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Epsishi or psishi?
geomekhaiel
posted on Oct 10, 2005 - 03:19 AM
Hi Mikey,
The works 'u,y, meaning "soul" is supposed to be pronounced "psishi" with no "e", because there is no jenkim, but this is a little hard to do for some people because there is two consonant with each other, therefore, people tend to pronounce it "epsishi" but if u want to be a perfectionist, then say "psishi"
George Mekhaiel
Ramez Mikhail
posted on Oct 10, 2005 - 03:26 AM
Since you did not ask about the letter Chi, I am not gonna even address that (and its good u didnt ask, cuz i have no straight answer lol)
"u,y is a Greek word literally meaning soul. Now there are no Djinkims in Greek (and indeed not really in Coptic till recently). Greek only contains accent marks (acute, grave, and circumflex) and breathings (rough/smooth) So in Greek words, unless the word starts with an E (Epsilon) or a similar letter that could give that Djinkim voicless stop, it would be mere sloppiness to add an E sound in the beginning for no reason.
Same goes for Pnevma. Notice that from the same root we get words like Pneumatology, and pneumonia. It behoves me how Copts in America don't ever say Epneumonia or Epneumatology, but insist on saying Epnevma.
Ramez Mikhail
posted on Oct 10, 2005 - 03:40 AM
Early forms of Greek had no accent marks or even lower case script. People just understood how to stress words without any need for special marks.
Later, accent marks and lower case developed. Initially however, accent marks indicated pitch rather than stress. basically the language sounded more like poetry with certain syllables having a rising a pitch than others.
An Acute accent indicated a rise in pitch.
A Grave indicated a lowered pitch.
A circumflex is a quick rise in pitch followed by a quick low pitch.
Later, this pitch distinction was lost and by the time Attic Greek shows up, all accents had the same function: simply indicating which syllable in a word is stressed.
As for breathings, these are different looking marks on the beginning of words. A rough breathing traditionally made an [h] sound in the beginning of the word. Thats how you get English transliterations of names like Hagia Sophia, with Hagia spelt that way simply because the word agia has a rough breathing rendering it hagioc in traditional pronunciation.
Dont panic though..hehe. This rough breathing business perished by the beginning of the Koine era (Alexander the Great) and in later forms of Greek. In Greek writing these marks still exist, since Greek is known to have more or less preserved its traditional spelling (aka Orthography), But we don't need to worry about how Attic Greek sounded as far as our Greek in church is concerned. These Attic features were long gone before Our Lord Jesus was even born.
This was more than u ever wanted to know about accents..lol
Ramez Mikhail
posted on Oct 10, 2005 - 04:00 AM
Attic is the Greek dialect of Attica, a Greek city. It became the standard Greek dialect later and from it emerged koine greek (Greek of the new testament).
So Attic Greek/Classical Greek are somewhat interchangeable terms.
A circumflex accent simply looks like a tiny curve. A Grave accent looks like ( `) and an acute looks the same but facing the opposite direction.
Dont know nothing in Spanish..sorry..lol
Ramez Mikhail
posted on Oct 10, 2005 - 05:26 AM
This is correct. It is transliterated as "dh". In linguistic terms, its a voiced fricative D.
A common trend in evolution of greek pronunciation from Attic to Koine is that Delta, Gamma and Beta became voiced fricatives pronounced (Dh, Gh, and V).
So Doxa in Classic....Dhoxa in Koine till modern day Greek.
Ramez Mikhail
posted on Oct 10, 2005 - 05:48 PM
There is no right or wrong dialect in ANY language. Any dialect is perfectly valid and an acceptable variety of a language. As long as different dialects are intelligible, they qualify as dialects of one language and there is absolutely NO way to declare one correct and the other wrong.
