Talk:Pre-Late Egyptian Reconstruction

Sound change law while adopting Semitic words into E
How was Semitic Loanwords transliterated in Egyptian/Coptic? Was there any change in pronounciation/phonology? CaptainMeowmori (discuss • contribs) 19:29, 16 December 2019 (UTC)
 * I don't know. are you around? --mikeu talk 23:50, 16 December 2019 (UTC)


 * Yes! Life unfortunately got in the way. I definitely need to tidy up this page as it's a collection of my notes and thought processes combined and I'm sure it can be quite confusing for many people who are first reading it. I will start working at it some more in the coming days.


 * I'm not an expert but I'd assume from what I have seen that Semitic words with E would have assimilated to the Egyptian paradigm, so in other words that syllable would have been insunciated with a schwa or A, or it could have just stayed the same but it wouldn't have needed to be shown in the hieroglyphics unless that syllable was "stressed" in which case a weak consanant would have been inserted, for example the two foreign names of Astarte and Cleopatra were written in hieroglyphics with an inserted vague vowel in those stressed syllables. Egyptianized words with a stressed A or I appeared to be vague to the Egyptians during the time of the New kingdom since it appears that the Canaanite vowel shift was coming about around this time where stressed A turned into stressed O and unstressed A merged with a schwa- I would assume a I became A especially in a stressed position because of the huge loss of words with A, so a lot of times these loanwords will alternate with A and I unpredictably.


 * Back to Semitic E, it also appears that the Egyptians merged this sound with schwa even in a stressed syllable where you can clearly see this in Coptic with the Qualitatives and with other words. There didn't seem to be a clear cut strategy to represent the vowels and I'm pretty sure each city and even each family or group or organization had their own way of pronouncing these words.