The Coptic alphabet is an alphabet used for writing the Coptic language. It is based on the Greek alphabet, but contains some extra letters for sounds used in Coptic but not in Greek. Those letters are derived from the Demotic script, a highly cursive writing system used to write the Egyptian language. For information on how to read IPA transcriptions of English words see here. ... Phonetics (from the Greek word φωνή, phone meaning sound, voice) is the study of sounds and the human voice. ... Unicode is an industry standard designed to allow text and symbols from all of the writing systems of the world to be consistently represented and manipulated by computers. ... This chart shows concisely the most common way in which the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is applied to represent the English language. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... A Specimen of typeset fonts and languages, by William Caslon, letter founder; from the 1728 Cyclopaedia. ... Coptic is the most recent phase of ancient Egyptian. ... The Greek alphabet is an alphabet that has been used to write the Greek language since about the 9th century BC. It was the first alphabet in the narrow sense, that is, a writing system using a separate symbol for each vowel and consonant alike. ... Demotic (from δημοτικά popular) refers to both the ancient Egyptian script derived from northern forms of hieratic used in the Delta, as well as the stage of the Egyptian language following Late Egyptian and preceding Coptic. ... Written records of the ancient Egyptian language have been dated from about 3200 BC. Egyptian is part of the Afro-Asiatic group of languages and is related to Berber and Semitic (languages such as Arabic, Amharic, Tigrinya and Hebrew). ...

History

Coptic letters in a florid Bohairic script

The Coptic alphabet came into general use in Egypt during the 4th century AD. It is still used by the members of the Coptic Church to write their religious texts. All the Gnostic codices found in Nag Hammadi used the Coptic alphabet. The Proto-Canaanite alphabet is an abjad of twenty-plus acrophonic glyphs, which is found in Levantine texts of the Late Bronze Age (from ca. ... The Phoenician alphabet dates from around 1400 BC and is related to the Proto-Canaanite alphabet. ... The Paleo-Hebrew alphabet is an offshoot of the Phoenician alphabet used to write the Hebrew language from about the 10th century BCE until it began to fall out of use in the 5th century BCE with the adoption of the Aramaic alphabet as a writing system for Hebrew and... Bilingual inscription (Greek and Aramaic) by the Indian emperor Ashoka the Great, 3rd century BC. The Aramaic alphabet is an abjad alphabet designed for writing the Aramaic language. ... BrāhmÄ« refers to the pre-modern members of the Brahmic family of scripts. ... The Brahmic family is a family of abugidas (writing systems) used in South Asia, Southeast Asia, Tibet, Mongolia, Manchuria. ... This article or section is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. ...   This article or section uses Khmer characters which may be rendered as boxes or other nonsensical symbols. ... Javanese script is the script that Javanese is originally written in (not to be confused with Javascript, which is a programming language). ... Note: This article contains special characters. ... 11th century book in Syriac Serto. ... The Nabatean alphabet is a consonantal alphabet (abjad) that was used by the Nabateans in the 2nd century BC. Important inscriptions are found in Petra. ... The Arabic alphabet is the script used for writing Arabic and various other languages, together with various closely related scripts that typically differ in the presence or absence of a few letters. ... The Pahlavi script was used broadly in the Sasanid Persian Empire to write down Middle Persian for secular, as well as religious purposes. ... The Avestan alphabet was created in the 3rd century AD for writing the hymns of Zarathustra (a. ... Note: This article contains special characters. ... The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today. ... For other uses, see Rune (disambiguation). ... Note: This article contains special characters. ...   The Gothic alphabet is an alphabetic writing system attributed by Philostorgius to Wulfila, used exclusively for writing the ancient Gothic language. ... Tablet inscribed with the Glagolitic alphabet The Glagolitic alphabet or Glagolitsa is the oldest known Slavonic alphabet. ... The Cyrillic alphabet (pronounced , also called azbuka, from the old name of the first two letters) is an alphabet used for several East and South Slavic languages—Belarusian, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Russian, Rusyn, Serbian, and Ukrainian—and many other languages of the former Soviet Union, Asia and Eastern Europe. ... The Samaritan alphabet is a direct descendant of the paleo-Hebrew variety of the Phoenician alphabet, the more commonly known Hebrew alphabet having been adapted from the Aramaic alphabet under the Persian Empire. ... Photograph of Botorrita 1 (both sides), 1st century BC. The Iberian scripts (or Iberian alphabet) are two scripts (or two styles of the same script) found on the Iberian peninsula, the Northeast and South Iberian script. ... The ancient South Arabian alphabet (also known as musnad) branched from the Proto-Sinaitic alphabet in ca. ... Note: This article contains special characters. ... The Meroitic script is an alphabet of Egyptian (Hieroglyphic) origin used in Kingdom of Meroë. Some scholars, e. ... Jamo redirects here. ... Zhuyin fuhao (Traditional Chinese: ; Simplified Chinese: ; Hanyu Pinyin: ; Tongyong Pinyin: ; Wade-Giles: Chu-yin fu-hao), or Symbols for Annotating Sounds, often abbreviated as Zhuyin, or known as Bopomofo (ㄅㄆㄇㄈ) after the first four letters of this Chinese phonemic alphabet (bo po mo fo), is the national phonetic system of the... Nearly all the segmental scripts (alphabets, but see below for more precise terminology) used around the globe were apparently derived from the Proto-Sinaitic alphabet. ... (3rd century - 4th century - 5th century _ other centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 4th century was that century which lasted from 301 to 400. ... Christ - Coptic Art Coptic Orthodox Christianity is the indigenous form of Christianity that, according to tradition, the apostle Mark established in Egypt in the middle of the 1st century AD (approximately AD 60). ... Various Religious symbols, including (first row) Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Bahai, (second row) Islamic, tribal, Taoist, Shinto (third row) Buddhist, Sikh, Hindu, Jain, (fourth row) Ayyavazhi, Triple Goddess, Maltese cross, pre-Christian Slavonic Religion is the adherence to codified beliefs and rituals that generally involve a faith in a spiritual... This article or section is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. ... The town of Nag Hammadi in Egypt Nag Hammâdi (Arabic نجع حمادي; transliterated: Naj Hammādi) (26°03′N 32°15′E), is a town in the middle of Egypt, called Chenoboskion in classical antiquity, about 80 kilometres north-west of Luxor with some 30,000 citizens. ...

