Talk:Kahk

Coptic etymology
I was unable to verify the etymology from Coptic using the given source. The scan quality makes it uncertain, but it looks like it has "ⲕⲁⲁⲕⲉ", not "ⲕⲁⲏⲕ". Also, ⲏ is a vowel in Coptic, not the consonant /h/. This seems to have been introduced by an IP editor in Special:Diff/956257081: before then the etymology given was from Arabic ka'ak.

you edited the etymology section recently and know Coptic and Egyptian Arabic, what's your opinion? Apocheir (talk) 03:15, 1 September 2023 (UTC)


 * I share your concerns. It just doesn't seem that the word originated from /kaʕke/ which is most probably a loanword from Arabic (or the closest phonosemantic match) into late Coptic. Many Arabic words were loaned in Coptic and used instead of the original Coptic ones, which were in turn loanwords from Coptic. The consonant in question must have been ϩ which appears to have given Egyptian Arabic words with /h, ħ/ in other example words. Also, Coptic had some words with /ʕ/ that were not spelled or spelled with a double vowel or ⲁ (whose pronunciation have been probably lost in medieval and late Coptic; the same applies for ϩ /h, ħ/ —> /h/), for ⲁ it is a practice that seems to have been inherited when transcribing Arabic names in Latin alphabet with "A" as the equivalent, and apparently some of the Coptic /ʕ/ were lost or mutated to /ħ/ in Egyptian Arabic. --Esperfulmo (talk) 23:11, 3 September 2023 (UTC)