Coptic Lesson 4: Ente

epchois_nai_nan

Coptic Lesson 4: `nte

To quickly recap what you have learned so far:

The Definite article: pi ] ni `p (`v) `t (`;) (pi ti ni ep (ef) et (eth) / pi di ni ep (ep) et (et))

Possessive articles: pa pen / pek pe peten / pef pec pou (pa pen / pek pe peten / pef pes pou)

This lesson will deal with the word `nte (ente/ende), and it's contracted form: `n (en) which mean 'of'.

This word and its contraction always denote POSSESSION, i.e., the fact that something belongs to something else:

piouyb `nte ]e`kklycia (pi-oweeb ente ti ekeklee-sia / pi-wEb ende ti ekeklEsia) = the priest of the Church (i.e. the Church's priest)

]mau `nte pirwmi (ti-mav ente pi-rOmi / di-mau ende pi-rOmi) = the mother of the man (i.e. the man's mother)

This is called the Possessive Construction

`nte can also be shortened to `n / `m (en/em). `m is used only when the word it is attached to begins with any of the following letters: m p b v ' and `n is used everywhere else.

`pouro `n]hiryny (ep-ouro ente ti-hirini/epouro ende di-hirEnE) = the King of peace

But, ]mau `mpirwmi = the mother of the man

Simple yes?

One more thing needs to be said to avoid confusion in later lessons though - you will notice that in all the above examples of possession, there was a definite article between the `nte and the word it applies to (or the `n/`m and the word it denotes):

`pouro `nte ]hiryny (ep-ouro ente ti-hirini/epouro ende di-hirEnE) = the King of peace

`pouro `n]hiryny (ep-ouro en-ti-hirini/epouro en-di-hirEnE) = the King of peace

This is an important feature of the Possessive Construction as it differentiates between possession and adjectives (which we will cover in the next lesson). It does not even need need to be the definite article - the possessive and indefinite articles also apply:

`pouro `ntahiryny (ep-ouro en-ta-hirini/epouro en-da-hirEnE) = the King of my peace (the possessive article)

`pouro `nouhiryny (ep-ouro en-ou-hirini/epouro en-ou-hirEnE) = the King of a peace

When no article is used, the second word becomes a PROPERTY or CHARACTERISTIC of the first word, rather than its POSSESSION - e.g.:

pirwmi `napac (pi-romi en-apas) = the man (that is) old (i.e. the OLD man)

This will be explained in more detail in the next lesson. For now, simply remember that:

1.`nte it ALWAYS denotes possession
2. `n/`m denotes possession when it is followed by an article

God bless

mabsoota

thanks, this is so useful!
:)
does anyone know what is the origin of the coptic word 'rom' for man?
i think it's the same in quite a few different languages.
eg the romany (gypsy) word for man is also 'rom'.

ophadece

The word is romi /romi/ and sometimes esp in Sa'idic /ra:ma/. Don't know the etymology, but may look it up if ebshoisnainan hasn't a quicker answer...
Oujai

epchois_nai_nan

No I don't have a quicker answer - I'd be interested to learn the etymology too actually.

It's listed in the Chicago Demotic Dictionary as 'RMT' (the final 'T' was just a grammatical thing I think, not spoken) so at least as far back as Demotic (450 BC) the word was pretty much the same. But it just gives the definition, nothing about the history or origin of the word. Hopefully ophadece will have some more information :)

dzheremi

[quote author=mabsoota link=topic=10709.msg130657#msg130657 date=1297714641]
thanks, this is so useful!
:)
does anyone know what is the origin of the coptic word 'rom' for man?
i think it's the same in quite a few different languages.
eg the romany (gypsy) word for man is also 'rom'.


I'm still waiting for it to arrive in the mail, but believe it or not there's an entire chapter on this word (or rather the derivation of it) in Takacs' (ed.) "Semito-Hamitic Festschrift for A. B. Dolgopolsky und H. Jungraithmayr". I'll post whatever I find in there that might be relevant to this discussion. From the title of the chapter (the only thing I can see in the preview/summary), Ebshois is correct in that it comes from RMT in the Egyptian.

ophadece

I don't think I can add any piece of knowledge to what has been said already. I will try but I don't think I'll be able to go that far back as ebshois and dzheremi did... thanks for the great insight...
Oujai

[Deleted User]

~

epchois_nai_nan

[quote author=CopticStrength link=topic=10709.msg131143#msg131143 date=1298133892]
I found a PDF file that fits in with thess lessons by Abouna Kyrillos Makar.

http://www.suscopts.org/deacons/coptic/FT-Coptic Language-Lectures.pdf

Hope this is somewhat helpful.

PPFM
CopticStrength


Wow these are awesome! I'd never seen them before - Thanks!

