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Middle Egyptian via French & English? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5557 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 25 of 35 24 July 2012 at 3:51am | IP Logged | |||||
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@Hampie
I'm all for these new hieroglyphic editions and almost bought The Tale of Peter Rabbit last time I was in the British Museum. I've also heard of "The Story of Sinuhe" in passing, but in all honesty, know very little else about Ancient Egyptian narrative literature. I'd certainly be interested to find out more... I'm now also wondering just how much the Egyptian language changed over the expanse of centuries between the Old Kingdom and Late Period? Are the differences similar to those between Old, Middle and Modern English for example, or very much more pronounced?? Edited by Teango on 24 July 2012 at 3:57am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5533 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 26 of 35 24 July 2012 at 4:35am | IP Logged | |||||
Wow. I so just ordered that. Thank you. If you haven't already, download the Aegyptus font, unzip it, and install Gardiner.ttf. Then keep reading. I glanced at the title of the book, broke it into words, and figured out which was which using the determinatives: The determinatives are A2, A1 and "wn", respectively, if you need to type them. I'm actually kind of amazed that I could go from the hieroglyphs to the transliterations to the definitions, and then type everything on my keyboard without looking up the individual signs. I guess learning the basic signs helps a lot with this. …and now I know why Khatzumoto over at AJATT tells people to learn to write the Kanji before doing anything else.
There are several popular texts that you can buy in Egyptian/English or Egyptian/French facing page translations. I imagine that they're probably the best bets for intermediate students. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
 songlines Pro Member Canada flickr.com/photos/cp Joined 5210 days ago 729 posts - 1056 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French Personal Language Map | Message 27 of 35 24 July 2012 at 8:00am | IP Logged | |||||
Wow. I have a colleague who's both an Ancient Egyptophile and worked in one of our Children's Literature Special Collections departments. - Have to tell him about that! (But then again, perhaps he already owns a copy...) Edited by songlines on 24 July 2012 at 8:03am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| akkadboy Triglot Senior Member France Joined 5409 days ago 264 posts - 497 votes Speaks: French*, English, Yiddish Studies: Latin, Ancient Egyptian, Welsh | Message 28 of 35 24 July 2012 at 9:05am | IP Logged | |||||
I'm no expert on Old and Middle English so I can only say that ancient Egyptian changed a lot and not so much at the same time :) Broadly, the history of ancient Egyptian can be divided in two phases : - Old Egyptian/Middle Egyptian (ca. 3000-1300 BC, ME still used afterwards as a prestige language) : synthetic morphology (suffixes are used in verbal and nominal morphology) ; aspectual opposition (perfective/imperfective) ; coordination or subordination is rarely marked explicitely. - Late Egyptian/Demotic/Coptic (ca. 1300 BC-1300 AD): developpement of articles (rendering the gender/number endings useless) and possessive adjectives ; transition from an aspectual system to a temporal system ; coordination or subordination is marked explicitely ; and of course lots of other things (new verbal patterns, phonological changes, new vocabulary, new scripts, etc) From a practical point of view, I would say that someone who knows "only" ME would get the gist of a LE text but no more. However, this person could of course learn LE faster than someone not knowing ancient Egyptian at all. If you're interested in that topic, you can read A. Loprieno's Ancient Egyptian: A Linguistic Introduction. Edited by akkadboy on 24 July 2012 at 9:14am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5557 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 29 of 35 24 July 2012 at 12:49pm | IP Logged | |||||
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@emk
Thanks for the font - those encoding boxes have been magically transformed now! And I was also quite amazed that after only 4 lessons in Assimil, I could translate everything from the sounds alone, apart from the word "rabbit", where the little rabbit determinant at the end is a dead giveaway (excuse the pun). :D @akkadboy Would a good foundation in Middle Egyptian enable me to undertstand the gist of Old Egyptian inscriptions too? I'm just asking as I'd love to be able to read the widest possible range by the end of this course. I imagine Coptic is quite another ball game altogether but I'm keeping my fingers crossed that ME will help me out if I ever fancy going down that road later. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5533 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 30 of 35 24 July 2012 at 5:01pm | IP Logged | |||||
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More Egyptian literature! If you read French, check the Maison de Vie catalog
carefully. They publish quite a few interesting books in facing-page editions, with hieroglyphs, transliterations and French translations: Maison de vie I haven't receive my copy of Les aventures Sinouhé yet, but I've heard good things about some of the Maison de Vie books. There are similar publications in English, of course, though I have no idea what period they come from: Legends of the Egyptian Gods Let's post this stuff as we find it, and be sure to mention anything that we get to see first hand. :-) 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| akkadboy Triglot Senior Member France Joined 5409 days ago 264 posts - 497 votes Speaks: French*, English, Yiddish Studies: Latin, Ancient Egyptian, Welsh | Message 31 of 35 24 July 2012 at 5:50pm | IP Logged | |||||
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@Teango
Yes, Old Egyptian and Middle Egyptian are very close to each other. These two stages are called "égyptien de première phase" in contrast to LE/Demotic/Coptic which form the "égyptien de seconde phase". In fact, ME and OE are so close that Old Egyptian is (almost ?) never taught as a separate subject (although it should definitely be, the Pyramid Texts can be tricky :)). @emk Maison de vie is runned by Christian Jacq, an ex-egyptologist who now writes novels. The literary quality of his writings is subject to heated debates but what is sure is that they are not reliable as a source for studying ancient Egypt (but being novels I guess it's okay). The "real" problem is that Jacq has developped a liking to esoterical thinking and has founded Maison de Vie. I haven't read any of the books they offer but it would be surprising if his ideas had not influenced their translations. I'l soon post some links to ME texts editions. Edited by akkadboy on 24 July 2012 at 6:01pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| akkadboy Triglot Senior Member France Joined 5409 days ago 264 posts - 497 votes Speaks: French*, English, Yiddish Studies: Latin, Ancient Egyptian, Welsh | Message 32 of 35 24 July 2012 at 7:08pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Here are some links, most of them offer dozens of interesting titles so you'll have to browse through them carefully, although I've tried to indicate which titles might be the most intersting for you :
Etana, especially Sethe's Urkunden Archive.org, the oldest issues of the ZÄS but also lots of others things Oriental Institute, they have digitalized (almost) their whole catalog of publications (epigraphic survey of Karnak, Luxor, Medinet Habu...) BIFAO, the Bulletin of the French Institute EOS, British Museum Stelae OI Lib, especially the BiAe M. Malfliet, lots of publications, not sure all of them are free of rights... I hope you'll enjoy it :) 4 persons have voted this message useful |
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