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The Egypt language is
included in the family of the Afro-Asiatic languages; the
Egyptian is an indigenous language and the records of this
language date from around 3400 BC.
These records show that
the Egypt language is one of the oldest languages that are
recorded.
The Egyptian was spoken in
the Coptic form till the end of the 17th century.
In the our
days modern Egypt the national language is the Egyptian
Arabic that replace step by step the Coptic language
becoming the daily life` s language after the Egypt` s
conquer by the Muslims. The Coptic Church still uses the
Coptic as liturgical language.
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It was reported that the Coptic is
still spoken by few native speakers. The old Egyptian
language constitutes an independent branch of the
Afro-Asiatic languages. The closest group of languages to it
is the Berber, the Bej and the Semitic. The written
documentations of the Egyptian language date from the 32
century BC making it one of the oldest languages that have
documentations. The Egypt language is divided in six
chronological divisions: the archaic Egyptian (before 3000
BC), the old Egyptian (between 3000 and 2000 BC), the Middle
Egyptian (between 2000 and 1300 BC), the Late Egyptian
(between 1300 and 700 BC), the Demotic Egyptian (between the
7th century BC and the 4th century AD), and the Coptic
Egyptian (between the 3rd century and the 17th century AD).
500 years is the period of time when the Egyptians spoken
the Old Egyptian.
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The period when the Middle Egyptian was spoken by
Egyptians is with 200 years longer, till the Late
Egyptian language appeared. Till the first centuries
AD, the Middle Egyptian language survived as a
written language, like the classical Arabic in our
days or the Latin in the Middle Ages. About 650 BC
is the time when the Demotic Egyptian language
appeared; it survived till the 5th century AD as a
spoken language.In the 4th century AD the Coptic
Egyptian Language came in stage, surviving till the
16th century AD as living language. |
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In the 16th century AD the scholars of
Europe used to travel to Egypt to learn the Coptic Egyptian
from the native speakers in the Renaissance time. The
Coptic` s archaic dialect is still spoken by the Egyptians
of the Christian churches.
The hieratic and the hieroglyphs were
used for writing in the Middle Egyptian as well as the Late
and the Old Egyptian. To write in Demotic a script deriving
from hieratic was used; in appearance, the Demotic looks
like the modern Arabic and although there is no connection
between the two of them, it is written from right and left
too. The Coptic Alphabet is used to write in Coptic; it`s a
Greek alphabet`s modified form, having symbols from the
Demotic Egyptian for the sounds that didn't appear in the
Ancient Greek. The Arabic language became the Egyptian
political administration` s language in the 17th century.
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