We should really be adding these documents to the 'Articles' section of the site don't you reckon? Their not copyrighted or anything ...

marian6

epchois_nai_nan, do you know when you should go for  `nte and when choose `n?
So whats the exact difference or are they both equal?

epchois_nai_nan

Ignore this post - I was wrong, I looked it up.

marian6

So to use your example, is it also correct to say: aftee ente pefsoma and ti-shouri ente ennoub?

epchois_nai_nan

[quote author=marian6 link=topic=10709.msg131174#msg131174 date=1298163005]
So to use your example, is it also correct to say: aftee ente pefsoma and ti-shouri ente ennoub?


Ah I've made a pretty serious mistake! You just made me realise - sorry, I mixed up two concepts. LOL, ok forget everything I just said :D There are actually MANY uses of `n/`m so I won't go into them all here - only two are relevant. This is actually getting fairly advanced so don't worry too much if you don't get it immediately - I was going to leave it for later lessons.

The Possessive Construction
If you want to talk about POSSESSION, you can use `nte or its contracted form `n/`m

piouyb `nte ]ekklycia (pi-oweeb ente ti-ekekleesia / pi-wEb ende di-ekeklEsia) = the Priest of the Church (the Church's priest), is the same as piouyb `n]ekklycia (pi-oweeb enti-ekekleesia / pi-wEb endi-ekeklEsia). This indicates POSSESSION, or BELONGING of one thing to another.

The Attributive Construction
BUT - `n/`m is also used for ADJECTIVES. This is what I forgot and why I got confused when you gave the example of 'ti-shouree ente noub'.

]soury `nnoub does not mean, the censer WHICH BELONGS TO gold, it means the censer which is MADE OF gold - i.e. it is a GOLDEN censer. This is an adjective - it tells you a PROPERTY or CHARACTERISTIC of a word. With this construction, you cannot use `nte. So the example you gave of 'ti-shouree ente noub' is incorrect - you cannot say this.

Now, whenever you see `n/`m used, there is a very simple way tell whether it is marking an adjective or a possession. If there is an ARTICLE of any kind after the `n/`m, then it is possessive. Look at these examples:

`pouro `nte ]hiryny (ep-ouro ente ti-hirini/epouro ende di-hirEnE) = the King of peace

`pouro `n]hiryny (ep-ouro en-ti-hirini/epouro en-di-hirEnE) = the King of peace

BUT `pouro `nhiryny (ep-ouro en-hirini/epouro en-hirEnE) = the PEACEFUL king

In the first two, the ] is the definite article (meaning 'the') which means `n is being used to denote possession. The same is true of any article, not just the definite article:

`pouro `ntahiryny (ep-ouro en-ta-hirini/epouro en-da-hirEnE) = the King of my peace (the possessive article)

`pouro `nouhiryny (ep-ouro en-ou-hirini/epouro en-ou-hirEnE) = the King of a peace

When there is no article between the 'en' and the word, then it is telling you a PROPERTY or CHARACTERISTIC of the first word:

`]soury `nnoub (ti-shouree en-noub) = the censer WHICH IS golden. Here there is no article between the 'en' and the 'noub'.

For this reason, I will remove the example of 'ti-shouree en-noub' from the opening post because that is a mistake - I should not have included it as an example of possession. I'm sorry about that, I hope too many people haven't been confused - I will deal with the ATTRIBUTIVE CONSTRUCTION properly in my next lesson so that this is cleared up.

God bless and pray for me

ophadece

Ebouro 'nhirene is not a proper construction. I guess you want to say ebouro 'nhirenekon, but even that is still hefty for my ears.
Don't forget also a very important usage of 'm and 'n but not 'nda is the attachment to the object of the sentence: Dishiwum 'mbi'eish...
Oujai

epchois_nai_nan

[quote author=ophadece link=topic=10709.msg131196#msg131196 date=1298186929]
Ebouro 'nhirene is not a proper construction. I guess you want to say ebouro 'nhirenekon, but even that is still hefty for my ears.
Don't forget also a very important usage of 'm and 'n but not 'nda is the attachment to the object of the sentence: Dishiwum 'mbi'eish...
Oujai


Thanks ophadece, you're right about ep-ouro en-hirene - its very awkward wording (and not strictly grammatically correct either) but I thought it was easiest way to illustrate the point at hand.

And yeah, I will address the `n/`m of verb objects in the future, after the lessons dealing with verbs. The above two deal only with `n/`m which come after nouns.

God bless - and please keep reading my posts as you have MUCH more experience with the language than me, I will often make mistakes and would very much appreciate your corrections.

Pray for me

marian6

thanks for the additional explaination, it's getting more clear now

dzheremi

[quote author=dzheremi link=topic=10709.msg130687#msg130687 date=1297753404]
I'm still waiting for it to arrive in the mail, but believe it or not there's an entire chapter on this word (or rather the derivation of it) in Takacs' (ed.) "Semito-Hamitic Festschrift for A. B. Dolgopolsky und H. Jungraithmayr".


