Coptic alphabet

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Coptic alphabet
Script type	Alphabet
Time period	2nd century A.D.[1] to present (in Coptic liturgy)
Direction	left-to-right
Languages	Coptic language
Related scripts
Parent systems	Egyptian hieroglyphs Proto-Sinaitic Phoenician alphabet Greek script augmented by Demotic Coptic alphabet
Child systems	Old Nubian
ISO 15924
ISO 15924	Copt, 204 , ​Coptic
Unicode
Unicode alias	Coptic
Unicode range	U+2C80–U+2CFF Coptic U+0370–U+03FF Greek and Coptic U+102E0–U+102FF Coptic Epact Numbers
This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction between [ ], / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.

This article contains Coptic text. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Coptic letters.

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 letters of the Coptic Alphabet.

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The Coptic alphabet has a long history, going back to the Hellenistic period, when the Greek alphabet was used 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 spiritual 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 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 Orthodox Church of Alexandria to write their religious texts. All the Gnostic codices found in Nag Hammadi used the Coptic alphabet.

The Old Nubian alphabet—used 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 ⲓ and ⲩ to show that these started a new syllable, others a circumflex over any vowel for the same purpose.^[2]

The Coptic alphabet's glyphs are largely based on the Greek alphabet, another help in interpreting older Egyptian texts,^[3] 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).^[2] In addition to the alphabetic letters, the letter ϯ stood for the syllable /te/ or /de/.

As the Coptic alphabet is simply a typeface of the Greek alphabet,^[4] with a few added letters, it can be used to write Greek without any transliteration schemes. Latin equivalents would include the Icelandic alphabet (which likewise has added letters), or the Fraktur alphabet (which has distinctive forms). While initially unified with the Greek alphabet by Unicode, a proposal was later accepted to separate it, with the proposal noting that Coptic is never written using modern Greek letter-forms (unlike German, which may be written with Fraktur or Roman Antiqua letter-forms), and that the Coptic letter-forms have closer mutual legibility with the Greek-based letters incorporated into the separately encoded Cyrillic alphabet than with the forms used in modern Greek.^[5][6]

Letters[]

These are the letters that are used for writing the Coptic language.

