The Script and the Grammar
Introduction
This part was written for the English-speaking student learning Middle Egyptian.
The literature on Egyptian grammar is written in English, German and French, and its terms — aspect, stative, nisba, negatival complement, relativity — are not merely technical jargon; often they are concepts that have no counterpart in the grammar students learn in school. The difficulty is therefore twofold: to acquire the language, and at the same time to acquire the descriptive language in which it is discussed. This part is meant to remove the second obstacle.
The material is arranged entry by entry. Each entry defines one term in plain English, shows how it works in languages familiar to the reader, and from there moves to Egyptian — and especially to those points where Egyptian behaves differently from what linguistic expectation dictates. The examples are given in hieroglyphs, transliteration and translation, and the boxed notes record the exception and the trap.
At the end of each chapter, the vocabulary introduced in it is gathered together.
The order is thematic rather than alphabetical, and the chapters build on one another: from the signs of the script and basic concepts, through the noun, the pronouns and the adjective, to the verb, negation and relativity, and on to the complex sentence. Even so, the material is not meant to be read straight through. Its place is beside the text being studied, open in a nearby window, whenever a term or a form does not fall into place.
Finally: this part is no substitute for classes, for the grammars and for the texts themselves. Every topic presented here is far broader than what is written about it on this site, and the brevity is intentional. Its purpose is to set out the concept in English, defined and clear, so that the reader can return to the sources and read them with open eyes.