Just got this in the mail the other day and am sitting down to read it. I tried to make a PDF of it first, since there's a lot of information here (and I don't have the proper fonts to display all of it), but my scanner is just a little too small for the book to lay flat, so it comes out unreadable at the edges. So I'll quote some relevant parts instead. All come from Václav Blažek's "Egyptian rmt 'man': An Attempt at an Afroasiatic Etymology" (in Takacs: 2008, 57-62). I've omitted some of the citations that don't make sense out of context.

One of the most frequent Egyptian words, rmt "man, human being", was usually written in the defective spelling, without the medial m. The orthography agrees with the pronounced form e.g. in the Pyramid Texts, but not always. [...] The collective rmt.t "mankind, people" is known from the Middle Kingdom. The sound m was preserved till the latest stages of the Egyptian language, written in other types of script: Demotic rmt "man", rmt.t "woman"; Coptic (Sahidic) rome (since I can't type in Coptic here, roh-omega-mu-epsilon), Bohayric romi (roh-omega-mu-iota), Fayyumic lomi (lambda-omega-mu-iota) "man, human". Edel (1955-66), Callender (1975) and Osing (1976) proposed the vocalization *ramt, Vycichl (1983) reconstructed the participle-like protoform *ramit < *ramik, while Vergote (1965) identified here the nomen concretum (concrete noun --dzh.) of the Semitic type qátal and vocalized it as *rámat.

Blažek (henceforth VB) then goes on to detail two proposed etymologies that don't work but have nonetheless been popular: analogy to Semitic *gábbar- "strong" and its many reflexes in the various Semitic languages (he notes that this has been rejected as early as Calice, 1936), and another group who proposed rmk in connection with Akkadian ramku(m) "priest", the term derived from ramaku "to bath". Without further specification, he states "For semantical [sic] reasons, it is untenable." (2008, 57)

The main purpose of the present article is to prove the new etymology proposing a compound segmented in rm-t and interpreted as *"son of man".

This idea is based on the assumed semantic analogy with the metaphor "man/human being" = "son of mankind", widespread in the ancient languages of the Near East: [...] Akkadian mar awiluti and mar niši "man" in the sense of "human being", lit. "son of mankind"; Ugaritic bn nšm "men", i.e. "sons of mankind", and the compound bnš "man, an individual, someone, person; people, personnel; service personnel; farmhand, labourer", pl. bnšm, cf. also bnš bnšm "every man", lit. "a man of men"; plus syllabic bu-nu-šu < *bun-noš-; similarly Hebrew ben-ʔenoš, Aramaic bar ʔenaš [....]

From a syntactical point of view, this order of components is typical for the Old Egyptian compounds, cf. hm-ntr "priest", lit. "servant-of-god" > Coptic hont (hori-o-ne-tau); (Egy.) z3t3 "snake", lit. "son of the earth" > Coptic site (semma-iota-tau-ei) "basilisk".

The second component *t with the hypothetical meaning "man, people" can be identified with the Egyptian word t3j "man, person", first attested in both Old Kingdom and Pyramid Texts.

At this point VB presents a lengthy explanation of the derivation of the Egyptian word t3j, parts of which are in German so I can't understand them, and none of which is terribly necessary to summarize if we just accept the hypothesis given above. :)

Accepting the analogy with the metaphor "human being" = "son of mankind", the first component should have been connected with the meaning "son, child" [...].

A whole bunch of data is then presented from the Chadic and Cushitic languages, since this is an attempt at an Afroasiatic etymology, so it would by necessity include the other languages of the group, not just Semitic but also Berber, Chadic, Cushitic, and Omotic. Much of it is written in German and French, because apparently VB lives in the early part of the last century when a well-rounded scholarly education would've included training in those languages. Or maybe it still does and I am missing out on a huge part of a proper education. Either way, it's not translated, and what is translated is incredibly arcane in relation to what I've presented so far, so just trust me that there is lots of evidence for the first part of the compound (rm-) from Hausa (cf. rám-tso "small lads", where "-tso" is the diminutive suffix), Sokoro (cf. rum "child", róma "son"), and about a million other languages.

Summing up, the lexical data especially from Chadic and Cushitic languages support the existence of both components of the hypothetical Egyptian compound *rm-t and allow the semantic construction of "son of man(kind)". [...] It is possible to connect the first component with such verbs as Arabic ramaʕa "to give birth" [...] East Cushitic *rim- > Somali rim-ay "uterus", rim-an "pregnant (of animals)" [...] Oromo rim "to be pregnant" [....] It is possible to conclude the existence of the verb √r-m with various extensions in Afroasiatic. One of them could be √r-m-y ≈ "to bear, give birth", giving the participle *ramiy.

So there you have it, folks. *√r-m "to bear" > *r-m "son" > *rm-t (copound from r-m "son" + reduction of t3j "man") >  Egyptian (after grammaticalization of -t) rmt > Demotic rmt > Coptic rome, romi, lomi (depending on dialect)

Ta-da! ;D

ophadece

Thanks very much dzheremi
qen ousep`hmot emasw
oujai