User talk:Esperfulmo/Coptic

A couple of notes[edit source]

First of all, thank you for your great jobǃ I took a quick look at you suggestions, and just want to address a few thingsː

ⲍⲉⲃⲉⲑⲉ is most likely not a Coptic toponym, but a transliteration of an Arabic one

ⲧⲁϩϭⲟⲩⲣ is only proposed but unattested

Concerning Africa - it is actually attested in Coptic as ⲁⲫⲣⲓⲕⲏ (in general i believe people tend to borrow from Greek rather than any other language with what i don't necessarily agree)

Egyptian Arabic rendering of ج as g has nothing to do with Coptic and shouldn't be considered as any source of evidence

Coptic ϫ and it's rendeting in Arabic as ش - see Carsten Peust's "Koptische Dialektologie anhand âgyptisch-arabischer Ortsnamen"

Also i want to make clear that this Wikipedia Incubator is a mess and in my opinion is probably beyond saving ⲫⲁϯⲟⲩⲉⲣϣⲓ (talk) 20:02, 15 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks man, for your feedback.

Regarding ⟨ϫ⟩, it is very obvious that it represented a consonant having two allophones, namely [ʃ] initially/finally and [ɟ] intervocalically.
How do we explain that many words having ⟨ϫ⟩ evolved to have [ʃ] in some positions while [ɡ] others?
What would the original Arabic word for ⲍⲉⲃⲉⲑⲉ /ˈzɛβɛtʰɛ/ be? The current Egyptian Arabic one sounds like a feminine "tar" (زفتة, actually respelled زفتى with a flexible alef to "change" the connotation) which is by no means likely to be a name for a place, as this is a curse word (a variant of "ugly"/"abhorrent") in Egyptian Arabic and as far as I know, the place has nothing to do with petroleum industry, and actually petroleum was unknown when the town got its name.

Greets. --Mahmudmasri (talk) 01:12, 16 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I found a source for many source names: [1]

Ziftā زفتى [30.7°N/31.2°E] (ältere Schreibung auch زوفتى, was auf eine Aussprachevariante Zuftā hindeutet) = Ⲝⲉⲃⲉⲧⲉ ~ Ⲝⲉⲃⲉⲇⲉ (nur in Manuskripten einer mittelalterlichen Liste; mit Ⲝ sicher Ⲍ gemeint, wie von Amélineau 1893: 580 auch wiedergegeben). - Timm 1669f. Die koptische Form ist vielleicht nur eine Transkription des arabischen Namens. Eine veraltete Etymologie zitiert bei Gauthier IV 143.

Carsten Peust perhaps has a similar opinion to yours, I highlighted in bold. --Mahmudmasri (talk) 02:01, 16 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

What's your source of ϫ being [ɟ]? I'm aware of it being [dʒ], [tʃ], [kʲ] and even [ç] but not [ɟ].
We explain it with different pronunciations of ϫ in these toponyms. See Carsten Peust's "Koptische Dialektologie anhand âgyptisch-arabischer Ortsnamen" again. --ⲫⲁϯⲟⲩⲉⲣϣⲓ (talk) 11:07, 16 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The source is volume one on the letter, particularly the last lines. There are contradictory descriptions on its pronunciation, even implausible. It is apparently a voiced sound with another voiceless fricative as an allophone, or the other way around, a voiceless fricative with a voiced sound as an allophone. The plosive sound seemed more plausible to me due to the words that were consistently borrowed into Egyptian Arabic with /ɡ/, and at other times as /ʃ/, which is kinda agreed upon for the [ʃ] in the source, in addition to how it was borrowed in Egyptian Arabic in this other case. Simply getting confused with the Greco-Bohairic pronunciation or assuming that there must have been an Italian-like pronunciation for the consonant, didn't make sense to me. The value [ɟ] could possibly have been something like [ʝ] or [ɟ͡ʝ]. Likewise, the allophonic value [ʃ] might have actually been [t͡ʃ].

Another possibility for the /ɡ/ sound as borrowed in Egyptian Arabic is that Egyptian Arabic habitually converts /(d)ʒ/ sound or the likes (e.g. [ʝ] or [ɟ͡ʝ]) to /ɡ/. /t͡ʃ/ is usually deaffricated to [ʃ]. --Mahmudmasri (talk) 06:12, 28 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]