- Determinatives
- Directional variant glyphs
- Gender of nouns
- Adverbial sentences
- Verbal sentences
- Summary
- Vocabulary
- Exercises
- Sidebar: Hints for learning alphabetic order
Determinatives
In the vocabulary for the last lesson, four words had an extra unpronounced glyph. These are called determinatives, which are glyphs added to the end of a word to help convey its meaning. This acts as a supplement to the phonetic glyphs. In some cases the determinatives can even distinguish two words with the same consonants. Here are a few words spelled with the uniliterals but followed by determinatives that suggest their meaning.
| Word | Determinative | Det. Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| ππ°ππ ±π³ hrw “day” | π³ the sun | sun, day, time |
| ππ°ππ ±π΄πππ rΕ‘wt “joy, happiness” | π a papyrus scroll | writing, abstract concepts |
| π§π°πͺπ±ππ dpt “boat” | π a boat | boat, travel |
| ππ°ππ zt “woman” | π a seated woman | woman, goddess |
Many words may have the same determinative, because the determinative usually only indicates a broad category of meaning, not a specific word. For example, words for periods of time like ππ°ππ ±π³ hrw “day” use the same determinative as ππ°ππ³ rκ€ “sun” itself.
A lot of words use the scroll “abstract” determinative because they represent something the Egyptians couldn’t draw, so they only exist “as words”, as it were. ππ±ππ°π αΈ«t “thing” is a bit like that; a specific thing may be very concrete, but the notion of “a thing”, generically, is about as abstract as it gets!
Multiple or variant determinatives
Sometimes a word can have more than one determinative, such as ππ°ππ΄π ͺπ nαΈs “commoner”, which has two: the “sparrow”, which signifies something as being “small” or of lesser importance, and the “man”, which tells you this is about a type of person (defaulting to male). The sparrow determinative is interesting and can present a complication, which we will discuss in another lesson.
A word with a determinative similar to the boat in π§π°πͺπ±ππ dpt “boat” is π ±ππΏπ wjκ’ “divine boat, solar boat”; the determinative is π “sacred boat”, a bit fancier than the π boat in dpt, but it can also be found written with the “plain” boat: π ±ππΏπ . As we noted in previous lessons, one has to remain a little flexible in translating Egyptian.
Directional variant glyphs
The papyrus scroll determinative has an interesting property. You saw it on ππ±ππ°π αΈ«t “thing”, but you’ve also seen it now on ππ°ππ ±π΄πππ rΕ‘wt “joy, happiness”. It is one of a few glyphs which can be written either horizontally or vertically as needed to fit with the other glyphs around it. Not all such glyphs are determinatives; in the next lesson you’ll see a phonogram that can do this too.
Gender of nouns
Egyptian, like Spanish and French, has two grammatical genders, traditionally called masculine and feminine. There is a simple rule for determining the gender of a noun, although there are a few exceptions: in most cases, if a noun ends with -t, it is feminine; otherwise it is masculine. All of the nouns we learned in the last lesson’s Vocabulary obey this rule. And in general, in this website’s lexicon and the individual lesson vocabularies, we will not explicitly mention the gender of a noun, unless it is an exception to the -t rule.
But in full disclosure, ππ±ππ°π αΈ«t “thing” can be our first exception. If you use it to mean a specific thing (no matter what that thing actually is in a given case), it is indeed feminine. But it can be also be used to mean “something” or “anything” in its context, in which case it’s treated as masculine! So in the sentence “What’s that thing over there?” it would be feminine, but in “Can you see anything?” or “Just give me something!” it would be masculine.
The gender affects the form of words which modify the noun, so that those words have one form for masculine nouns and another for feminine nouns. This is called agreement. The first such word we’ll use is the demonstrative which means “this” or “that”, which has the form πͺπ°π pn when it describes a masculine noun, and ππ°π tn when it describes a feminine noun. Whether pn/tn mean “this” or “that” depends largely on context, but later we will learn how to contrast “this” and “that” more clearly.