I am not even going to address the possible mistakes of ur claimed "right dialect"....dont forget its afterall a theory, which by definition might be mistaken...unless u claim to have been around Copts from the 19th century.
aguy
posted on Oct 10, 2005 - 07:58 PM
I know that such languages are very deliberate about encoding vowels in their script. You're not supposed to pronounce a vowel in between consonants, and I believe it is more than plausible, that the reason people say "av *E* chi sar *E* x" is that people have a hard time with back-to-back consonants. Its the same reasons why if you go to a Mexican restaurant, you'll find that the servers say "esteak", rather than "steak". You'll find a lot of egyptians say "estupid" rather than stupid, or "up *e* stairs", rather than "upstairs". It's the very same thing with Avchisarx... I've never heard of Coptic vowels that are not encoded in the script, either with a vowel, or with a "jenkem" (is that what it's called?), and this is true even of Arabic. I know it's true of Latin-based romance languages, and probably Germanic languages. I'll bet this is also the case with classical Greek.
Peace,
A Guy
Guest
posted on Oct 10, 2005 - 08:04 PM
Well...except that in previous scripts of Egyptian, vowels were not written. Kind of like how Arabic words can be written without a single "a" "e" or "o" letter but still have those sounds in them based on the accents on the top and bottom of the letter.
So it is *conceivable* that the Coptic script still retains some of that characteristic...that not all vowels are written, but you're supposed to know to pronounce a vowel between consonants based on knowing how to speak the language.
But then again, we have proof that "non-sophisticated" (pardon the expression) Coptic pronounciation has many phantom vowels as we compared to known-good pronounciation in Greek words for example.
aguy
posted on Oct 10, 2005 - 08:18 PM
Well, the hiroglyphic script you're talking about probably didn't even have "letters" did it... It encoded words, not letters? Or are you referring to something else? Correct me if I'm wrong.
As for Arabic, every vowel sound is encoded, whether it's by a letter, or by "tashkeel", the accents that you put on top of words. There's never a vowel sound that's not encoded. Sometimes, people don't write the "tashkeel", but it's only because it's known; technically, it should be there. I've never heard of Coptic having something like "tashkeel", except maybe the "jenkem"/"jenkin", whatever it is called.
Of course, it is conceivable that there might have been vowel sounds that were not written into the script, but I would think that we would know about this, because a lot of the knowledge about the Coptic language was handed down, and so we're not entirely cut off from Coptic spoken language. The average person (like you and me) is likely to make mistakes in pronunciation, but I'm guessing Coptic scholars have a lot of sources that can be traced through the centuries, so that the official "rules" are known, but I don't know what kind of sources there are on which we base our current knowledge, and we would have to ask a Coptic scholar about those sources.
As you said yourself, it is a common tendency that we *know* exists (based on knowledge of Greek) to add "phantom vowels" as you called them: I really like that... Is this a commonly used term, or did you just come up with it? I like that; very appropriate. 
Peace,
A Guy
Ramez Mikhail
posted on Oct 11, 2005 - 02:39 AM
Who said phanton vowels are common in Greek??!
Being a Greek student for over a year and listening to Greek chants and services, I am yet to hear Greeks butcher their language in that manner like we do with our own. In fact, there are some consonant combinations in Greek that are downright difficult to utter even for English speakers, who supposedly have no phantom vowel issues.
As for Spanish phantom vowels, how did u guys generalize that to all romance languages? This is just a Spanish thing....not sure ive ever heard of that issue in original latin or in French for example.
aguy
posted on Oct 11, 2005 - 05:37 PM
Hey Ramez,
It appears you misunderstood what I or "Guest" were saying. Guest was saying that Copts add phantom vowels to Greek words that we KNOW shouldn't have the vowel sounds, and the correct pronunciation of these Greek words is known because Greek is very much a language that is alive today, and well-studied. He used this as proof that Copts have a strong tendency to add phantom vowels where they shouldn't be added. He used this argument, because one might argue, "we don't really know how Copts used to pronounce these words, because people haven't spoken Coptic as a first language for a couple of centuries" (which is something at which you had hinted).
I, on the other hand, when discussing Romance languages, made the generalization that as far as I know, Romance languages do for the most part encode into their scripts the vowel sounds that should be pronounced, according to the "proper" pronunciation of their tongue (and I know you challenge this notion of a proper pronunciation, but, while I agree to some extent, I do not completely agree with the totally relativistic stance that you took with regard to this issue). In other words, if you're supposed to pronounce the vowel, I'm saying generally, there will be a written indication of this in most Romance languages (as far as I know, and I am by no means a language expert). This was the generalization I made about Romance languages. On the other hand, it seems you thought that I meant that speakers of other Romance languages have a similar tendency (to Spanish speakers) to add phantom vowels that should not be there. This was not what I was saying.
