of all, I struggle to see where the ayin fits in Greco-Bohairic.. secondly, don't understand your statement of old Bohairic being much different to Sa'idic and GB. Not exactly sure to be honest Oujai
Ophadece, We discussed this in this thread. Here is the quote from the Coptic Encyclopedia and my comments from that thread:
"According to the Coptic Encyclopedia, "Ayin belong to the phonological inventory of Ancient and also later Egyptian, perhaps even as far as the beginning of Demotic. However, it probably does not belong any longer to the phonological inventory of Coptic or even Pre-Coptic, not even as a Cryptophoneme, in contrast to Aleph. .... Ayin nonetheless plays an important role in Coptic phonology....itself has not entirely disappeared but has survived in some way, being transformed into the phonological aleph.
In other words, there is no eyin letter or sound in Coptic phonology proper but something like an ayin phoneme was incorporated into the Coptic cyrptophoneme Aleph (Hamza in Arabic). But this conclusion is not universally accepted among Coptic linguists."
So you're right. There is no ayin proper in Coptic as there was in Ancient Egyptian. But something like the ayin phoneme incorporated into the "aleph" in both Sahidic and Bohairic Coptic (no distinction between OB and GB) and it is not found in Ancient, Koine, Demotic or Modern Greek.
Secondly, when I said OB is different than Sahidic, I was referring to letters like p, which in Sahidic is /p/ and never /b/ like OB. Sahidic t is always /t/ and not /d/. While Sahidic does pronounce b as /w/ (like Beca as /wesa/), it is not universally applicable like it is in OB. So ououyyb (a priest) in Sahidic is pronounced /oweeb/, not /oweew/. These Sahidic examples are nearly identical in GB.
Secondly, when I said OB is different than Sahidic, I was referring to letters like p, which in Sahidic is /p/ and never /b/ like OB. Sahidic t is always /t/ and not /d/. While Sahidic does pronounce b as /w/ (like Beca as /wesa/), it is not universally applicable like it is in OB. So ououyyb (a priest) in Sahidic is pronounced /oweeb/, not /oweew/. These Sahidic examples are nearly identical in GB.
There are few inaccuracies here that should be addressed.
The letter B in Bohairic can be either "B" as in boy or "w" as in Wisa. Here are some examples:
[quote author=Remnkemi link=topic=12394.msg151805#msg151805 date=1329158486] [quote author=ophadece link=topic=12394.msg151751#msg151751 date=1329035944] Dear Remenkimi, First of all, I struggle to see where the ayin fits in Greco-Bohairic.. secondly, don't understand your statement of old Bohairic being much different to Sa'idic and GB. Not exactly sure to be honest Oujai
Ophadece, We discussed this in this thread. Here is the quote from the Coptic Encyclopedia and my comments from that thread:
"According to the Coptic Encyclopedia, "Ayin belong to the phonological inventory of Ancient and also later Egyptian, perhaps even as far as the beginning of Demotic. However, it probably does not belong any longer to the phonological inventory of Coptic or even Pre-Coptic, not even as a Cryptophoneme, in contrast to Aleph. .... Ayin nonetheless plays an important role in Coptic phonology....itself has not entirely disappeared but has survived in some way, being transformed into the phonological aleph.
In other words, there is no eyin letter or sound in Coptic phonology proper but something like an ayin phoneme was incorporated into the Coptic cyrptophoneme Aleph (Hamza in Arabic). But this conclusion is not universally accepted among Coptic linguists."
So you're right. There is no ayin proper in Coptic as there was in Ancient Egyptian. But something like the ayin phoneme incorporated into the "aleph" in both Sahidic and Bohairic Coptic (no distinction between OB and GB) and it is not found in Ancient, Koine, Demotic or Modern Greek.
Secondly, when I said OB is different than Sahidic, I was referring to letters like p, which in Sahidic is /p/ and never /b/ like OB. Sahidic t is always /t/ and not /d/. While Sahidic does pronounce b as /w/ (like Beca as /wesa/), it is not universally applicable like it is in OB. So ououyyb (a priest) in Sahidic is pronounced /oweeb/, not /oweew/. These Sahidic examples are nearly identical in GB.
