Towards a definition of an Egyptian Greek variety

Sonja Dahlgren

doi:10.2218/pihph.1.2016.1695

Abstract

In this paper I study the possibility of an Egyptian Greek variety that — on the phonological level — developed from the 2 nd century CE onward, and which has so far not been defined as an independent language variety. Some preliminary remarks on this have been made, based on the great amount of features present in Greek in Egypt potentially stemming from the contact with Egyptian. Greek texts from Egypt display a substantial amount of nonstandard variation on all linguistic levels. In this paper I investigate the phonological level, concentrating on vowel orthography. Preliminary results of my study indicate Coptic phonological influence in, for example, the allophonic distribution of unstressed vowels, the tendency for consonant-to-vowel coarticulatory effects, and transfer of the Egyptian stress system. Parallel material can be found in the nonstandard usage of Greek loanwords in Coptic, which are used as a comparison for the Greek nonstandard writing forms. In order to be able to differentiate between Coptic impact and Greek internal phonological variation in the analysis of the phonetic variants, Coptic phoneme qualities are compared to the nonstandard renderings of Arabic loanwords in Coptic which display the same phenomena as the Greek ones.

Highlights

Introduction and previous studiesAfter the conquest of Egypt by Alexander the Great in 332 BCE, Greek was introduced to the Egyptian administration and soon became the official language of the Egyptian government, being in use until ca. the 8th century
It seems that over time, a new variety of Greek developed from the imperfect learning of the Egyptian L2 Greek users, and on phonological level the development of this variety can be seen in texts from the 2nd to the 8th century CE, in various nonstandard orthographic forms
While much of the writing was according to the Greek standard, when there was nonstandard orthographic variation in the writing of the Egyptians, it often revealed features of their L1 phonological system

Summary

Introduction and previous studies

After the conquest of Egypt by Alexander the Great in 332 BCE, Greek was introduced to the Egyptian administration and soon became the official language of the Egyptian government, being in use until ca. the 8th century. In the field of Coptology, Girgis (1966) already lists some of the more frequent nonstandard phonetic variants which occur in the vowel spellings of Greek loanwords in Coptic Using these earlier studies as a basis for my work, I have investigated the impact of Egyptian on Greek vowel orthography (Dahlgren 2016; in preparation (doctoral dissertation)). Horrocks (2010, 111-‐114, 168-‐172) has given a preliminary account of the transfer of Egyptian phonological structures to Greek including e.g. the interchangeable use of voiced and voiceless stops and the confusion of unstressed /a, e, o/, from which I have expanded the phonetic analysis in Dahlgren (in prep.); for instance, no attention to the possible impact of the Egyptian stress system on Greek has been given so far, and the nonstandard variation of /i, e/ has not been seen as anything else than a Greek internal phenomenon. I present here the preliminary results further explored in Dahlgren (in prep.)

Some features of Greek in Egypt

Possible transfer of Egyptian stress onto Greek

Greek loanwords in Coptic

Arabic loanwords in Coptic: supporting evidence for Coptic phonology

Discussion