The Coptic alphabet did not appear overnight. There was a long history, going back to the Hellenistic period, of using the Greek alphabet to transcribe Demotic texts, with the aim of recording the correct pronunciation of the Demotic. During the first two centuries of the Common Era, an entire series of magical texts were written in what scholars term Old Coptic, Egyptian language texts written in the Greek alphabet. A number of letters, however, were derived from Demotic, and many of these (though not all) are used in "true" Coptic writing. With the spread of Christianity in Egypt, by the late 3rd century AD knowledge of hieroglyphic writing was lost, as well as Demotic slightly later, making way for a writing system more closely associated with the Christian church. By the 4th century the Coptic alphabet was "standardised", particularly for the Sahidic dialect. (It should be noted that there are a number of differences between the alphabets as used in the various dialects in Coptic.) The Ptolemaic dynasty in Egypt began following Alexander the Greats conquest in 332 BC and ended with the death of Cleopatra VII and the Roman conquest in 30 BC. It was founded when Ptolemy I Soter declared himself Pharaoh of Egypt, creating a powerful Hellenistic state from southern Syria... Transcription is the conversion into written, typewritten or printed form, of a spoken language source, such as the proceedings of a court hearing. ... Era Vulgaris redirects here. ... // Christianity is a monotheistic[1] religion centered on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as presented in the New Testament. ... (2nd century - 3rd century - 4th century _ other centuries) Events The Sassanid dynasty of Persia launches a war to reconquer lost lands in the Roman east. ... It has been suggested that Hieroglyph (French Wiki article) be merged into this article or section. ...

The Old Nubian alphabet—used to write the Old Nubian language [unrelated to the Coptic language]—is written mainly in an uncial Greek alphabet, but it borrows Coptic and Meroitic letters of Demotic origin into its inventory. It is often incorrectly thought that Old Nubian used the entire Coptic alphabet directly, but this is not the case. A page from an Old Nubian translation of Liber Institutionis Michaelis Archangelis from the 9th-10th century AD, found at Qasr Ibrim, now at the British Museum. ... The Book of Kells, c. ... The Greek alphabet is an alphabet that has been used to write the Greek language since about the 9th century BC. It was the first alphabet in the narrow sense, that is, a writing system using a separate symbol for each vowel and consonant alike. ... The Meroitic script is an alphabet of Egyptian (Hieroglyphic) origin used in Kingdom of Meroë. Some scholars, e. ...

