Saturday, June 20, 2020

Coptic, lesson 2

Coptic is progressing. It's slow; about one lesson per month. So I'll be at this for a while. But that's ok. Slow is smooth, smooth is fast.

In lesson 2 we're covering the indefinite article, and Coptic is one of those languages that has an indefinite for plurals. This feels odd to native English speakers (a books? Wha..?), but not so bad when you translate it as "some, certain." It's just important to think of plural indefinite as not the opposite of the definite (the in English), but as, well, just like it says, an indefinite quantity. 

Some boats are in the harbor.

Some boats in the above example would have Coptic's indefinite article. In Coptic, the articles are prefixed directly onto the noun: 
ϫⲟⲓ: boat
ⲡϫⲟⲓ: the boat
ⲟⲩϫⲟⲓ: a boat
ⲉϫⲏⲩ: boats
ⲛⲉϫⲏⲩ: the boats
ϩⲉⲛⲉϫⲏⲩ: some boats

Also covered in this chapter is the genitive, or possession. Coptic deals with this simply: thing being possessed * preposition * possessor
ⲡⲏⲓ ⲙ̅ ⲡⲣⲱⲙⲉ: the house of the man, the man's house

There are other considerations, however. If the first noun (thing being possessed) is indefinite, then the preposition is changed to ⲛ̅ⲧⲉ. 

Also included in lesson 2 is some mention of negatives and required words for sentences with adverbial predicates, but that'll just get too complicated to go over in a blog entry. 

We're spending five weeks on this lesson. First week was just reading the lesson and learning vocab. Tomorrow is the end of week two; I just submitted the first of four homeworks. 

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