Let's Learn Ancient Egyptian Together

[alexander]

Ok, some of you, at this point, are probably thinking why, wha, who, waaaa? But let me explain first, who this is for and what the goal is, and generally why i want to do this

So, first of all what this is about. It has been my goal recently to pick up a language that will look really random and cool on one's resumee, and i have stopped at ancient egyptian, because one, they can never test you on the thoroughness of your knowledge, and two, it will get them soo confused when they see a dead, not all that well known or understood language.

That's why i started learning about and learning ancient egyptian. There is also no right way to pronounce the syllables, we have ideas, but its all up for debate, aka, you are never wrong in the pronounciation.

There aren't all that many people that know ancient egyptian, so you are at a plus there as well, writing in it would be a sort of easy and quick way to share thoughts, securely (more or less).

So let's learn it together (there is little info out there, i was able to get a beginner book for it, but its mostly explaining what we were able to learn about the language, and general rules, so perhaps some people have some dusted books they would like to share, or an online reseource they can point to, to learn this).... i wonder how many people are as crazy as me to do this

i'll create a group for this, once, and if anyone responds...

[modest]

Once upon a time, there was a TV show that showed some Egyptian hieroglyphs. They didn't say what it meant and there was one glyph obscured. So, I spent a couple hours trying to discover its meaning only to give up. I did eventually find out the meaning. Here is what they showed:



What do ya think

And, also, yeah, where are the good internet sources I could have used to decipher this?

~modest

[Thunderbird]

First letter is an s or saw sound ?

Egypt Name Translator

[modest]

Yes, the left most symbol is the same as the alphabet glyph "s".

~modest

[Thunderbird]

Can I buy a vowel ?

[modest]

If they had vowels, I'd sell you one. But, I don't think they do.

~modest

[Moontanman]

SHIT, no vowels?

[alexander]

ok, the left most sound is an s sound, the birdie there is an Ah sound. having problems with the last 2 letters...

lets see the syllable to the left of the bird looks like an upside down papyrus shoot... it looks somewhat like an h, though i would not count out an r or in fact an m sound there, though leave it for now...

last syllable is even harder to find, i think it has the meaning of an overseeer, at least that is the closest thing to that figure i could find..

middle one i am still trying to figure out, shooting for something more of an h or an m there...

so we get

s, blank ,(i think m or n, or a d), a and its all an overseer of some sort, methinks...

well either an overseer, or, well i guess it would miss a syllable for being overseen, so it must be an overseer, which would probably mean its a name, even though there's no cartouche there...

names that would fit this

sabah - which seems to fit closely
sanura, though we are missing the classical ra sign there, so likely no
salihah - which i guess it could be though not as neatly as the first guess here
sabola - also a possibility...

case here being that most names that fit this description have an a after the s syllable, which means it s a safe thing to assume, with some degree of certainly, that the second syllable, is quite possibly an ah sound as well...


those would be my guesses with a little book research...

[alexander]

yes and no, on the vowels, there are no direct vowels in hieroglyphs, though not to say that some sounds could not have resembled a vowel..

egyptians had hard time pronouncing letters like L and O, in fact from the earliest two names translated, Ptolemy and Cleopatra, the vowen we pronouce as O, would have likely been pronouced as wa, as the sound for the corresponding syllable indicates. Also the t in cleopatra, which is a differeny syllable from the Ptolemys t would have likely been a harder, D sound, and the letter l would have been pronounced as r or an rw sound. It's a scary sounding language when the name we seem to know as Ptolemys was likely pronounced as Ptwarwmys. The beautiful cleopatra would have been pronounces closer to Krwiwapadra... this gives you some more interesting facts on ancient egyptian, and the way it would have sound when spoken...

neato, right?

[modest]

Originally Posted by alexander

ok, the left most sound is an s sound, the birdie there is an Ah sound. having problems with the last 2 letters...

lets see the syllable to the left of the bird looks like an upside down papyrus shoot... it looks somewhat like an h, though i would not count out an r or in fact an m sound there, though leave it for now...

last syllable is even harder to find, i think it has the meaning of an overseeer, at least that is the closest thing to that figure i could find..

middle one i am still trying to figure out, shooting for something more of an h or an m there...

so we get

s, blank ,(i think m or n, or a d), a and its all an overseer of some sort, methinks...

The full word is:



I should clarify that I never did figure out what this meant myself - someone else did. So, I would be worthless as far as how to solve it. I can, however, say that there is no 'm' or 'n' but there is a 'd'.

Originally Posted by alexander

well either an overseer, or, well i guess it would miss a syllable for being overseen, so it must be an overseer, which would probably mean its a name, even though there's no cartouche there...

The absence of a cartouche is not editing or a mistake. It properly doesn't have one and you correctly infer that it is not then a name. It is a verb. I don't think overseer or overseen is in any way related. But, I may be wrong. For all I know this word and overseer have the same root word or something. It doesn't seem directly related to me.

Originally Posted by alexander

case here being that most names that fit this description have an a after the s syllable, which means it s a safe thing to assume,

Very nice! You are correct. The latin transliteration has an 'a' at the end after the 's'.

Let me know if you want me to tell you.

~modest