Coptic alphabet

Coptic alphabet
Coptic alphabet
Type

Alphabet

Languages

Coptic language

Time period

c. 300 AD to 14th century AD (Still used today in Coptic churches in Egypt and abroad)

Parent systems Phoenician and Egyptian hieroglyphs

Greek and Demotic

Coptic alphabet

Sister systems

Old Nubian
Latin
Cyrillic
Armenian

ISO 15924

Copt, 204

Direction

Left-to-right

Unicode alias

Coptic

Unicode range U+2C80 to U+2CFF [1]

[2]
U+03E2 to U+03EF
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols.

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Coptic alphabet

2
Egyptian language Coptic language
Writing Systems
Hieroglyphs Hieratic
Demotic Coptic

The Coptic alphabet is the script used for writing the Coptic language. The repertoire of glyphs is based on the
Greek alphabet augmented by letters borrowed from the Egyptian Demotic and is the first alphabetic script used for
the Egyptian language. There are several Coptic alphabets, as the Coptic writing system may vary greatly among the
various dialects and subdialects of the Coptic language.

History
The Coptic alphabet has a long history, going back to the Hellenistic
period, of using the Greek alphabet to transcribe Demotic texts, with
the aim of recording the correct pronunciation of Demotic. During the
first two centuries of the Common Era, an entire series of magical texts
were written in what scholars term Old Coptic, Egyptian language texts
written in the Greek alphabet. A number of letters, however, were
derived from Demotic, and many of these (though not all) are used in
"true" Coptic writing. With the spread of Christianity in Egypt, by the
late 3rd century, knowledge of hieroglyphic writing was lost, as well as
Demotic slightly later, making way for a writing system more closely
Coptic letters in a florid Bohairic script
associated with the Christian church. By the 4th century, the Coptic
alphabet was "standardised", particularly for the Sahidic dialect. (There
are a number of differences between the alphabets as used in the various dialects in Coptic.) Coptic is not generally
used today except by the members of the Coptic Church to write their religious texts. All the Gnostic codices found
in Nag Hammadi used the Coptic alphabet.
The Old Nubian alphabetused to write Old Nubian, a Nilo-Saharan language is written mainly in an uncial
Greek alphabet, which borrows Coptic and Meroitic letters of Demotic origin into its inventory.

Form
The Coptic alphabet was the first Egyptian writing system to indicate vowels, making Coptic documents invaluable
for the interpretation of earlier Egyptian texts. Some Egyptian syllables had sonorants but no vowels; in Sahidic,
these were written in Coptic with a line above the entire syllable. Various scribal schools made limited use of
diacritics: some used an apostrophe as a word divider and to mark clitics, a function of determinatives in logographic
Egyptian; others used diereses over and to show that these started a new syllable, others a circumflex over any
vowel for the same purpose.[3]
Coptic is largely based on the Greek alphabet, another help in interpreting older Egyptian texts,[4] with 24 letters of
Greek origin; 6 or 7 more were retained from Demotic, depending on the dialect (6 in Sahidic, another each in
Bohairic and Akhmimic).[3] In addition to the alphabetic letters, the letter stood for the syllable /ti/. The Coptic
alphabet is more obviously Greek-based than the Cyrillic script, and may be compared to, say, the Latin-based
Icelandic alphabet (which also has special letters at the end which are not in the original Latin alphabet). The Coptic
alphabet in turn had a strong influence on the Cyrillic script..

Coptic alphabet

Alphabet table
image maj. image min. majuscule minuscule numeric value

name

Greek
equivalent

translit. (IPA)

Alpha

a [a]

Vita

w, v, b [w]

Ghamma

g []

Delta

d [d]

Ei

e [i]

So

(stigma)

Zeeta

z [z]

Eeta

, e [e]

Theeta

th, t' [t]

10

Yota

i [i]

20

Kabba

k [k]

30

Lola

l [l]

40

Me

m [m]

50

Ne

n [n]

60

Exi

ks [ks]

70

o [o]

80

Pi

p [p]

100

Ro

r [r]

200

Sima

, ,

s [s]

300

Tav

t [t]

400

Epsilon

u, ou [u]

500

Fi

ph, p' [p]

600

Khe

kh [k]

700

Epsi

ps

800

Oou

, o [o]

Shy

(none)

sh []

90

Fay

, (koppa)
(form, number)

f [f]

()

()

Khay

(none)

x [x]

Hoory

(none)

h [h]

Genga

(none)

j, dzh [d]

Tsheema

, (koppa)
(function)

q [q]

Tee

(none)

ti [ti]

Coptic alphabet

900

Letters derived from the demotic:

hieroglyph

demotic

coptic

ti

The additional letter xai is in Akhmimic and in Bohairic, both for a velar fricative /x/.

