Heard about Egyptian language! It’s basically an extinct language which originated in the Nile valley. The language constitutes and incorporates in it a branch of the interesting Afro-Asiatic language phylum. The Semitic, Chadic, Cushitic, Omotic and Amazigh (Berber) language groups constitute of the rest remaining members of this phylum.

Old Egyptian Language

Studies suggest that on the basis of ancient texts, scholars have divided the history of Egyptian language among five periods which are Old Egyptian that took from 3000 to about 2200 BCE, Middle Egyptian from c. 2200–c. 1600 BCE, Late Egyptian from c.1550–c. 700 BCE, Demotic from c. 700 BCE–c. 400 CE and last Coptic that ranges from c. 2nd century CE until the last of 17th century. Thus, these five literary dialects are completely different from each other and were differentiated. These periods of language refer to the language which is written only and this is at often times differed greatly on comparison with spoken dialects. Studies also suggest that Coptic is still in ecclesiastical use along with Arabic and is placed among the Arabic-speaking miaphysite Christians of Egypt.

Morphology, Word Formation, and Syntax
When we talk about Word formation, it is similar to the “root and pattern” system in Egyptian. It was also found that it is present all over the Afro-Asiatic language phylum. In systems like these, consonantal “roots” generally indicate the common and general meaning of a word which joins with vocalic “patterns” that further create more specific and accurate meaning. To understand more properly there is an example in English that would be the difference between the words wake and woke, in which upon doing the root Square root of√wk it provides a basic notion of “being awake” and further combines with the patterns -a-e and -o-e to create verbs that have a particular tense. It is seen in ancient Egyptian texts, that roots were predominantly comprised of three consonants, and they omitted vowels from them.

By: Prerana Sharma