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phonology of guttural and unique egyptian letters:
by dr. ossama alsaadawi
important: in this document let us use only small letters because capital letters will be used here
to express some other phonations of unique egyptian phoneme letters
some egyptian phonemes have no equivalent in english alphabets, so we must put some rule how to write (in english) these special egyptian letters. modern egyptians put some conventional rules among themselves to write these letters as follows:
1. the egyptian *hamza (a) letter*, they chose the digit (2) to express this letter because it looks like the egyptian eagle G1 (a) and also it looks like the english (a). the *hamza* reads like (a) in *apple*, but in any position inside the word even at the end of a word unlike english words. for example, the egyptian word *hada2*, which means *calmed down*, is only written in english as *hada* which is a distorted sound of the real word and could give another meaning.
however, from professional lingual point of view i prefer using the upper comma ( ' ) to replace this convention and to express the real utterance of the the egyptian (hamza), so the egyptian word *hada2* could be written professionally as .. hada'
2. the egyptian *extended (aa) letter*, which utters as in the english word *able*. this is very important egyptian letter H6 and have no equivalent english letter. so we must put a new convention to write it correctly.
i suppose to use the english *average mark* ( a~ ) to express this egyptian extended (aa) letter. for example the egyptian word (aabaa') which means (fathers), if we write it in english as (aba) it will be very distorted and cannot express both the real utterance and meaning of the word. however, we can write it now as (a~ba~'). it means that the first (a) is extended and the second (a) is also extended and the word ends with the (hamza) or (') that we expressed above!
3. the egyptian *th* letter, which utters as in the english word *three*, and is written in egyptian as Z2A or three vertical dashes performed like a pyramid shape. commonly, there is no known modern convention among the egyptians for writing this letter in english, probably they may write it as (th) but this may give a false utterance because (th) could be pronounced also as in (then) which a quite different utterance of the egyptian letter.
therefore I suggest using the english mark ( ^ ) to express the real utterance of the egyptian letter (th) as in (three).
4. the egyptian *kh* letter, which utters as in the word *khufu* or *khan* could be written in english as capital X, ( X ) or as the english digit ( 5 ) which is used as a convention among modern egyptians or by using (kh).
5. the egyptian *th* letter as read in *then* could be written as ( ; ) because this sign was used in egyptian hieratic line as (th) from (then) or as underlined small z letter ( z )
6. the egyptian *sh* letter as read in *show* could be written as capital S or as underlined capital S ( S ) or as the mark ( # ) because it resembles the ancient egyptian *sh* grapheme.
7. the egyptian guttural magnified D letter could be written as capital D or as underlined capital ( D ).
8. the egyptian guttural magnified T could be written as capital T.
9. the egyptian guttural magnified Z could be written as magnified Z.
10. the egyptian guttural *3ayn* letter could be written as (3) which is used as a convention among modern egyptians or slant dashed ( a` ) or as underlined small (a).
11. the egyptian guttural *gh* letter could be written as capital G or as underlined capital G.
12. the egyptian guttural q letter is written as normal small english q.
13. the egyptian guttural magnified *La* or *L2* letter could be written as underlined L (L) or as (L').
14. the egyptian guttural *au* letter could be written as (au) or by using the questioning mark (?) which the original egyptian depiction for this letter.
15. the egyptian *female t* letter could be written by normal small t (t) letter
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