- More biliterals
- Triliterals
- Weak consonants and verbs
- ๐๐ ฑ jw
- Tense and mood
- “To be or not to be”
- Summary
- Vocabulary
- Exercises
More Biliterals
| ๐
ฎ p๊ข Flying pintail | ๐ or ๐ s๊ข Chest and lid | ๐
ท แนฏ๊ข Duckling |
| ๐ แธฅ๊ข Clump of papyrus | ๐ท ลก๊ข Pool with lotuses | ๐ แธ๊ข Fire-drill |
| ๐ผ k๊ข Lotus with rhizome | ๐ k๊ข Upraised arms | ๐ nb Basket |
| ๐ แบ๊ข Elephantfish | ๐ t๊ข Kiln | ๐ km Crocodile scales |
Triliterals
The final set of phonograms are the triliterals, which represent an ordered set of three consonants. Like biliterals, triliterals are usually written with uniliteral phonetic complements. There are two common patterns: one is to follow the triliteral with its second and third consonants, such as ๐น๐๐ฐ๐ ๊คnแธซ or ๐พ๐๐ฟ แธฅq๊ข. The other is to follow it with only the third, as in ๐ข๐ ๊คแธฅ๊ค or ๐๐ sแธm “hear”.
Because many Egyptian word roots are made of three consonants, many triliterals are entire words unto themselves, as with ๊คnแธซ (“live”) and sแธm (“hear”). But many triliteral words will still need a determinative: for example ๐ข๐๐ฐ๐ป ๊คแธฅ๊ค “stand up”, which has only the third consonant as a phonetic complement, but also has a determinative, or ๐พ๐๐ฟ๐ แธฅq๊ข “ruler”, which has its second and third complements, plus the determinative.
Weak consonants and verbs
A few sounds are known as weak consonants because they often get omitted in writing. These are ๊ข, j, y, and w. Both j and w can indicate a place where a vowel existed, and the sounds “y” and “w” are called semivowels or glides by linguists, because their sound is very close to that of the vowels “ee” and “oo”; being so close to being vowels, these sounds were often omitted. Because of the linguistic term, some authors do refer to these glyphs as semivowels. Gardiner (1957) uses the term, but Allen (2014), for example, does not.
If a weak consonant is thought to be present, we sometimes add it to transliteration in parentheses. For example, if a word was written rd in a particular text, but we know that the word is spelled rdj in full, then that particular instance of the word may be transliterated rd(j). Or the word’s full transliteration could be provided parenthetically after the spelling that was actually written, like “rd (rdj)“. Not every Egyptologist does this; many prefer to just transliterate what was actually written in each case.
Weak consonants are usually not omitted at the beginning of a word. It sometimes occurs in the middle of a word, but most often at the end. In the last lesson we saw that some nouns have an ending of -j or -w; these are often omitted.
There are many verbs, some quite frequently used, which end in -j or -w. When you see a word in the vocabulary transliterated, for example, แธซdj, but you only see the signs for แธซd, you will know what’s going on. As we get further into the details of how verbs are conjugated, you will learn that such verbs can make their forms differently than other verbs. Therefore we speak of weak verbs, and it’s very helpful to be aware of the verb having a “hidden” weak consonant.
๐๐ ฑ jw
Now for one of the most important, but weirdest, words: ๐๐ ฑ jw. First of all: despite what you may have been told by any other courses, or older grammar books, jw is not the verb “to be” or any other verb. (At least, not according to scholarship as of the year 2025 CE.) As we learn more about verbs, we will see that it kinda acts like verbs in some situations, but it does not in others, and it has its own rules.
jw is actually the first of a category of very important words called particles. These modify the sense of an entire sentence or clause, rather than modifying any single word within it.
Egyptologists have been unable to come up with a simple translation for jw, and they might never do so. But it’s agreed that it usually seems to indicate that the statement which follows is sort of “free-standing” and describes a state of affairs which is true at some point in time. It is suitable for a sentence like “The sun is in the sky”. Sometimes that’s true and sometimes it isn’t, which makes jw a good word to use when it is.
As we said in the last lesson, you can say “the sun is in the sky” simply by saying r๊ค m pt, but it is actually more common to say such a sentence with jw at the beginning:
๐๐
ฑ๐๐ฐ๐๐ณ๐
๐ช๐ฑ๐๐ฐ๐ฏ jw r๊ค m pt
“The sun is in the sky.”
Having said that, we will see jw in a variety of other situations, including alongside actual verbs, so you must not make assumptions about what it will mean in every case. We will review it each time we learn more uses of it.
Tense and Mood
Egyptian doesn’t clearly delineate its verb tenses the way English does. In various situations, the exact same words might be translated “I hear you”, “I will hear you”, “I may hear you”, “my having heard you”, and so forth. This can honestly be difficult. But do not let it discourage you!
