For millennia, Egypt has been the epicenter of languages that circulated throughout different eras. While some languages withered away, the remnants of the Coptic language remain in the liturgical language of the Coptic Church in Egypt. The Coptic language entwines history and spirituality, in a place that never disremembered its resonance. In their pure essence, the words ‘Copt or Coptic,’ intertwine linguistically with the words, ‘Egypt or Egyptian,’ as they have the same origin. The English word Coptic stems from the Latin word Coptus, which is derived from the Greek word Aigyptos (Αἴγυπτος), meaning “Egyptian”. The Coptic language is the last phase of ancient Egyptian phonology. Written in a script based on the Greek alphabet, the majority of Coptic words are taken from the ancient Egyptian language, with the exception of some characters derived from Greek. In his book, ‘Forgotten Scripts’, Cyrus Gordon stated that “the Coptic Church still preserves the native Egyptian language written in Greek characters, so that we have an unbroken tradition of Egyptian texts spanning about five thousand years.” Similar to the universality of the English language today, the Greek language was the world’s lingua franca. … Continue reading The Story of Qibṭī: Remnants of the Coptic Language in Egypt