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The Coptic alphabet is the writing system used liturgically in the Coptic Orthodox Church and was also formerly in widespread use. This language is the modern heir of the Egyptian language, and was written before with the hieroglyphs, which has ceased to be a living language in the tenth century

History
The ancient hieroglyphic writing gave way to write the Coptic language, an alphabet derived from the Greek, whose letters were borrowed in the late first century () of an era Christian. The mother of this alphabet is the Greek oncial. The Coptic language differs from the Greek language in terms of phoneme s, it took complete the alphabet of twenty-four letters by seven additional signs, which were borrowed from the demotic, writing d ' hieroglyphic origin which preceded the alphabet Coptic and ceased to be used during the ((s-| V | e)). Conversely, some Greek letters were unnecessary but were retained for the rating of term borrowed from the biblical Greek.

The Coptic alphabet is now reserved for Christian texts. However, it served its debut for the written content varied texts as "magical". For WV Davies (see bibliography), import of Greek letters in the language ─ who could use a handwriting ancestral but phonetically imprecise ─ explained by the need to reflect as closely as possible the sounds of magic formulas. The alphabet in its older versions is not standardized and contains, according to places and dialects, many letters from the demotic which have not been retained in the final version, which is well attested from ((s-| IV | e)). Over the centuries, religious documents took precedence over the profane writings, including one could find letters, correspondence and commercial laws.

Notably, the Nubian alphabet drift of the alphabet although Coptic languages have no link between them.

Letters
' Note: 'all phonetic transcriptions follow the practice of API .

List of graphemes
The letters are given for the bohaïrique alphabet.

The letters are also used from ─ ─ bohaïrique, as in Greek, as numbers (hence the presence in the alphabet of a sign non-literal and purely number,soouresulting from digammaGreek, and a ligature abréviative,rōcrossed worth 900, replacing thesampi Greek); consult numeration Coptic for details. The sa'idique seems to ignore such a practice and notes the numbers long.

Capitals
The Coptic alphabet can be considered bicameral: each letter has a capital and  tiny. In fact, except in certain styles especially decorated, the capitals are nothing more than tiny large format and they do not need a separate learning. There is nothing comparable to the current case of Greek, including the tiny east of Ν ν, for example. The letterḫaiis probably the only one whose two variants are different whatever the style:Ϧcapital,ϧlowercase.

Name letters
It was included in this table one of many possible names for every letter, those givenroughlyby the grammar of Plumley (see bibliography). We can consider that the old names.

The names of the letters are not really standardized and are found in this area are wide variations depending on the texts, minimal (the letterfaican be called'fei) or more notable ( ' he is often referred to by the nameep ˢ ilonin recent texts). The Hellenization of pronunciation (see below) has obviously played a significant role, as well as constraints related to the Coptic language itself: the emergence of a vowel épenthétique at the beginning word in a syllable to begin if a two consonants is visible in cases like ˢ ikoften calledek ˢ i.

consonants is visible in cases like ˢ ikoften calledek ˢ i
From now, the code words in italics Greek alphabet to be read as if they were written in Coptic. Indeed, Unicode still does not distinguish the two blocks of characters (see below). The words written in Greek in Roman (unlike italics) must be understood as the Greek. Note that is now possible to encode any page Coptic (see "Dae").

For reasons of simplicity, it was chosen to represent thesēmma(sigmaGreek) by the Latin letterc: indeed, the Coptic having borrowed the sigma Lunar Greek, it knows no alternative ς final. Write σ eventually word would be too disturbing to the eye used to read Greek. It is also more prudent to encode the sigma lunar by acrather than by the Greek character provided by Unicode (ς U +03 F2), which is not always present in the current fonts.

We chose a transliterated and not a transcription for words Copts. This transliteration is bijective: each symbol or diagram symbolic chosen can not match a single letter Coptic and vice versa, hence the rating of consonants sucked by aʰ. For example,pʰ(φ)can not be confused with the following lettersph(π ϩ). Note that ḏcan easily be replaced byj. The presence of aḏinkim(see below) is indicated by aəstating:ρ ̄is transliterated ə r.

Value of letters
Different sources consulted provide for certain letters of values very different depending on whether it takes place in a historical perspective (the Coptic as it was spoken in the past, we still need to know what dialect is spoken) or present (as is now made during religious ceremonies). Moreover, we must distinguish between the pronunciation sa'idique (now extinct dialect) of the bohaïrique (the only dialect still "living"). The recent texts devoted to Coptic generally more stress on pronunciation bohaïrique liturgical today. Two books, however, rely mainly on the former pronunciation: article Ritner and grammar Plumley (see bibliography).

On the other hand, according to Emile Maher Ishak (see bibliography), bohaïrique pronunciation of the Coptic language would have been artificially close to that of modern Greek in the middle of ((s-| XIX | e)), to allow a merger between the Greek Orthodox church and the Coptic Orthodox church in Egypt, fusion that did not ultimately made. This movement of Hellenization, under the aegis of the pope Cyril IV and Girgis Moftah Arian, professor of Coptic liturgical, however, has been gradually accepted globally and at present, except in rare churches, Coptic is read "the Greek. " This pronunciation is nevertheless deemed fake and artificial (as it does not necessarily apply to all the words too for not contravene the established custom, proper names, for example, are often pronounced "l ' Former "). It then considers belongs to the "old bohaïrique" a pronunciation more hypothetical returned and pre-Hellenization, pronunciation ─ sometimes rightly or wrongly ─ designated as the sa'idique.

In the table above, it was stated in the first value that likely sa'idique (or "old bohaïrique"), returned from the former Egyptian, old practices cash and the value of Greek letters at the time of the borrowing of the alphabet. The second value is that of bohaïrique Hellenised today. It will describe below these two systems.