Unlike “this” or “that” in English, pn/tn follows the noun it modifies: ππ°ππππ°π zt tn “this woman” or “that woman”.
Adverbial sentences
Now it’s time to see two of the simplest sentence structures in Egyptian, so we can actually say something! The first is a subject noun followed by one or more prepositional phrases. Unlike in English and many European languages, you do not use any form of “to be” like “is” or “are” when making such a sentence in Egyptian.
πͺπ°πππ
ππ°ππ
±π΄πππ ptαΈ₯ m rΕ‘wt
“Ptah is in rejoicing.” (This means Ptah is joyful.)
(lit. “Ptah in rejoicing.”)
π
±ππΏππ
πͺπ±ππ°π―πππ°πππ°ππ³ wjκ’ m pt αΈ₯nκ€ rκ€
“The divine boat is in the sky together with the sun.”
(lit. “Divine-boat in sky with sun.”)
Knowing “where” something is adverbial in English. It describes where the “action” of “being” happens. Therefore, even though Egyptian doesn’t use “to be” for this sort of sentence, we call it an adverbial sentence.
Verbal sentences
The second type of sentence has the subject actually doing an action instead of simply being somewhere, and is called a verbal sentence. The way to construct one is to write the verb followed by the subject noun. This is in reverse order from English. You can also add prepositional phrases after the noun.
ππ³π§πͺπ°πππ
π
±ππΏπ αΈd ptαΈ₯ m wjκ’
“Ptah speaks in the divine boat.”
(lit. “Speaks Ptah in divine-boat.”)
ππ
πππππΉοΈ αΈ«m jκ€αΈ₯
“The moon does not know.”
(lit. “Does-not-know the moon.”)
Note the unusual verb ππ π αΈ«m is the negation of an English verb: to αΈ«m does not mean to know something, but rather not to know! (Don’t worry, there is a verb “to know” and we’ll get to it.)
There is a catch to using this simple sentence structure, though. Consider the phrase “I go” in English. It can imply that it’s something you do habitually, like “I go to the mall on Friday nights”, even if you’re not going to the mall presently. To talk about going to the mall now, it’s more common to say “I am going to the mall.” So “I am going” is a more complicated form than “I go”, but it has a simpler meaning.
Egyptian does a similar thing. The “verb-subject” combination is the simplest way to write a verbal sentence, but it is not usually used for a simple present-tense statement like “Ptah is speaking.” There is a more complicated way that is often used. Instead, this simple form often means a wish (“may Ptah speak”) or future (“Ptah will speak”).
For now, you can treat it the “verb-subject” sentence as the basic form as we learn the basics. Keep it in mind for later, however, that a somewhat more complicated structure is more commonly used.
Summary: Determinatives, gender, and sentences
- Determinatives are one or more glyphs written at the end of a word, after its phonograms, to clarify or reinforce its meaning.
- A few glyphs, such as the papyrus scroll determinative, can be written either vertically or horizontally as needed.
- Nouns are either masculine or feminine, which affects the form of words used to modify the nouns.
- The rule of thumb for a noun’s gender is that feminines end in -t, while other nouns are masculine, although we will meet some exceptions.
- One exception is the noun ππ±ππ°π αΈ«t “thing”, which is feminine as usual if it means a specific thing in a given case, but can also mean “something, anything”, in which case it is masculine.
- An adjective or demonstrative which describes a noun usually follows that noun, and needs to agree with the noun in gender.
- Adverbial sentences can be made with a subject noun followed by prepositional phrases. We do not use any form of “to be” to link the subject to the prepositional phrases.
- Verbal sentences can be made with a verb followed by a subject noun, which can also be followed by prepositional phrases, although this is not the most common way to express a typical statement about the present.
Vocabulary
We will explain the determinatives in this lesson’s vocabulary, and will do so with new determinatives in the next few lessons, but not for long. You’ll get used to spotting determinatives quickly enough.