Does this clarify things?
Dear Remenkimi, In the thread you gave me the link for, you were talking about Bohairic Coptic (which I thought you meant proper authentic Bohairic Coptic, and I was fine with that then), but here you seem to imply Greco-Bohairic as well as old Bohairic. I disagree. There has never been any teaching of ayin pronunciation in what people call Greco-Bohairic dialect. As for the letter p in Sa'idic, I am not sure where you got the idea that it is pronounced as /p/ not /b/. That is not correct. As for the other letters I think imikhail replied already. Oujai qen `P[C
The Coptic Encyclopedia does not make the distinction between Old Bohairic and Greco Bohairic in regards to the phoneme ayin or aleph. There hasn't been, as far as I know, any study that discusses any differences in ayin or aleph in OB vs. GB. You will also notice that the Coptic Encyclopedia is not talking about how GB is taught. It only makes the distinction of Coptic vs. Ancient Egyptian.
Regarding Sahidic, having taken Sahidic Coptic at the graduate degree level, I can tell you that no pronunciation exercise or discussions in class with Sahidic words containing "p" was it ever pronounced /b/.
I disagree with imikhail about the other letters. In all my Coptic classes, senoute was it ever pronounced /shenouda/. It was always /shE noo tay/. Our reading exercises in Budge's "Life of Paphnutios" pavnoute never said /bab nuda/. It was always /paf noo tay/. This is why I said Sahidic phonology is closer to GB than OB.
I'm afraid those aren't strictly correct teachings.. sorry, but is it proper of me to say this about your long life education? Well, I just said it... Oujai
Like imikhail said, the 't' in Sahidic is sometimes a t and sometimes a d. This is true as Sahidic words were sometimes written with a tau and sometimes a delta.
Taking your example Pavnoute, Sahidic is only inconsistent with OB when it comes to the P (I have been thought at the uni that it's always a P, but now I'm critical of this notion. It might be inconsistent with the Ph, but in OB it's sometimes ph and sometimes b. And it's inconsistent with the last 'e')
Sahidic: Paph nou te (imo) OB: Bab nou de GB: Paph no tee
I think it's impossible to say overall which of the two is closer tham Sahidic., as it differs concerning different consonants
It's irrelevant how you think Paphnoti is pronounced in Sahidic or how Paphnoti should be pronounced in Sahidic. I'm telling you it is not babnoudi or babnouda. Every univeristy in the world teaches a standard Sahidic pronunciation and it is Pap nou tay or Paf nou tay.
You can argue that my Sahidic (and every other Sahidic course in the world) is essentially wrong because it doesn't follow OB. That's your choice. There is no evidence that Sahidic is like OB.
Again, this is pointless. The original discussion was Sahidic vs. Greek vs. Coptic pronunciation. I gave references how Sahidic is like GB at one end, and close to Greek at the other end, and no where near OB. And you guys want everything to mimic OB, even Sahidic, without any research.
> Sahidic and GB differes in only in a handful of letters in the following ways: (1) There is no j in Sahidic. All words with j in Bohairic have their Sahidic equivalents with [. <
OK.
> (2) Greek loan words in Sahidic with the letters ; x v , ' are pronounced as voiced stops, not voiceless stops. So ; for t + h, x for k + c, v for p + h, , for k +h and ' for p + c. In Sahidic ;e is not pronounced /the/ but it is a contraction of the, pronounced in Sahidic as /(e)t he/. <
I agree, and this pronunciation is quite similar to Classical / Koine Greek, which was used in the first century AD.
> In Greek, these letters are pronounced like GB. For example, ;allaca which means sea is not pronounced /et hal las sa/ (as Sahidic would pronounce it) but /tha la sa/ (as GB would pronounce it). <
This is exactly my point: Sahidic pronunciation is not analogous to Modern / Demotic Greek on which GB is based. It is also different from the OB pronunciation. But, IMHO, there are enough similarities to both that may attract proponents of GB and OB to espouse the Sahidic pronunciation as a system for pronouncing Bohairic / Liturgical Coptic.