Uppercase (Image)	Lowercase (Image)	Uppercase (Unicode)	Lowercase (Unicode)	Numeric value	Letter Name[7]	Greek equivalent	Transliteration	Sahidic pronunciation[8]	Bohairic pronunciation[8]	Late Coptic pronunciation[9]	Greco-Bohairic pronunciation[10]
		Ⲁ	ⲁ	1	Alpha	Α, α	a	[a]	[a]	[æ, ɑ]	[ɐ]
		Ⲃ	ⲃ	2	Beta	Β, β	b	[β]	[β] (final [b])	[w] (final [b])	[b, v]
		Ⲅ	ⲅ	3	Gamma	Γ, γ	g	[k] (marked Greek words)	—	[ɣ, g, ŋ](only in Greek loanwords)	[ɣ, g, ŋ]
		Ⲇ	ⲇ	4	Delta	Δ, δ	d	[t] (marked Greek words)	—	[d] (only in Greek loanwords)	[ð, d]
		Ⲉ	ⲉ	5	Eey	Ε, ε	ə	[ɛ, ə] (ei = [iː, j])	[ɛ, ə]	[æ, ɑ]	[e̞]
		Ⲋ	ⲋ	6	Soou (6)	ϛ Ϛ, ϛ* (, )	s͡t[note 1]	—	—	—	—
		Ⲍ	ⲍ	7	Zeta	Ζ, ζ	z	[s] (marked Greek words)	—	[z] (only in Greek loanwords)	[z]
		Ⲏ	ⲏ	8	Eta	Η, η	aa, ê	[eː]	[e]	[æ, ɑ, ɪ]	[iː]
		Ⲑ	ⲑ	9	Theta	Θ, θ	th	[t.h]	[tʰ]	[t]	[θ]
		Ⲓ	ⲓ	10	Iota	Ι, ι	i	[iː, j]	[i, j, ə]	[ɪ, j]	[i,j,ɪ]
		Ⲕ	ⲕ	20	Kappa	Κ, κ	k	[k]	[kʼ, k]	[k]	[k]
		Ⲗ	ⲗ	30	Lola	Λ, λ	l	[l]	[l]	[l]	[l]
		Ⲙ	ⲙ	40	Mey	Μ, μ	m	[m]	[m]	[m]	[m]
		Ⲛ	ⲛ	50	Ney	Ν, ν	n	[n]	[n]	[n]	[n]
		Ⲝ	ⲝ	60	Exi	Ξ, ξ	ks	—	—	[ks] (only in Greek loanwords)	[ks, e̞ks]
		Ⲟ	ⲟ	70	O	Ο, ο	o	[ɔ]	[ɔ]	[ɔ]	[o̞, u]
		Ⲡ	ⲡ	80	Pi	Π, π	p	[p]	[p]	[b]	[p]
		Ⲣ	ⲣ	100	Roo	Ρ, ρ	r	[ɾ~r]	[ɾ~r]	[ɾ~r]	[ɾ~r]
		Ⲥ	ⲥ	200	Seema	Σ, σ, ς	s	[s]	[s]	[s]	[s]
		Ⲧ	ⲧ	300	Tav	Τ, τ	t	[t]	[tʼ, t]	[d] (final [t])	[t]
		Ⲩ	ⲩ	400	Upsilon	Υ, υ	u	[w] (ou = [uː, w])		[ɪ, w] (ou = [u, w])	[i, w, v, u]
		Ⲫ	ⲫ	500	Phi	Φ, φ	ph	[p.h]	[pʰ]	[b~f]	[f]
		Ⲭ	ⲭ	600	Chi	Χ, χ	kh	[k.h]	[kʰ]	[k]	[k, x, ç]
		Ⲯ	ⲯ	700	Epsi	Ψ, ψ	ps	—	—	[bs] (only in Greek loanwords)	[ps, e̞ps]
		Ⲱ	ⲱ	800	Oou	Ω, ω	ô	[oː]	[o]	[u]	[o̞ː]
		Ϣ	ϣ	—	Shai	(none)	š	[ʃ]	[ʃ]	[ʃ]	[ʃ]
		Ϥ	ϥ	90	Fai	ϙ (numerical value)	f	[f]	[f]	[f]	[f]
		Ϧ (Ⳉ)	ϧ (ⳉ) [note 2]	—	Khai	(none)	x	NA	[x]	[x]	[x]
		Ϩ	ϩ	—	Hori	(none)	h	[h]	[h]	[h]	[h]
		Ϫ	ϫ	—	Janja	(none)	j	[t͡ʃ]	[t͡ʃʼ, t͡ʃ]	[ɟ]	[g, dʒ]
		Ϭ	ϭ	—	Cheema	(none)	c	[kʲ]	[t͡ʃʰ]	[ʃ]	[tʃ, e̞tʃ]
		Ϯ	ϯ	—	Ti	(none)	ti	[tiː]	[tʼi, ti, tə]	[di]	[ti]
		Ⳁ	ⳁ	900	Sampi	Ϡ,ϡ (numerical value)	—	—	—	—	—

Letters derived from Demotic[]

In Old Coptic, there were a large number of Demotic Egyptian characters, including some logograms. They were soon reduced to half a dozen, for sounds not covered by the Greek alphabet. The following letters remained:

Hieroglyph		Demotic		Coptic		Translit.
	→		→	Ϣ		š
	→		→	Ϥ		f
	→		→	Ϧ		x
	→		→	Ϩ		h
	→		→	Ϫ		j
	→		→	Ϭ		c
	→		→	Ϯ		di

Unicode[]

In Unicode, most Coptic letters formerly shared codepoints with similar Greek letters, but a disunification was accepted for version 4.1, which appeared in 2005. 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 (U+03E2–U+03EF highlighted below) derived from Demotic, and these need to be included in any complete implementation of Coptic.