Peace,
A Guy
Ramez Mikhail
posted on Oct 11, 2005 - 09:26 PM
Aguy,
Thanks for the clarification. Indeed, Copts today do that all the time with any language they learn. I say Copts today because again, I do not know if anybody knows if Ancient Egyptians/Copts had the same issue or if the Egyptian/Coptic language, whatever pronunciation happens to be authentic, had this feature.
I personally like to believe that its just a modern issue, a by-product of Arabic infiltration. The no consonants back to back rule is definitely there in Arabic when where we see all the invisible vowels that are only encoded as marks. But I am no Arabic or Coptic scholar...just speculating.
Guest,
I do not think God is all that interested in either camps when it comes to the eternal question of "Should I call Him Efnouti or Epnouda?"...or watever Efnouti is in Maher-ian Coptic. This is simply a linguistic question for people interested in language...
Forgive the sarcasm
Remnkemi
posted on Oct 12, 2005 - 02:36 AM
A guy, the phenomena is not "officially" called phantom vowels. It is called epenthesis or epenthetic vowels. When you remove vowels that are written, it is called elision. You find this in French, where final consonants are not pronounced.
Epenthesis is quite common in many languages. It is not the same as inflection and descention, known in Arabic as "tashkeel". Inflection in the Semitic Afro-Asiatic languages, is not to demarcate pronunciation stress, rather it marks vowels that are read by diactrics.
Coptic is an Afro-Asiatic language, specifically under the Egyptian language subgroup. It shares some charatistics found in the Semitic subgroup, as mentioned above.
Keep in mind, epenthesis is cultrally determined, more correctly geographically determined. Egyptian Copts, who speak Arabic only, can only speak Coptic using Semitic tendencies (epenthesis, etc). When Coptic moved out of these geographical area, such as America, these Semitic language tendencies are not found. In fact, American Copts, will eventually enter English tendencies into Coptic pronunciation.
So in essence, Coptic should not rely geographic characteristics. It should follow linguistic tendencies more than geographical ones. Epenthesis should gradually be removed, since languages are dynamic and geographic characteristics are no longer prominent.
I hope I didn't confuse you guys.
George
MikeS
posted on Oct 12, 2005 - 11:21 AM
Hello all,
Ramez and Remenkimi are correct - the thing with Bohairic (specifically, Greco-Bohairic) Coptic (which I adressed in another topic) is that it simply does not allow consonant clusters at the beginings of words, so yeah, it's exactly like Spanish in that respect (that epenthetic 'e' before consonant clusters in word initial position).
A lot of these I think, as Remenkimi stated, could actually be dropped, they really don't need to be there and in fact in Traditional/Old Bohairic, are rarely used.
Egyptian heiroglyphics by the way, represented in some cases a single sound (phoneme), and in some cases a group of two to three consonants. Some were also just used in a very similar fasion to the Chinese concept of the "radical", i.e. if you had two words that sounded the same, the determinative sign (which is what this is called in heiroglyphics) could be used to further clarify the meaning. For example, the word for knife would be spelt out, but is also found with the determninative sign for "knife". May sound like overkill to us, but for this system of writing was very ingenious. Because vowels were not written, many words ended up being spelt the same way - this was a good way to tell exactly which word was meant and avoided all ambiguity!
Mike S
Guest
posted on Oct 12, 2005 - 10:50 PM
From Ramez Mikhail:Guest,
I do not think God is all that interested in either camps when it comes to the eternal question of "Should I call Him Efnouti or Epnouda?"...or watever Efnouti is in Maher-ian Coptic. This is simply a linguistic question for people interested in language...
Forgive the sarcasm
vye;ouwn ouoh `mmon `hli ma`s;am ouoh vyet`s;am ouoh `mmon `hli ouwn
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