Blog: #coptic

Sahidic Coptic alphabet chart

Today I’m releasing a Sahidic Coptic alphabet chart and worksheet. The chart:

And the worksheet:

Coptic Latin

I was googling around for information on Latin vowel shifts (to see if the shift from adalter to adulter was unique or if the a to u shift happened with other words, too) and came across the Omniglot page on Coptic Latin. My first thought was: uh, what? (Mostly since I’ve studied both Coptic and Latin, and Coptic doesn’t have really anything to do with Latin. Greek, yes. But Latin?)

Turns out it’s a modern mashup of the Coptic script and the Latin language, invented by David Biliot to help his students start learning Catholic Latin (which I’m guessing is just another name for Church Latin or ecclesiastical Latin). Interesting idea. And, you know, there’s precedence for this sort of thing, since Coptic itself was a mashup of the Greek script (with modifications) and the Egyptian language.

Here’s the sample text from Omniglot’s page (which I’ve retyped using two different fonts, the second of which I find a bit more readable):

Transliteration: Omnes homines dignitate et jure liberi et pares nascuntur, rationis et conscientiae participes sunt, quibus inter se concordiae studio est agendum.