Nouns:
- ππππΉοΈ jκ€αΈ₯ “moon” (det. πΉοΈ moon)
- π ±ππΏπ wjκ’ “divine boat, solar boat” (det. π “sacred boat”, a bit fancier than the π boat in dpt)
- ππ°ππ΄π ͺπ nαΈs “commoner” (det. π ͺ sparrow, “small, insignificant”, and π “man, person”)
- ππ°ππ ±π΄πππ rΕ‘wt “joy, happiness” (dets. π “face, smell, taste”, π “abstract”)
- ππ°ππ ±π³ hrw “day” (det. π³ “sun”, meaning “sun” and “time”)
- ππ°ππ zt “woman” (det. π woman)
Demonstratives:
- πͺπ°π pn “this, that” (used with masculine nouns)
- ππ°π tn “this, that” (used with feminine nouns)
Verbs:
- π ±πππ°πΆ wbn “rise, shine” (det. πΆ, the sun shining)
- ππ π αΈ«m “be ignorant of, do not know” (det. π, a pair of arms in a “no” gesture or shrug)
- πΌπ°ππ gr “be silent” (det. π, a man pointing to his mouth)
- ππ³π§ αΈd “say, speak” (usually not written with a determinative)
A warning about verbs in the Lexicon: If you look up these or any other verbs in this website’s compiled lexicon, you will see some weird note in parentheses after the verb. For example, with wbn you will see “(3-lit.)” For other verbs you might see “(2ae-gem.)” or “(3ae-inf.)” or “(caus. 3-lit.)” or other such things. These are the classes of the verbs in question. It will be quite a few lessons before we need to go into those, so for now you can ignore them. We won’t include them in individual lesson vocabularies until we actually discuss the classes and what they mean, but we wanted you to be prepared if you use the lexicon.
Exercises
Click here to do the exercises for Lesson 4.
Sidebar: Hints for learning alphabetic order
To make learning the alphabetical order simpler, you might learn it by “chunks”, as there are some groups which sorta go together. Here are some tips that I’ve come up with which might help you.
- First we have the “strange” consonants, including the “semivowels”: κ’ j y κ€ w.
- If you think of κ’ as an “a”, you can remember that it comes first.
- κ€ looks like half of an o.
- y is closely related to j, so you could remember that y follows j.
- So if you use English alphabetical order (other than keeping y with j), you have: A J (Y) O W, which then matches the correct order for the group: κ’ j y κ€ w.
- These are followed by what linguists call labial sounds, because they’re made with the lips. w itself is a labial sound, so you can remember that while it ends the “semivowels” group, it also begins the labial group.
- The remaining labials after w are b p f m.
- In the Roman alphabet, b f m are already in order.
- Then remember that p can be thought of as a variant of b that follows directly after it, since the only difference is whether the sound is voiced or not.
- Right after m comes n, and “NeaR” to n is r.
- After r we have the various h sounds. I sorta remember the order of these by harshness:
- You say h when you say “hello”.
- You say αΈ₯ to clean your glasses, and I wear glasses.
- Then you say αΈ« when speaking German, and I studied German in high school, so I don’t think it sounds as harsh as some English speakers do, but it’s harsher than the ones above it.
- And finally, αΊ to me sounds rather like someone (or something) actually hissing at you.
- Then you have the sibilants, z s Ε‘.
- I don’t have a great idea for ordering these unless you want to make up a silly mnemonic phrase, like “Zebra Swing SHift” or something.
- This is one place where the British system is more helpful, because it’s s Ε Ε‘, and that’s an s with no strokes above it, one stroke above it, and two strokes above it, in order.
- Then you have the three “k” type sounds (velar stops, as linguists call them): q k g.
- Silly mnemonic time: “Quit Keeping Geese”, perhaps.
- Finally, you have the four dental stops: t αΉ― d αΈ.
- Here, it’s easy to remember that each of t and d is followed by its underlined counterpart. You just have to remember that they are in the reverse of Roman alphabetic order.
- Maybe it’s the fact that t comes after all of q, k, and g, so it is the one that comes after them; d comes after t if you basically continue the alphabet and start again from the beginning.