Ancient Egyptian anyone?
The Aspiring Polyglot is wondering why Ancient Egyptian isn't among the must-haves that language collectors feel a need to have studied at least a little. She notes:
I have said before that these languages ought be taught as living languages. In a case like Indo-European or Ancient Egyptian, it would be nice to find a few scholars confident enough to spend less time on asterisks and footnotes and more time laying out how they think of the language in their own mind, so that we could learn, say, the Collier or Kamrin dialect, as a starting point for thinking in the language. In recent years, we have seen Aramaic and Latin in the Passion of the Christ. And Ancient Egyptian has appeared in Stargate and the Mummy. Notes Penelope Wilson, in Hieroglyphics: a very short introduction:
In Collier, if I recall correctly, the idea of speaking the words in some way, any way, that helps is encouraged. In Janice Kamrin's Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs, it's emphasized before one even meets the alphabet that you won't be learning to speak Ancient Egyptian. Which brings the question: When Kamrin reads a hieroglyphic text, does she read by English understanding, by a conceiving of roots or by mumbling her version of what Egyptian sounded like? I suspect it's the last of these, and I wish she'd share so that at the conclusion of her book her readers would know there's at least one person they could chat with.
They may tackle Ancient Greek, Latin or Sanskrit but few dare to touch hieroglyphs, even if they have an affinity for character-based languages such as Chinese or Japanese.I think the big problem is that in a lot of ways, Ancient Egyptian is closer to Indo-European, or at least proto-Latin, than Latin in terms of a) the quality of study materials and b) the amount of concrete knowledge we have to go on. While too many texts for Latin, Sanskrit, etc, aren't very good and are directed to specialists or, at least, the overly educated, language-wise, there are some good texts for ordinary people out there. Other than the Dover texts of Wallis Budge stuff, there isn't a lot of popularizing stuff out there for Egyptian. And Budge isn't exactly the best language teacher that history has brought us.
I have said before that these languages ought be taught as living languages. In a case like Indo-European or Ancient Egyptian, it would be nice to find a few scholars confident enough to spend less time on asterisks and footnotes and more time laying out how they think of the language in their own mind, so that we could learn, say, the Collier or Kamrin dialect, as a starting point for thinking in the language. In recent years, we have seen Aramaic and Latin in the Passion of the Christ. And Ancient Egyptian has appeared in Stargate and the Mummy. Notes Penelope Wilson, in Hieroglyphics: a very short introduction:
[Stargate and the Mummy] are genuine attempts to create something in a dead tongue for modern ears, and Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs may turn out not to record such a dead language after all. Perhaps, then, we really will be able to think in Ancient Egyptian and begin to create a clear image of the past. But will it be in our image or in theirs.Wilson's quote is interesting because it gives hope to us language enthusiasts that another object of study may appear that we can truly enjoy. But it probably terrifies at least some of the scholars, whose aim is to preserve Ancient Egyptian well enough to do their best at getting the Ancient Egyptian understanding, and who would view our hobby as a bit trifling compared to the decoding of an ancient civilization.
In Collier, if I recall correctly, the idea of speaking the words in some way, any way, that helps is encouraged. In Janice Kamrin's Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs, it's emphasized before one even meets the alphabet that you won't be learning to speak Ancient Egyptian. Which brings the question: When Kamrin reads a hieroglyphic text, does she read by English understanding, by a conceiving of roots or by mumbling her version of what Egyptian sounded like? I suspect it's the last of these, and I wish she'd share so that at the conclusion of her book her readers would know there's at least one person they could chat with.
Labels: ancient languages
3 Comments:
I think you described the issues surrounding the study of Ancient Egyptian a lot better than I did! :)
When reading Egyptian hieroglyphs, I tend to stick an 'a' or 'e' in between each consonant as learning combinations of consonants gets boring after a while, though many common words often have a more or less 'orthodox' transliteration so I use those where possible (eg. 'pr' as in 'house' is usually transliterated as 'per' and not 'par', for instance).
I'd really like to see a book or online course that tries to handle Egyptian in a more modern way. Even something along the format of the Teach Yourself books might be something to consider. Having said that, I think the fact that Middle Egyptian (and all other pre-Coptic forms) was not a colloquial language is a reason why this approach hasn't been taken. Granted, Latin and Ancient Greek texts probably didn't reflect the spoken form but at least they had vowels and have more or less survived to present date. Ancient Egyptian died out with the end of Dynastic Egypt and while it survived in some minor form as Coptic, we don't really know much about the spoken language.
Yes! What you're in effect suggesting here is the idea of living history and living language, rather than just "studying" it.
Some scholars may view that as weird but I would argue: If you aren't living what you learn, are you really learning at all? Sometimes, for example, just asking "How would they have said this or that in Egyptian or Indo-European?" is a great opportunity for learning aspects of the subject that simply wouldn't happen if you did nothing but read books like a "good scholar". You have to ponder what you learn after the book is done, but many don't bother to do this for even a second. So they never ask the good questions that the authors may not ask themselves. To me, that's what a mature and responsible reader does but many have lost track of these basic reading skills.
So, yes, let the haters call people kooks for being inquisitive. Live history and languages and dare to enjoy what you study.
Glen: I think you're absolutely right - this stuff has to come alive, and to be lived. Language is for communicating. Even if you're communicating with a civilization past, you can still be the recipient of the message, learning and growing from the vicarious experiencing of the understanding of others who share our common humanity.
Kelly: I think it's absolutely crucial to make the letter combinations into words. Arabic speakers do not think "mlk," but "maliki" when they think of kings and power. Our Latin pronunciations are part known, part conjecture. But there are conventions and the Latinists abide by them so that a relatively large community can "know" Latin. We need to do something similar with Ancient Egyptian, with the transliteration acting like Romaji with Japanese and the language being learned as a spoken language first, then written. After all, tons of people spoke Ancient Egyptian, and a comparatively small number wrote it. While the hieroglyphs are usually the first source of fascination, I'm not so sure they're the best entry point to the language.
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