I’m hoping for a consensus based not on a compromise of truth but on scientific evidence.
Great post Thutmose.. the dilemma is that studies say different things unfortunately due to each person's preferences for references.. I will provide a couple of old and well-trusted researches that appear to be rather "un"mutilated by Erian effendi's teachings.. Oujai
[quote author=Remnkemi link=topic=12394.msg152134#msg152134 date=1329499818] It's irrelevant how you think Paphnoti is pronounced in Sahidic or how Paphnoti should be pronounced in Sahidic. I'm telling you it is not babnoudi or babnouda. Every univeristy in the world teaches a standard Sahidic pronunciation and it is Pap nou tay or Paf nou tay.
You can argue that my Sahidic (and every other Sahidic course in the world) is essentially wrong because it doesn't follow OB. That's your choice. There is no evidence that Sahidic is like OB.
Again, this is pointless. The original discussion was Sahidic vs. Greek vs. Coptic pronunciation. I gave references how Sahidic is like GB at one end, and close to Greek at the other end, and no where near OB. And you guys want everything to mimic OB, even Sahidic, without any research.
So shenouda should be "shenou tay" according to your argument.
All the manuscripts are wrong .. we need to follow reminkimi's new way of saying shenouda
Comments
P.S I donot want to interrupt your debate so if you want please start a new thread.
Thanks to Google, anyone can find information about Coptic dialects and their systems of pronunciation. The GB and OB pronunciations were introduced in the 19th and the 20th centuries, respectively. Both are recent developments and, IMHO, they are inaccurate. The following brief article summarizes their basic history:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coptic_pronunciation_reform
Sahidic pronunciation, on the other hand, is quite similar to the ancient Greek letters. I believe it should be readily applicable to Bohairic / liturgical Coptic, that it would correct many errors, and that it has the potential of unifying advocates of GB and OB since it contains features of both of them.
OUjai
I disagree with your assessment. Sahidic is closer to GB than it is to Greek. Sahidic and GB differes in only in a handful of letters in the following ways:
(1) There is no j in Sahidic. All words with j in Bohairic have their Sahidic equivalents with [.
(2) Greek loan words in Sahidic with the letters ; x v , ' are pronounced as voiced stops, not voiceless stops. So ; for t + h, x for k + c, v for p + h, , for k + h and ' for p + c.
In Sahidic ;e is not pronounced /the/ but it is a contraction of the, pronounced in Sahidic as /(e)t he/. In Greek, these letters are pronounced like GB. For example, ;allaca which means sea is not pronounced /et hal las sa/ (as Sahidic would pronounce it) but /tha la sa/ (as GB would pronounce it).
Then of course, Sahidic and Bohairic have pronunciation not found in Greek. The aleph and ayin in Demotic and Old Coptic is found in Sahidic and Bohairic (both OB and GB), but not in Greek.
To reduce Sahidic pronunciation to a clone of Greek (or vice versa) simply ignores manuscript evidence of Sahidic and Greek bilingualism, as well as 50-100 years of Sahidic Coptic research.
The simple fact is Koine Greek is very close to GB at one end and Sahidic is close to GB at the other end, but Koine Greek is not closer to Sahidic than GB. OB is no where near Greek pronunciation and significantly different than Sahidic pronunciation.
First of all, I struggle to see where the ayin fits in Greco-Bohairic.. secondly, don't understand your statement of old Bohairic being much different to Sa'idic and GB. Not exactly sure to be honest
Oujai
Dear Remenkimi,
First of all, I struggle to see where the ayin fits in Greco-Bohairic.. secondly, don't understand your statement of old Bohairic being much different to Sa'idic and GB. Not exactly sure to be honest
Oujai
Ophadece,
We discussed this in this thread. Here is the quote from the Coptic Encyclopedia and my comments from that thread: So you're right. There is no ayin proper in Coptic as there was in Ancient Egyptian. But something like the ayin phoneme incorporated into the "aleph" in both Sahidic and Bohairic Coptic (no distinction between OB and GB) and it is not found in Ancient, Koine, Demotic or Modern Greek.
