How do egyptologists know how the ancient language is pronounced, when they speak it now?

Question

When you see them on the TV now, speaking the language when reading from hyrogriphics, how do they know what it sounds like and how it is pronounced?

Answer 1

The truth is they DON'T know exactly how it was pronounced, but for purposes of reading it aloud (including in dramatic presentations) they have combined what they DO know with their best guesses about uncertain sounds, and certain conventions that go back to the early days of hieroglyphic decipherment.

Note the following:

* The Egyptians wrote only the consonants, no vowels, so the vowels need to be supplied in some way

* "To make things pronounceable, Egyptologists add a short 'e' sound between consonants. They also tend to pronounce the characters [called] "A" and "a" as 'a', and frequently treat "i" and "w" as though they were the vowels i and u.

"This is partly a carry-over from the original decipherment of hieroglyphs, which was done using the Ptolemaic transcriptions of Greek and Roman names, which did use these characters in this way. However, this is NOT a correct way of dealing with the pronunciation of [earlier forms, like] Middle Egyptian."

* "The pronunciation of the Egyptian language changed greatly over the course of its history." So what we know about LATER writings (for which we have the sort of Greek transcriptions people point to) does NOT tell us how it was pronounced in earlier periods

* The questions are by no means just about the vowels (which are NOT written). There are a lot of questionmarks about how to pronounce certain of the CONSONANTS as well, esp. for earlier periods.

based on (and partially quoted from):
"How To Pronounce Egyptian"
http://home.prcn.org/sfryer/pronunciation1.html


In fact, Egyptologists frequently warn against the confusion perpetuated in popular presentations (e.g., in movies), which suggest that we know exactly how to pronounce these writings. People are not even told such things as that the vowels were not written, leading one Egyptologist to comment:

"This is typically not explained to people who are told that their names can be written in such and such a way in hieroglyphics (cf. Nom en hieroglyphes), or who are simply told that the name of the Egyptian sun god is "Ra" -- the pronunciation we find in the recent entertaining but historically absurd movies Stargate (1994) and The Mummy (1999). Well, "ra" may be Tahitian for "sun," but it is not Ancient Egyptian!"

http://www.friesian.com/egypt.htm

Answer 2

The Rosetta stone shows both Ancient Greek and Egyptian Hieroglyphics. It was deciphered because the names of Egyptian Kings are outlined by ovals. (If you go to Rome/Cairo, you can see Obelisks with the names of Kings outlined). Egyptology's found the appropriate name in Greek and then looked at the names to get the phonetic alphabet of the Egyptians.

Also, the vowels and consonants of our words haven't changed considerably in the last 5000 years. Take the Scandinavian word "viking" and the Latin word "Victory". The "vic" sound has meant conquer for thousands of years.

Another interesting source for how we pronounced words thousands of years ago is from graffiti. If a Greek slave tried to write a Latin or Egyptian word, he would use his own alphabet. Quite a lot of this graffiti survived and is inscribed on the insides of tombs or on public buildings

Answer 3

I think they simply apply modern Egyptian pronunciation rules to the ancient text. It very often happens with non vivid languages, e.g. Latin. Latin writing is the same in all countries, but the pronunciation differs according to the pronuncation of native language in a country.

Answer 4

Spelling mistakes are the most common key to pronunciation because people often mis-spell words whose spelling and pronunciation have separated over time. I do believe that in the case of hieroglyphics, the first guy is right, that it is through phonetic translations that a pronunciation key has been worked out.

Answer 5

They don't, then can only make an educated guess.
No one can truly speak a dead language as it was spoken, especially a language spoken for thousands of years.

Answer 6

I believe it was translated from Greek or some similar regional language

Answer 7

Linguists know about how languages change over time, and can predict how the language would have changed.