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Language
Home » Egypt » Egypt - The People and the Culture » LanguageRecords for the Egyptian language have dated back many centuries to 3200 BC and is still known as part of the Afro-Asiatic group of languages which is related to Berber and Semitic – similar languages such as Arabic, Amharic and Hebrew.
This typical form of language remained until the 5th century A.D. in the form of Demotic (which meant it is capitalized in order to distinguish it from demotic Greek) – taken from the ancient Egyptian script of northern Hieratic which was used in the Delta. Shortly after this time, it was replaced by the Coptic language. The lifespan of the Demotic language was recorded as the oldest recorded languages in the world – it remained in Egypt for 4,000 years.
The Coptic language was the direct descendent of the phased out Demotic tongue and as a result is known as the most recent phase of ancient Egyptian. It has been derived from the Hieroglyphic and Hieratic scripts that were once used and is said to be a modified form of the Greek alphabet.
This language was most popular through 200 A.D. to 1100 A.D. and its last known record of use was throughout the 17th century. When Egypt was conquered by Arabians during this time, it was the birth of the language that is still used today – Egyptian Arabic but the Coptic tongue is not completely lost, it is still used in the country’s Coptic Orthodox Church.
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