Secondly, when I said OB is different than Sahidic, I was referring to letters like p, which in Sahidic is /p/ and never /b/ like OB. Sahidic t is always /t/ and not /d/. While Sahidic does pronounce b as /w/ (like Beca as /wesa/), it is not universally applicable like it is in OB. So ououyyb (a priest) in Sahidic is pronounced /oweeb/, not /oweew/. These Sahidic examples are nearly identical in GB.
Does this clarify things?
[quote author=Remnkemi link=topic=12394.msg151724#msg151724 date=1329002712]
(1) There is no j in Sahidic. All words with j in Bohairic have their Sahidic equivalents with [.
Are you sure that there is no j in Sahidic?
edit: I don't really see what you mean with your first point.
The letter B in Bohairic can be either "B" as in boy or "w" as in Wisa. Here are some examples:
Barbara, niwan (every), nowi (sin), sobdee (prepare), wab (priest).
The "t" is pronounced as d, in both Sahidic and Bohairic. Yet sometimes is pronounced as t.
[quote author=ophadece link=topic=12394.msg151751#msg151751 date=1329035944]
Dear Remenkimi,
First of all, I struggle to see where the ayin fits in Greco-Bohairic.. secondly, don't understand your statement of old Bohairic being much different to Sa'idic and GB. Not exactly sure to be honest
Oujai
Ophadece,
We discussed this in this thread. Here is the quote from the Coptic Encyclopedia and my comments from that thread: So you're right. There is no ayin proper in Coptic as there was in Ancient Egyptian. But something like the ayin phoneme incorporated into the "aleph" in both Sahidic and Bohairic Coptic (no distinction between OB and GB) and it is not found in Ancient, Koine, Demotic or Modern Greek.
Secondly, when I said OB is different than Sahidic, I was referring to letters like p, which in Sahidic is /p/ and never /b/ like OB. Sahidic t is always /t/ and not /d/. While Sahidic does pronounce b as /w/ (like Beca as /wesa/), it is not universally applicable like it is in OB. So ououyyb (a priest) in Sahidic is pronounced /oweeb/, not /oweew/. These Sahidic examples are nearly identical in GB.
Does this clarify things?
Dear Remenkimi,
In the thread you gave me the link for, you were talking about Bohairic Coptic (which I thought you meant proper authentic Bohairic Coptic, and I was fine with that then), but here you seem to imply Greco-Bohairic as well as old Bohairic. I disagree. There has never been any teaching of ayin pronunciation in what people call Greco-Bohairic dialect.
As for the letter p in Sa'idic, I am not sure where you got the idea that it is pronounced as /p/ not /b/. That is not correct. As for the other letters I think imikhail replied already.
Oujai qen `P[C
The Coptic Encyclopedia does not make the distinction between Old Bohairic and Greco Bohairic in regards to the phoneme ayin or aleph. There hasn't been, as far as I know, any study that discusses any differences in ayin or aleph in OB vs. GB. You will also notice that the Coptic Encyclopedia is not talking about how GB is taught. It only makes the distinction of Coptic vs. Ancient Egyptian.
Regarding Sahidic, having taken Sahidic Coptic at the graduate degree level, I can tell you that no pronunciation exercise or discussions in class with Sahidic words containing "p" was it ever pronounced /b/.
I disagree with imikhail about the other letters. In all my Coptic classes, senoute was it ever pronounced /shenouda/. It was always /shE noo tay/. Our reading exercises in Budge's "Life of Paphnutios" pavnoute never said /bab nuda/. It was always /paf noo tay/. This is why I said Sahidic phonology is closer to GB than OB.
