Language
The Coptic language is the last stage of the Egyptian language.
Coptic should more correctly be used to refer to the script rather than the language itself. Even though this script was introduced as far back as the 1st century BC, it has been applied to the writing of the Egyptian language from the 1st century AD to the present day. Coptic remained the spoken language of all Egyptians until it was slowly replaced by Masri (colloquial Egyptian Arabic) around the 17th century, although it may have survived in isolated pockets for a little longer.
Today, Coptic is the native language of only about 300 Copts around the world. It is also the liturgical language of the native Egyptian Churches (the Coptic Orthodox Church and the Coptic Catholic Church). It is taught worldwide in many prestigious institutions, but its teaching within Egypt remains restricted.
Dialects of Coptic language:
- Sahidic: Theban or Upper Egyptian.
- Bohairic: The dialect of the Nile Delta and of the medieval and modern Coptic Church.
- Akhmimic
- Lycopolitan (also known as Subakhmimic)
- Fayyumic
- Oxyrhynchite
Read more about this topic: Egyptian Christians
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—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)
“Man, even man debased by the neocapitalism and pseudosocialism of our time, is a marvelous being because he sometimes speaks. Language is the mark, the sign, not of his fall but of his original innocence. Through the Word we may regain the lost kingdom and recover powers we possessed in the far-distant past.”
—Octavio Paz (b. 1914)
“The face of the water, in time, became a wonderful book—a book that was a dead language to the uneducated passenger, but which told its mind to me without reserve, delivering its most cherished secrets as clearly as if it uttered them with a voice. And it was not a book to be read once and thrown aside, for it had a new story to tell every day.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)