Unicode
In Unicode, most Coptic letters formerly shared codepoints with similar Greek letters, but a disunification has been
accepted for version4.1, which appeared in 2005, despite the Coptic letters simply being a typeface of the Greek
alphabet with a few added letters rather than an actual separate alphabet (cf. Fraktur, Gaelic type). The new Coptic
block is U+2C80 to U+2CFF. Most fonts contained in mainstream operating systems use a distinctive Byzantine
style for this block. The Greek block includes seven Coptic letters derived from Demotic, and these need to be
included in any complete implementation of Coptic.
Greek and Coptic[1]
Unicode chart [2] (PDF)

U+037x
U+038x
U+039x
U+03Ax
U+03Bx
U+03Cx
U+03Dx
U+03Ex
U+03Fx

0 1 2 3 4

Notes
1.As of Unicode version6.1

8 9 A

B C D

Coptic alphabet

Coptic[1]
Unicode chart [1] (PDF)

U+2C8x
U+2C9x
U+2CAx
U+2CBx
U+2CCx
U+2CDx
U+2CEx
U+2CFx

Notes
1. As of Unicode version 6.1

Diacritics and punctuation

These are also included in the unicode specification.

Punctuation
normal English punctuation (comma, period, question mark, semicolon, colon, hyphen) uses the regular Unicode
codepoints for punctuation
dicolon: standard colon U+003A
middle dot: U+00B7
en dash: U+2013
em dash: U+2014
slanted double hyphen: U+2E17

Combining diacritics
These are codepoints applied after that of the character they modify.

combining overstroke: U+0305 (=supralinear stroke)

combining character-joining overstroke (from middle of one character to middle of the next): U+035E
combining dot under a letter: U+0323
combining dot over a letter: U+0307
combining overstroke and dot below: U+0305,U+0323
combining acute accent: U+0301
combining grave accent: U+0300
combining circumflex accent (caret shaped): U+0302
combining circumflex (curved shape) or inverted breve above: U+0311
combining circumflex as wide inverted breve above joining two letters: U+0361
combining diaeresis: U+0308

Coptic alphabet

References
[1] http:/ / www. unicode. org/ charts/ PDF/ U2C80. pdf
[2] http:/ / www. unicode. org/ charts/ PDF/ U0370. pdf
[3] Ritner, Robert Kriech. 1996. "The Coptic Alphabet". In The World's Writing Systems, edited by Peter T. Daniels and William Bright. Oxford
and New York: Oxford University Press. 1994:287290.
[4] Campbell, George L. "Coptic." Compendium of the World's Writing Systems. 2nd ed. Vol. 1. Biddles LTD, 1991. 415.

Quaegebeur, Jan. 1982. "De la prhistoire de l'criture copte." Orientalia lovaniensia analecta 13:125136.
Kasser, Rodolphe. 1991. "Alphabet in Coptic, Greek". In The Coptic Encyclopedia, edited by Aziz S. Atiya. New
York: Macmillan Publishing Company, Volume 8. 3032.
Kasser, Rodolphe. 1991. "Alphabets, Coptic". In The Coptic Encyclopedia, edited by Aziz S. Atiya. New York:
Macmillan Publishing Company, Volume 8. 3241.
Kasser, Rodolphe. 1991. "Alphabets, Old Coptic". In The Coptic Encyclopedia, edited by Aziz S. Atiya. New
York: Macmillan Publishing Company, Volume 8. 4145.

