Special Writing Rules

Weak consonants

The way the Egyptians pronounced certain consonants caused them to often “disappear” at the end of a word. These consonants are w and j.

For an analogy in English, consider the word “grow.” The w helps you know how to pronounce the vowel, but you still don’t need it: consider the gardening product “Miracle-Gro”. If you’re familiar with English, and you’re talking about gardening, you probably realize that “Gro” is pronounced just like “grow”. But in the word “wet”, the w is in a position where it’s needed.

Similarly, something about w and j meant they are often omitted at the end of a word. For example, ๐“Ž›๐“†‘๐“„ซ๐“…ฑ๐“†š แธฅf๊œฃw “snake” could be written ๐“Ž›๐“†‘๐“„ซ๐“†š แธฅf๊œฃ instead. Notice here that the ๐“…ฑ was omitted because it’s the “disappearing” last sound of the word, even though it’s not the last glyph; the last glyph is the determinative ๐“†š, which is still usually written.

The presence or absence of the w or j can often make a difference grammatically. For example, a w at the end of ๐“‹นโ€Œ๐“ˆ–๐“ ๊œฅnแธซ “life, live” could turn it into a verb form called the “stative”: ๐“‹นโ€Œ๐“ˆ–๐“๐“…ฑ ๊œฅnแธซw “he is alive”. So there are situations where you need to be aware of the possibility of a missing w or j and consider what they would mean; if their presence would suddenly make the translation much clearer in that context, you can take that into consideration.

The “Two Consonants Together” Rule

Since the vowels weren’t written, we don’t know for sure how Egyptian words were pronounced, but we have some pretty good ideas, thanks to reconstruction from Coptic and information we can get from other languages writing how Egyptian names were pronounced. Linguists usually put an asterisk in front of a reconstructed pronunciation to make it clear that it’s uncertain, like reconstructed *qabab for written qbb.

From this information, we’ve been able to determine that if two copies of the same consonant come together in a word, not separated by vowels, they are usually written only once in the hieroglyphs. For example, the word ๐“ƒน๐“ˆ–๐“ˆ– wnn was probably pronounced something like *wanan. But if the suffix ๐“†‘ f was attached to it grammatically, it would be pronounced *wannaf, with the two Ns coming together. And so in hieroglyphs, it would usually be written ๐“ƒน๐“ˆ–๐“†‘, with only one copy of the N, and an Egyptologist will transliterate it as written: wnf or wn.f.

When a grammatical form causes this rule to apply fairly consistently, these lessons will refer to it.