Ancient Egyptian Forum

PsyPharaoh

I've been brushing up on my hieroglyphic alphabet, and then it dawned on me. There are parallels, no matter how extreme, between the hieroglyphs used in the writing of the ancient Egyptians and words used in the culture of today!

Sure, it doesn't apply to all the letters, but here's what I can recognize:

B: A picture of a foot. Boots go on feet. Boot starts with B. B for boot!
D: A picture of a hand. Hands have fingers, otherwise known as digits. D for digits!
G: A picture of a jar. This, I know is a stretch, but at least it makes sense to me. In the French pronunciation of the alphabet, the G and the J are switched. So the G sounds like a J which is the first letter of jar. G (J) is for jar!
H: A picture of a similar representation to a hieroglyphic house. A stretch, yes.. H is for house!
I: A picture of a bird's feather, standing vertically. I is the only English capicalized letter that is a straight verticle line. In this, I see the vertical feather, and put two in two together. I is for verticleness of the feather!
K: A basket. The word basket's most prominent feature is the harsh sounding K. K is for basket!
L: A lion. Need I say more?
N: Water. We all know about the greatest river in all the world, the Nile, right? N is for Nile!
R: A mouth. I, being a reader of http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.com/, am familiar with the Maddoxian principal of the best form of being in the universe, the pirate. What is a pirate stereotypically known for saying? "Aarrgh!" R is for "Aarrgh"!

Questions? Comments? Suicide pacts?

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Si-amun · Posted: Fri Feb 04, 2005 11:29 pm Post subject:

What? Is this a joke? lol
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PsyPharaoh · Posted: Sat Feb 05, 2005 5:08 am Post subject:

It kind of is, I suppose. It is rather silly Smile

Although this association has actually been very useful for me.

If anyone recognizes another parallel, feel free to share!

Psusennes I · Pharaoh Joined: 09 Sep 2004 Posts: 913 Location: England

Those are pretty ridiculous parallels, especially considering that many of those letters are just 'guessed' values anyway. There are basically no connections between Ancient Egyptian and Modern English, unless you count the assimilated words from Egyptian to Greek to English, like Shepet Ankh -> Sphinx, in the context of an lion-bodied creature. Pharaoh is another word, but I am straining to think of any more. Coptic, which is still spoken, does use a plethora of words that are linked to Egypt. Such as 'sa-t' for daughter. Also, technically the lion glyph isn't actually a 'l' sound, but a 'rw' sound instead. Cleopatra made do with it though.

Anyway. Nice attempt, and yes- I'll admit it- I used to have my own silly ways of remembering letter values too! The jar could be a 'gourd' perhaps? Anyway, after a while the values just go into your head, but there are thousands more biliteral and triliteral glyphs to get your head around- others like the lion glyph 'rw'. Do lions make a 'rw' sound?
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Osiris_God · Scribe Joined: 15 Mar 2005 Posts: 51 Location: Canada

thats pretty kool

Unas · Posted: Tue Mar 22, 2005 11:06 am Post subject:

Well of course it's cool (I refuse to say it's "kool" on the grounds that kool is a brand of ciggarettes), I came up with the idea! Wink

In all seriousness of this very unserious topic - can you think of any parallels, Osiris_God?
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Psusennes I · Pharaoh Joined: 09 Sep 2004 Posts: 913 Location: England

I hate to spoil the fun, but most words that people think might come frome Egyptian actually don't. Sphinx and Pharaoh are very likely to come almost directly from the hieroglyphic language, but there really are very few other common words.

I heard a while back a little story about 'desert' coming from 'deshret' (the red land- the Egyptian desert), and for a while I belived it. Sadly it isn't so however. It comes from the latin 'dēsertāre' 'to be abandoned', which itself comes from 'de' - 'sertare', which means un-join. It has no link with Egypt whatsoever. Most of these obvious links are infact just false friends. Even something as clever as 'deshret' doesn't stand up to scrutiny- the Egyptian language had almost unnoticeable effects on European languages, rooted in Latin and Greek.

It's a shame really.
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Unas · Posted: Wed Mar 23, 2005 4:25 am Post subject:

I thought that was common knowledge; that languages are influenced by outside sources. Wink

Even in France, where there's the group of pompus Frano-Literaries who fight to keep the french language "pure", there are aspects of other languages that creep in.

We don't have a spoken form of the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, at least for the most part. I believe there are some aspects of it that might still exist, but we will never know what they are, if any.
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