Q&A Home > C > Coptic Language

• How was the Coptic language influenced by the Greek language?
• I am concerned about the emphasis put on the Coptic language; and the assumption that one will get a better understanding of God's message if they know and understand Coptic. The reason I find this hard to believe is because God created every language. God's profound message, in my opinion, can be understood by every language.
• I am torn by the lack of appreciation, and preservation of our Coptic Language and Heritage. I believe that the Coptic Heritage and Traditions are what make us COPTIC Orthodox. Getting rid of the Coptic Language all together, having no respect or place for our original Language is very sad. Can you help me support these arguments? We, as Copts, we need to understand the history of our forefathers, and how much they suffered to keep our language and faith.
• I have noticed a growing trend of deacons and priests using unconventional Coptic pronunciations in services, such as Old Bohairic. There are now Facebook sites promoting Old Bohairic and urging people to use it. It seems like this trend has caught on. Unfortunately, those who use Old Bohairic also have numerous differences amongst themselves in how they pronounce it. I fear that this movement is beginning to threaten the unity we have had in the Coptic language for many years now. It will also be a reason for those who may have been interested in learning Coptic to lose interest due to the introduction of numerous pronunciations in services. Is the Holy Synod considering issuing any decision regarding this? I humbly suggest that this be considered by the Holy Synod in order to preserve the usage of our wonderful Coptic language.
• I know that overstrokes are used to change Coptic alphabet characters to numbers (except for "So," or "6."), and that an overstroke can combine letters for an abbreviation, such as with IC for "Jesus." However, what do the overstrokes of N & M indicate?
• I really enjoy our church Coptic hymns. However, many people, including myself, have a very hard time understanding the language. Why doesn't the church sing all the hymns in English, a language we can all understand?
• Is it possible that the alternate spelling of the name of the alphabet character "dzaudzia," should actually be "dzandzia"? Then, it would (almost) phonetically parallel spellings such as "giangia," "ganga," "janja," or "jinja."
• What does 'Coptic' exactly mean?
• Why do we need the Coptic language in our church services?
• Why is the Coptic Language so important? (Nobody can understand it. To me, it's just another foreign language, like Chinese). Why can't the church just do all the hymns in the English language?