Ancient Egyptian vocalization project

This site is dedicated to researching and teaching the vocalization of the ancient Egyptian language. Ancient Egyptian is here understood to mean the languages of the Old Kingdom, Middle Kingdom, New Kingdom and Coptic, whether written in hieroglyphs, hieratic, demotic or using the Greek alphabet. As only the Greek alphabet systematically recorded vowels, the true sounds of the language are virtually unknown for the first three millenia of its history. Not only does this make Ancient Egyptian harder to learn (e.g. distinguishing between verb forms that were separated primarily by their vocalization), but it also prevents an intuitive appreciation of Egyptian literature and poetry.

The goal of the present project is to restore as much as possible of the original sound by combining all available historical sources and phonological research. At the core of this project is the /List of vocalized forms/. Sublists (like /Pronouns/, /Numbers/, and /Plural/) are meant to help the learner practice. Hopefully, one day there will be fully vocalized texts, too. Until then, there is lots to do - please join and add any material you can, just don't forget to cite your sources (or explain your derivations). :-)

--Hakseng 05:02, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

You may have a look here: http://xoomer.virgilio.it/omezzabo

I made some experiments, but they are just amateurish. There you'll find my explanations too.

I did some of the words. Perhaps it'll help.


 * /Pronouns
 * /General principles
 * /List of vocalized forms
 * /Numbers