Talk:mrkbt

Pronunciation

@Vorziblix you sure about the palatalization of k not happening until Demotic? Palatalized ḫ begins to be distinguished in writing as h̭ around the 19th/20th dynasty. And Peust locates the palatalization of the velar stops in the period immediately following the 20th dynasty. Rhemmiel (talk) 20:15, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

@Rhemmiel: Hmm, I may be misreading something, because Peust is also the source I’m getting my date from. He says on page 121 (of Egyptian Phonology) that ‘Albright (1946b: 317) is probably right in attributing this palatalization to a time not prior to the 4th century BC.’ Not sure if he says something different elsewhere? — Vorziblix (talk · contribs) 22:05, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

@Vorziblix Ahh you’re right, I had misremembered. He says graphic confusion between the velars began following the 20th dynasty but doesn’t attribute palatalization until later. His reasoning is a bit strange though. 1st millennium BC transcriptions in Semitic scripts wouldn’t show any sign of palatalization because they don’t distinguish between palatalized and plain velars. ϭⲁⲙⲟⲩⲗ doesn’t seem to be a particularly late borrowing seeing as how it underwent ā > ō > ū. And Greek loanwords with κ before front vowels like ϭⲁⲣⲁⲧⲉ < κεράτιον may have been borrowed with palatals rather than having developed them through internal sound change. The fact that we can’t identify the conditioning environments for palatalization in Coptic makes me suspect it occured before the Late Egyptian vowel shift and the fronting of the earlier back vowels. Phonemicization of the palatals as an effect of the vowel shift would line up well with the introduction of the sign h̭. Just some thoughts. Rhemmiel (talk) 01:00, 1 June 2022 (UTC)