Records of the old pronunciation
(With the acoustic Latin Script)
With the acoustic Latin Script A long time ago the foreigner scientists cared about recording of the old Coptic accent that was used in church’s prayers by voice input using the Latin letters .Though the voice input method has been evolved over time, however. all registrations made by the scientists in all eras witness to the heritage of one constant across time, the old Bohairic accent, which we received through the tradition in our Coptic church, and which we teach now to revive its use and generalization as it is the accent which was used when the language was still used as conversational language in the daily life . Record of Petraeus (1659) : It is the oldest known recording we have for the old language, using the voice input in Latin letters. In 1659, Petraeus has published the first Psalm written in the Bohairic Coptic dialect using the voice input for its pronunciation in Latin letters . This text had been excerpted and re-published completely by both Sholtz in (1778) in his book ‘ Grammatica – aegyptiaca – utriusque – dialectiquam, breviavit, illustravit, Oxonii 1778’ , and the Galtier in the fifth volume of the Journal of the French Institute ( BIF V, p. 110) . And as Petraeus recording was in the same century during which the Coptic language was about to extinct as a conversational language in the daily life and to be restricted only to the use in churches, so, this recording has a Great importance, it witness that the old pronunciation which we use now is the one that our fathers had used when they were still using the Coptic language .
So we re- publish the text Quoted from Galtier .
The Author :
Fr. Shenouda Maher Ishak ( previously Deacon Dr. Emil Maher Eshak ).
Translated by Dr. Mariam Michael