Coptic Language

Coptic Language, (from Greek Aigyptos, “Egypt” by way of Arabic qubt), the final phase of the Egyptian language, with borrowings from Greek and various Semitic languages; it is a member of the Egyptian branch of the Afro-Asiatic languages. Coptic at first existed concurrently with demotic Egyptian (the literary Egyptian of c. 700 bc-c. ad 400) but outlived it. By the 3rd century a Christian literature also began to appear in Coptic. Existing non-Christian Coptic writings include a fragment of Plato's Republic, medical texts, and magical spells. During that era Greek was the language of intellectual circles in Egypt, and so for Coptic the Greek alphabet was adopted, augmented by seven letters derived from demotic Egyptian; it is thus the only phase of the Egyptian language that is written in a way that makes the pronunciation clear to modern scholars. Coptic also replaced the religious terms and expressions of Egyptian with loanwords from Greek. Coptic was to some extent (but not altogether) supplanted by Arabic between the 8th and the 14th centuries; it is preserved, however, as the liturgical language of the Coptic Church. Most of the existing Coptic texts are religious works translated from the Greek. The only works originally written in Coptic are Gnostic and Manichaean texts, and a vast number of letters, sermons, and treaties written by Shenoute, the abbot of the so-called White Monastery at Sawhāj, near Akhmim. Coptic resembles demotic Egyptian except that in Coptic many non-Christian terms have been replaced by religious terms of Greek origin. Scholars usually recognize five Coptic dialects, of which Sahidic was the classical or standard dialect. Others are Bohairic, Fayyumic, Akhmimic, and Sub-Akhmimic. Efforts are now being made to have Bohairic, the dialect used by the Coptic Church, taught in some schools.