AUTHENTICITY OF THE OLD ACCENT

Coptic authentic pronunciation

Coptic and Demotic Egyptian are grammatically closely akin to Late Egyptian, which was written in the Hieroglyphic script. Coptic flourished as a literary language from the 2nd to 13th centuries, and its Bohairic dialect continues to be the liturgical language of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria. It was supplanted by Egyptian Arabic as a spoken language toward the early modern period, though revitalization efforts have been underway since the 19th century.

The old Coptic accent,  Its history, Originality and Superiority :

An overview about the old coptic accent and the the emergence of the new accent :

There were five or six main coptic accents, in addition to them there were many other sub accents, each of which is derived from the Conversational language in  Specific destination of the Egyptian country .The main coptic accents are the Upper Egypt ( tribal) which is named Saidy, Nautical named bahairy, Akhmimy, sub Akhmimya  and the accent of middle Egypt .                                                                                                      

The old accent was considered the cultural language in Egypt , and continued as the Conversational language in upper Egypt till the end of The sixteenth century and The early seventeenth century .                                                                                                       

  The Maqrizi, who lived in the fifteenth century said while he was talking about Moshe Monastery the following : “ And mostly on Egypt’s Christians is the knowlege of saidy coptic which is the origin of Coptic language, followed by the Behairy coptic language, and the Christian women in Al-Said and their children still not talking except with the saidy Coptic language and have full  knowledge of the Greek language ” The use of Bahairy accent became Invalid as Conversational language much earlier, But it continued the language of churches ‘ prayers in lower Egypt especially in the region of Wadi Al Natrun’ .

The author :

 Fr. Shenouda Maher Ishak ( previously Deacon Dr. Emil Maher Eshak ).

Translated by Dr. Mariam Michael