Bohairic Coptic

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Bohairic is a dialect of the Coptic language, the latest stage of the Egyptian language. Bohairic is attested from the eighth century CE, and has been the chief liturgical language of the Coptic Orthodox Church since the eleventh century. [1]

Contents

Terminology

The name Bohairic is derived from the Arabic place name Arabic : بحيرة, romanized: Buḥayrah, retained today in Beheira Governorate. The written form is generally believed to have originated in the western Nile Delta. Bohairic, like the other forms of Coptic, is usually described as a 'dialect', but an alternate hypothesis supported by some scholars is that the various forms of Coptic do not represent speech variation, but different orthographic traditions. [2]

History

The earliest attestation of Bohairic is in the fourth century CE, but the majority of texts are from the ninth century and later. [3] Prior to the tenth century, Sahidic was the form of Coptic with super-regional influence; however, by the eleventh century Bohairic had become the dominant written form of Coptic throughout Egypt. [1] Following the Arab conquest of Egypt, Coptic lost ground to Arabic over a period of centuries. Various scholars posit different dates for the demise of spoken Coptic, ranging from the eleventh century to the fourteenth century CE. [1] [4] However, Bohairic has remained in consistent liturgical use through the present in the Coptic Orthodox Church.

In 1858, the Coptic Orthodox Church effected a pronunciation reform under the leadership of ʻIryān Girgis Muftāḥ, a Coptic scholar supported by Pope Cyril IV of Alexandria. [5] This reformed pronunciation is sometimes referred to as 'Greco-Bohairic'.

Pronunciation

Church Pronunciations

Two systems of pronunciation predominate in the Coptic Orthodox Church today: The 'Greco-Bohairic' pronunciation supported by the Church, and 'Old Bohairic', systematised by Emile Māher Isḥāḳ in his 1975 doctoral thesis. [6] The following table shows general correspondences between the pronunciation systems. Particularly for Old Bohairic much pronunciation is lexeme-specific, [7] so any short list of correspondences is necessarily incomplete:

GraphemeGreco-BohairicOld Bohairic
/a/; ⲁ̀ /aː//a/
syllable-initial /v/; syllable-final and post-consonantal /b//w/; medial /uː/; final and pre-consonantal /b/
before close vowels /g/; before open vowels /ɣ; before velars /ŋ//ʤ/, /g/
/ð/; /d/ in names from Hebrew/d/
/e/; ⲉ̀ /eː//a/
/z//z/
/iː/; sometimes /i/ when syllable-initial/iː/, /aː/
/θ/; following ⲥ, ϣ, ⲧ, and m /t//t/, /tˤ/, sometimes /d/
word-final /i/, medial /iː/; when followed by other vowels /j//i/
/k//k/
/l//l/
/m//m/
/n//n/
/ks//ks
word-initial /o/; medial /u/; syllable-final /uː//o/, /oː/, /u/, /uː/, /a/
/p//b/
/r//r/
/s/; the sequence ⲥⲙ is pronounced /zm//s/
/t/; before an open vowel /tˤ/; after ⲛ in Greek words /d//d/, /dˤ/, /t/, /tˤ/
intervocalic /v/; elsewhere /i/
the sequence ⲟⲩ is /u/, but before consonants /w/
medially /i/ or /iː/; initially /i/; post-vocalic /u/ or /w/
/f/in most Coptic words /b/; in Greek words and some Coptic words /f/
in Coptic words /k/; in Greek words before closed vowels /ʃ/, before open vowels /x/in Coptic words /k/; in Greek words /k/, /ʃ/, /x/
/ps//bs/
/oː//oː/, /o/, /uː/
ϣ/ʃ//ʃ/
ϥ/f//f/
ϧ/x//x/
ϩ/h//h/
ϫbefore closed vowels /ʧ/; before open vowels /ʤ//ʤ/
ϭ/ʧ//ʃ/
ϯ/ti//di/

Historical Reconstructions

James Allen reconstructs the following phonemes for Bohairic: [8]

Consonants
Labial Apical Palatal Velar Glottal
Plosive unaspiratedptk
aspirated tʲʰ
Fricative f s ʃ x h
Nasal m n
Glide w l , r j ʔ

In Allen's reconstruction, in contrast to all other Coptic dialects, Bohairic maintains a strong opposition between aspirated and unaspirated plosives. Both Allen and Loprieno hold that here has been a shift from older Egyptian through which one new aspirated/unaspirated contrast exists: ϭ represents /kʲʰ/ in other dialects, but /tʲʰ/ in Bohairic; it thus alternates with ϫ in aspiration (as opposed to place of articulation, as it does in other dialects). [9] [10] Bohairic, along with Akhmimic, retains the phoneme /x/, which has collapsed into /h/ in other dialects.

Loprieno sees the same series of opposing consonants as Allen, but holds that the unaspirated consonants were articulated as ejectives, while their counterparts carried optional aspiration. Loprieno also holds that ⲃ, ⲇ, and ⲅ held voiced values /b/, /d/, and /g/ respectively, the latter two occurring solely in words borrowed from Greek and in post-nasal position. [11]

Allen considers vowel values to be more difficult to determine, but proposes the following matrix of distinctive features, common to all dialects of Coptic:

Vowels
[high][low][back][round][tense]
-++--
--++-
--+++
--+--
--+-+
ⲟⲩ+-+++
+---+

Allen holds that stress may fall either on the ultimate or penultima. Ⲏ, ⲟ, and ⲱ are always fully stressed, while the other vowels may or may not carry stress. [12] In many cases, stress must be determined from word structure.

Distinctive Grammatical Features

In recent decades, research on Coptic dialect variance has shifted from a phonological focus (as suggested through orthographic practice) to a morphosyntactic one. [2] A few distinctive Bohairic features are listed below:

Word Forms and Derivational Morphology

Pronouns

Verb Forms

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References

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