Unicode

In Unicode, most Coptic letters formerly shared codepoints with similar Greek letters, but a disunification has been accepted for version 4.1, which appeared in 2005. The new Coptic block is U+2C80 to U+2CFF. The Greek block includes seven Coptic letters derived from Demotic, and need to be included in any complete implementation of Coptic. Unicode is an industry standard designed to allow text and symbols from all of the writing systems of the world to be consistently represented and manipulated by computers. ... 2005 (MMV) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

Alphabet table

*If you do not see the characters in this column, download New Athena Unicode.
**Note: the letter sou was used only for its numerical value, 6. Unicode is an industry standard designed to allow text and symbols from all of the writing systems of the world to be consistently represented and manipulated by computers. ...

"Old Bohairic" Alphabet table

• Alpha (a, a) as in far & at
• Wida or Bida (b,w) as in bad, was
• Gamma (g,n,gh) ...
• Dalda (d) as in duck
• Eia (a) as in at
• So (6)
• Zada Or Zida (z)
• Hada Or Hida (h) (a, ee) as in at, teen
• Tita Or Tida (t) as in town
• ioda (i) as in pin
• Kabba (K)
• Laula (L)
• Mei (M)
• Nei(N)
• Eksi (X)
• O (o,oa) as in off, oat
• Bei (b) as in boat
• Ro (R)
• Sima (S)
• Dau (D,T) as in do, wet
• ha ( i, w) as in pin, how
• Fi (F,B) as in fat, bat
• Kei (K,sh, kh)
• Ebsi (bs)
• Omega (oa) as in boat
• shaay (sh)
• faay (f)
• khaay (kh)
• hoary (h, h) as hat & occasionally, like haa (7a) in Arabic as in temsa7, 7arb
• jandja (j) as in job
• shima or gshima (sh)
• de (de) as in dig

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See also

• Coptic pronunciation reform
• Institute of Coptic Studies
• Coptic Orthodox Church

Coptic pronunciation reform since 1850 has resulted in two major shifts in the use of Bohairic, the dialect of Coptic which is used as the liturgical language of the present-day Coptic Orthodox Church. ... The Institute of Coptic Studies was founded in 1954 [1] by the Coptic Orthodox Church and based in Cairo. ... Christ - Coptic Art Coptic Orthodox Christianity is the indigenous form of Christianity that, according to tradition, the apostle Mark established in Egypt in the middle of the 1st century AD (approximately AD 60). ...

References

• Loprieno, Antonio. 1995. Ancient Egyptian: A Linguistic Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 24–26.
• Quaegebeur, Jan. 1982. "De la préhistoire de l'écriture copte." Orientalia lovaniensia analecta 13:125–136.
• Ritner, Robert Kriech. 1996. "The Coptic Alphabet". In The World's Writing Systems, edited by Peter T. Daniels and William Bright. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. 287–290.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

Coptic script

• Learn the Coptic language online (in English, Arabic including video tutorials): from Saint Takla Haymanout Coptic Orthodox Church - Alexandria, Egypt
• The Coptic Alphabet
• Revised proposal to add the Coptic alphabet to the BMP of the UCS — Rare charts showing derivation of the added letters from Demotic are on pp.7 and 8 of this document.
• [1] Bohairic Coptic grammar book
• Forum created for the Old-Bohairic Coptic language including Kami lessons
• Coptic Unicode Fonts Unicode 4.1.0 compliant fonts
• Download Free Coptic Fonts
• Coptic Fonts Standard; a movement of Coptic Christians to standardize ASCII-based Coptic computer typefaces with a long term goal of designing Coptic Unicode fonts after disunification with the Greek block.

Image File history File links Commons-logo. ... Wikimedia Commons logo by Reid Beels The Wikimedia Commons (also called Commons or Wikicommons) is a repository of free content images, sound and other multimedia files. ... There are 95 printable ASCII characters, numbered 32 to 126. ... For the origin and evolution of fonts, see History of western typography. ...