Oujai
Taking your example Pavnoute, Sahidic is only inconsistent with OB when it comes to the P (I have been thought at the uni that it's always a P, but now I'm critical of this notion. It might be inconsistent with the Ph, but in OB it's sometimes ph and sometimes b. And it's inconsistent with the last 'e')
Sahidic: Paph nou te (imo)
OB: Bab nou de
GB: Paph no tee
I think it's impossible to say overall which of the two is closer tham Sahidic., as it differs concerning different consonants
Oujai
You can argue that my Sahidic (and every other Sahidic course in the world) is essentially wrong because it doesn't follow OB. That's your choice. There is no evidence that Sahidic is like OB.
Again, this is pointless. The original discussion was Sahidic vs. Greek vs. Coptic pronunciation. I gave references how Sahidic is like GB at one end, and close to Greek at the other end, and no where near OB. And you guys want everything to mimic OB, even Sahidic, without any research.
Oujai qen `P[C
What you’ve written seems to support my assessment.
> Regarding Sahidic, having taken Sahidic Coptic at the graduate degree level, <
Great. You should be glad that I’ve described Sahidic as “Classical Coptic.”
> Sahidic is closer to GB than it is to Greek. <
Sahidic pronunciation is close to Classical / Koine Greek pronunciation. GB is close to Modern / Demotic Greek pronunciation.
http://www.greek-language.com/Alphabet.html
> Sahidic and GB differes in only in a handful of letters in the following ways: (1) There is no j in Sahidic. All words with j in Bohairic have their Sahidic equivalents with [. <
OK.
> (2) Greek loan words in Sahidic with the letters ; x v , ' are pronounced as voiced stops, not voiceless stops. So ; for t + h, x for k + c, v for p + h, , for k +h and ' for p + c. In Sahidic ;e is not pronounced /the/ but it is a contraction of the, pronounced in Sahidic as /(e)t he/. <
I agree, and this pronunciation is quite similar to Classical / Koine Greek, which was used in the first century AD.
> In Greek, these letters are pronounced like GB. For example, ;allaca which means sea is not pronounced /et hal las sa/ (as Sahidic would pronounce it) but /tha la sa/ (as GB would pronounce it). <
This is exactly my point: Sahidic pronunciation is not analogous to Modern / Demotic Greek on which GB is based. It is also different from the OB pronunciation. But, IMHO, there are enough similarities to both that may attract proponents of GB and OB to espouse the Sahidic pronunciation as a system for pronouncing Bohairic / Liturgical Coptic.
I’m hoping for a consensus based not on a compromise of truth but on scientific evidence.
Oujai
It's irrelevant how you think Paphnoti is pronounced in Sahidic or how Paphnoti should be pronounced in Sahidic. I'm telling you it is not babnoudi or babnouda. Every univeristy in the world teaches a standard Sahidic pronunciation and it is Pap nou tay or Paf nou tay.
You can argue that my Sahidic (and every other Sahidic course in the world) is essentially wrong because it doesn't follow OB. That's your choice. There is no evidence that Sahidic is like OB.
Again, this is pointless. The original discussion was Sahidic vs. Greek vs. Coptic pronunciation. I gave references how Sahidic is like GB at one end, and close to Greek at the other end, and no where near OB. And you guys want everything to mimic OB, even Sahidic, without any research.
So shenouda should be "shenou tay" according to your argument.
All the manuscripts are wrong .. we need to follow reminkimi's new way of saying shenouda
(1) http://copticsounds.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/the-modern-pronunciation-of-coptic-in-the-mass.pdf - affected to some extent by the Moftahian new teaching, but interesting with regards Sa'idic.
(2) http://copticsounds.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/la-prononciation-moderne-du-copte-dans-la-haute-egypte.pdf - even less mutilated, and Sa'idic in the large part.
(3) http://copticsounds.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/fragment-eines-koptischen-tractates-uber-alchimie.pdf - this is definitely the best unmutilated piece of evidence on Coptic pronunciation (it is in German, but my impression it talks about Bohairic dialect rather than Sa'idic; it is very beneficial for those who can read Arabic to understand what imikhail, and I, are arguing about all the time).
Oujai qen `P[C