External links
Michael Everson's Revised proposal to add the Coptic alphabet to the BMP of the UCS (http://ra.dkuug.dk/
JTC1/SC2/WG2/docs/n2636.pdf)
Copticsounds a resource for the study of Coptic phonology (http://copticsounds.wordpress.com/)
Coptic Unicode input (http://ucbclassics.dreamhosters.com/djm/coptic.html)
Michael Everson's Antinoou: A standard font for Coptic (http://www.evertype.com/fonts/coptic/) supported
by the International Association for Coptic Studies (http://rmcisadu.let.uniroma1.it/~iacs/).
Ifao N Copte (http://www.ifao.egnet.net/) A professional Coptic Unicode font for researchers, students and
publishers has been developed by the French institute of oriental archeology (IFAO). Unicode, Mac and Windows
compatible, this free font is available through downloading from the IFAO website ( direct link (http://www.
ifao.egnet.net/publications/outils/polices/)).
Coptic Unicode fonts (http://www.typographies.fr/index.php) ; Coptic fonts made by Laurent Bourcellier &
Jonathan Perez, type designers

(http://sites.google.com/site/pisakho/Home): Coptic font support (http://sites.google.com/site/

pisakho/fonts) how to install, use and manipulate Coptic ASCII and Unicode fonts
Download Free Coptic Fonts (http://st-takla.org/Download-Software-Free/
Coptic_Downloads_Ta7mil___Christian_&_Coptic_Free-Fonts_01.html)
The Coptic Alphabet (http://www.omniglot.com/writing/coptic.htm) (omniglot.com)

Article Sources and Contributors

Article Sources and Contributors

Coptic alphabet Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=513398940 Contributors: 4pq1injbok, A12n, Adia, Afanous, Ahyangyi, Alai, Aldux, Alexandre8, Amikeco, Andre Engels,
BGManofID, Bletch, Bogdan Nagachop, Ch'marr, Codex Sinaiticus, Connection, Coptie, DabMachine, Dbachmann, DePiep, DerBorg, Diderot, DopefishJustin, EGeene, EagleFan, Error, Ettrig,
EvKnight13, Evertype, Fconaway, Flembles, Flibjib8, Future Perfect at Sunrise, Geni, Ghaly, GlassFET, Gringo300, Gurgisgirgis, HeyManHRU, Hvn0413, Hydrogen Iodide, Ikiroid, Inciteful,
Indexheavy, Indiana State, Jburt1, JeLuF, Jim Douglas, Joe Kress, Joefromrandb, JohnThorne, Joyous!, Kintetsubuffalo, Klimenok, Koavf, Kwamikagami, Lanternix, Leszek Jaczuk, Lethe,
Liliana-60, Lothar von Richthofen, LoveEncounterFlow, MCiura, Macedonian, Maddie!, Marcika, MariBoktor, Mark Dingemanse, MichaelFayez, Mike.lifeguard, Monedula, Mustafaa, Myopic
Bookworm, Mzajac, Nefertum17, Neilc, Nick Number, Nixdorf, Nnemo, Ogress, Oliver Pereira, Oneforlogic, Paxsimius, Proski, Puckly, Reedy, Rjwilmsi, Roger Pearse, Rmih, Sardanaphalus,
Schwei2, Scs237, Serouj, Shell Kinney, Silroquen, Sleman, Soosed, Spl908455, Stubby Nubby, Suruena, Svick, Theopneustos, Tobias Conradi, Trymybest, Twthmoses, Van helsing, Varlaam,
Vincent Ramos, Waprap, Wise mike, Youssefa, Zerida, , 77 anonymous edits

Image Sources, Licenses and Contributors

Image:CopticCross7Modified.jpg Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:CopticCross7Modified.jpg License: Public Domain Contributors: en:User:Lanternix
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Image:CopteHmaj.png Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:CopteHmaj.png License: Public Domain Contributors: Lanternix (talk)
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File:demotique kh.png Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Demotique_kh.png License: GNU Free Documentation License Contributors: Vicent Ramos
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File:demotique tsh.png Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Demotique_tsh.png License: GNU Free Documentation License Contributors: Vincent Ramos
File:demotique ti.png Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Demotique_ti.png License: GNU Free Documentation License Contributors: Vicent Ramos

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