The Modern Pronunciation of Coptic in the Mass 9781463229580

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The Modem Pronunciation of Coptic in the Mass

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T h e Modern Pronunciation of Coptic in the Mass

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Analecta Gorgiana

724 Series Editor George Anton Kiraz

Analecta Gorgiana is a collection of long essays and short monographs which are consistently cited by modern scholars but previously difficult to find because of their original appearance in obscure publications. Carefully selected by a team of scholars based on their relevance to modern scholarship, these essays can now be fully utilized by scholars and proudly owned by libraries.

The Modern Pronunciation of Coptic in the Mass

J. Dyneley Prince

1

gorgias press 2010

Gorgias Press LLC, 954 River Road, Piscataway, NJ, 08854, USA www.gorgiaspress.com Copyright © 2010 by Gorgias Press LLC Originally published in All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise without the prior written permission of Gorgias Press LLC. 2010 " ^

1 ISBN 978-1-61143-018-9

ISSN 1935-6854

Extract from Journal of the American Oriental Society 23 (1902)

Printed in the United States of America

The Modem DYNELEY

Pronunciation PRINCE, P h . D . ,

of Coptic in the Mass.—By J . Professor in Columbia Univer-

sity, New York City. THE name Copt (ryTTTlOC = Aiyuirrios, Arabic Qibt, pi. A.gbdt, vulgar Qiib&t) is restricted at the present day to the E u t y c h i a n or Monophysite sect which f o r centuries has formed the national Christian Church of E g y p t . This population, which numbers approximately five hundred thousand, represents the most direct descendants of the ancient Egyptians, because f o r religious reasons the Copts have practically abstained f r o m intermarriage with all alien elements. There is no ground whatever f o r the belief t h a t the ancestors of these people were foreign immigrants who embraced Christianity a f t e r the Mohammedan conquest of E g y p t i n 640 A. D. A t present the Copts are found in the greatest numbers in the towns of Negadeh, Luxor, Esneh, Dendera, Girgeh, T a n t a , AssiHt and Akhmim, where they are nearly all engaged in commerce of every description. In fact, they may be said to resemble in this respect the Armenians of T u r k e y and the Jewish communities of other lands. The Coptic language has been dead as a spoken idiom since the end of the seventeenth century A. D . A b o u t 1680 A. D . the D u t c h traveller Van Sleb mentioned as an extraordinary fact t h a t he had met an aged man who was still able to speak Coptic. T h e language must have perished as a vernacular, no doubt dying out very gradually, between the fifteenth and the seventeenth Christian centuries, because the Arabic historian Maqrizi remarked in the fifteenth century t h a t the Coptic women and children of U p p e r E g y p t in his time spoke Coptic almost exclusively, although they also knew Greek perfectly. There can be no doubt, however, t h a t Coptic had begun to take a secondary place even before the time of Maqrizi, for, as early as 1393, Coptic manuscripts had marginal notes in Arabic, which seems to show t h a t the latter language, even at t h a t period, was recognized as the dominant idiom and had come into very general use. Although the chief ancient dialects of Coptic were five in number, we have to reckon in the present treatise only with

290

J. I).

Prince,

[1903.

t w o , viz. t h e Sahidic a n d the Boheiric. T h e U p p e r E g y p t i a n linguistic variations all succumbed before t h e p o w e r f u l influence of the Sahidic idiom, which was at first spoken near T h e b e s a n d eventually was used as a vernacular f r o m Minyeh to t h e N u b i a n border. I n t h e same w a y t h e Boheiric, which was originally t h e l a n g u a g e of t h e W e s t e r n Delta, i. e. of Alexandria a n d its environs, soon became t h e t o n g u e of all Lower E g y p t . T h i s dialect eventually displaced even its p o w e r f u l rival, t h e Sahidic, a n d i t remains to-day, all over E g y p t , t h e idiom of the official church service-books, gospels, etc. T h e s t u d e n t of m o d e r n Coptic pronunciation, t h e r e f o r e , has to deal w i t h Boheiric, b u t o f t e n only orthographically, f o r , as will be shown in the following article, t h e local peculiarities of u t t e r a n c e have by no means died out. I n this connection should be mentioned t h e t r u l y excellent w o r k of m y f r i e n d , Mr. Claudius L a b i b , professor in t h e Orthodox P a t r i a r c h a l School in Cairo, who is an enthusiast in Coptic studies. H e has actually succeeded in t e a c h i n g a considerable n u m b e r of y o u n g people of b o t h sexes to use t h e Boheiric Coptic as a school vernacular, i. e., t o u n d e r s t a n d lectures delivered in it b y himself a n d others, especially W a h b y Bey, the head-master of t h e school; a n d has enabled his pupils to converse w i t h ease in Coptic on all o r d i n a r y subjects. L a b i b has accomplished this v e r y largely b y t h e establishment of a Coptic press, whence he has issued a n u m b e r of text-books, t h e most i m p o r t a n t of which are his C o p t i c - A r a b i c dictionary 1 (the t h i r d volume is now in p r e p a r a t i o n ) , and a series of primers to teach t h e Arabic-speaki n g s t u d e n t to express himself in Coptic. Besides these, he is a t present e n g a g e d in issuing a Coptic edition of t h e gospels as t h e y are read in t h e churches. Since t h e g r e a t m a j o r i t y of m o d e r n Coptic priests are in no sense scholars a n d do not even make a pretence of m a s t e r i n g their religious l a n g u a g e g r a m matically, b u t are content to read t h e mass a n d gospels ceremonially in a parrot-like fashion assisted b y a parallel A r a b i c translation, t h e importance of L a b i b ' s efforts a t education in this direction can h a r d l y be overestimated. H e cannot of course succeed, as he f o n d l y hopes to do, in r e v i v i n g a l a n g u a g e which has been dead f o r centuries, any more t h a n t h e enthusiastic Cornishmen who have j u s t f o u n d e d a society in E n g l a n d f o r t h e 1

