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Egyptian Language

Chart showing the successive phases of the Egyptian language and the writing systems in Egypt (including Greek and Arabic, used in later periods)

Old and Middle Egyptian are synthetic phases of the language, i.e. words include number, gender, case, tense. There is no word for 'the'.

Example: 'he will not hear' nn sDm.f / 'of the house' pr

Late Egyptian, demotic, and Coptic are analytic , i.e. number, case, tense are articulated in larger series of separate words. An old word for 'that' pA becomes the Egyptian for 'the'. So 'he will not hear' would be nn iw.f r sDm/ 'of the house' would be n pA pr


 

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