There are words which can help clarify these ambiguities. Some of them might be obvious, like “yesterday”. If you used the ambiguous words which might mean “I hear you” together with “yesterday”, you could eliminate the options “I hear you (now)” or “I will hear you”. It might be “maybe I heard you yesterday” or “I did hear you yesterday”, but it helped a bit.
Our new friend ๐๐ ฑ jw is such a word. If you say r๊ค m pt, it could mean “May the sun be in the sky!” or “If the sun is in the sky” or things like that. But if you say jw r๊ค m pt, you are making it more of an assertion, rather than a hypothetical or a wish. It could still be “the sun is in the sky” or “the sun was in the sky”, or other options, but it narrows it down to a statement.
For now you should just translate our simple sentences as being statements about the present. You will be able to branch out more as we go. But one simple case where things differ is if you link two statements together in an “if/then” or “when/then” relationship:
๐ช๐ฐ๐๐๐ญ๐
๐๐
ฑ๐ช๐ฐ๐๐๐
ฑ๐ช๐ฑ๐๐ฐ๐ฏ๐
๐๐ฐ๐๐
ฑ๐ด๐๐๐
ptแธฅ m bw pn jw pt m rลกwt
“When Ptah is in this place, the sky is in joy”
(lit. “Ptah in this place. jw sky in joy.”)
jw is on the second sentence, making it a statement, but it’s not on the first. So this makes a contrast: The second statement (“the sky is in joy”) is emphasized as an assertion, and by implication, the first one (“Ptah is in this place”) is weakened into being a condition or circumstance. You could imagine this being said in English, with the first sentence having the tone of a question: “Ptah is in this place? Then the sky is in joy!”
“To be or not to be”
As we have seen, the verb “to be” is not used for adverbial or verbal sentences in Egyptian. Soon we will see adjectival sentences, which describe the subject, like “Bob is good“, and further down the road we will see nominal sentences, in which the subject actually is a particular thing, like “Bob is a janitor“.
Each of these four types of sentences has a different structure, but they all have one thing in common: there is no verb “to be” in Egyptian like in English. It is the arrangement of words which tells us what the sentence says, not the presence of a word like “is” or “am”.
Summary: Triliterals, weakness, and jw
- Triliterals are glyphs which represent a set of three consonants. Like biliterals, they are usually written with one or two phonetic complement uniliterals.
- The sounds ๊ข, j, y, and w are called weak consonants because they are often omitted in writing, especially at the end of a word.
- Some verb inflections can depend upon whether the last sound of the verb is a weak consonant. Such verbs are called weak verbs.
- The word ๐๐ ฑ jw marks an adverbial sentence as being a statement describing a situation that is true at some point. It is not a verb, but is in a category of words called particles which add meanings and nuances to sentences.
- Egyptian does not mark the tense or mood of verbs as clearly as English, so we must rely more on context and on clues provided by particles like jw or adverbs like “yesterday”.
- There really is no verb “to be” in Egyptian. No such verb is used in making any of the four types of sentences.
Vocabulary
Now that we’ve talked about weak consonants, you should begin to notice words, especially verbs, which end with -j or -w in their transliteration, but which do not have them in their hieroglyphs. We will highlight those by writing the “full” transliteration parenthetically after the “normal” transliteration; for example, “jt (jtj)” means that the word is usually written ๐๐ jt, but that there’s another j which is being omitted at the end.
- ๐๐ ฑ jw (sentence particle; see lesson for usage)
- ๐๐๐ฐ๐๐ jt (jtj) “father” var. ๐๐๐, ๐๐ฐ๐๐
- Note the unusual use of the f-viper ๐ as determinative. Early texts do transliterate the word as jtf, but it is now accepted that the viper is a determinative. Also note that the -j is part of the root.
- ๐น๐๐ฐ๐ ๊คnแธซ “live”
- ๐ข๐๐ฐ๐ป ๊คแธฅ๊ค “stand up”
- ๐๐ฟ๐ป h๊ข (h๊ขj) โgo down, descendโ
- ๐พ๐๐ฟ๐ แธฅq๊ข “ruler”
- ๐๐ฐ๐ง๐ แธซd (แธซdj) “sail downstream”
- ๐๐ฐ๐๐ฑ๐ค z “man” (var. ๐๐ฐ๐)
- ๐ด๐๐ฐ๐๐ sแธซr “plan, advice”
- ๐ด๐๐ฐ๐๐ฑ๐๐ฟ๐ sลกt๊ข “secret” (noun)
- ๐๐ sแธm “hear”
- ๐ ท๐๐ฐ๐ค๐ แนฏ๊ขtj “vizier”