Dictionnaire Copte-Arabe par C. H. Labib; two vols. Coptic-Arabic, Cairo, 1216, Year of the Martyrs.

Vol. xxiii.]

Modern Pronunciation

of Coptic in the Mass.

291

revival of their ancient national tongue can ever have success. Labib's work, however, can, and no doubt will, stimulate among his somewhat lethargic co-religionists, priests and laymen, a desire to obtain a real knowledge of the literature of their ancient tongue. The present Orthodox Patriarch, Cyril the Fifth, himself an excellent Coptic scholar and a most enlightened man, is doing all in his power to further the study of Coptic in every school in Egypt under the aegis of his church. Hitherto it has been customary to regard the modern pronunciation of Coptic in the church services as being merely a slovenly corruption of the original utterances of the language, and consequently as being of little or no importance from a phonetic point of view. No idea could be more erroneous. In spite of the ignorance of the priesthood, they have for ceremonial reasons been at great pains to hand down the traditionally correct pronunciation of their religious language. Indeed, so different to the intonation of Arabic is the tone of the Coptic as uttered by the priests of to-day that no one can reasonably assert that Arabic has had any influence on the pronunciation of the church language. In short, we still have in the conventional utterances of the mass what seems to be a genuine echo of how the ancient language must have sounded both in Upper and in Lower E g y p t ; and this, too, in spite of the fact that the idiom of the church is orthographically Boheiric. There can be no doubt that in Upper Egypt the Boheiric is still uttered as if it were Sahidic, i. e. in accordance with the original Sahidic vocalization. The following table of the various pronunciations of the names of the letters of the alphabet 1 will serve partially to illustrate this undoubted fact. Cairo."'

Assiût.

Abydos.

Luxor.

Assuân.

A

Âlfâ

Âlfâ

Âlfâ

Âlfâ

Âlfâ

B

Wîdâ

Wîdâ

Wï'ttâ

Wîdâ

Vîdâ

r

Gamma

Gamma

Gamma

Gemma

Gamma

1 For a similar table of the pronunciations of the character-names in Upper Egypt only, see de Rochemonteix, La Prononciation du Copte dans la Haute Égypte, Mémoires de la Société linguistique de Paris, vii. pp. 245-276. 2 The Cairo pronunciations here given were taken orally from Labîb. I could find no equivalents for many of the pronunciations given in Steindorfli's Koptische Grammatik.

292

J. D. Prince, Dèlta

Dèlta

Dàlda

[1902. Dàlda

Éi

Élyè

Éiyè

Éiyè

Eiyè

È

Sù

So

So

So

So

1

Zità

Sita

Dàdì

Zàdì

Zàdà

H

Ita

Hidà

Hädi

Hadà

Hadà

e

Thità

Tìdà

Tätti

Téttà

Titta

i

Iótà

K

Kappà

A

Lòia

H

Mi

N

E

1

loda Kabbà

Kabbà

Kabbà

Làùla

Làtìla

Lola

Mi

Mèi

Mi

Mi

Ni

m

Nèi

Ni

m

Ìksì

( L a b i b g i v e s À k s ì f o r all U p p e r E g y p t )

Kappà

0

Ö

Ott

TT

P i (bì)

Vi

P C T T

Rótì

Rù Sima

Sima

Sämmi

Roü Sémmà

Sämma

Tav

Dà'u

Ipsilon

He

$

Vi

Fìi

Fii

Fii

Fii

X

Kì

Kì

Kèì

Kì

Ki

*

Épsì

Apsi

Apsi

Äpsi

Äpsi

(0

j ò (like ( Eng. aw)

F o r U p p e r E g y p t au and o

Ó

éài

F o r U p p e r E g y p t s è i a n d sài

Sài

q

Fài

Fai

Fài

Fài

Fài

b

Hài

He

He

He

Hèi

s

Hóri

X

Ganga

S)