Learn All About Reading Heiroglyphics

8/8/2019 Learn All About Reading Heiroglyphics

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LEARN ALL ABOUT READING

HIEROGLYPHICS: AN INTRODUCTION

Special thanks to Neferkiki for this wonderful introduction

So you want to write like an Egyptian, huh? Well it took several years

for aspiring scribes to learn how to do it, so for the sake of time we'll just cover the basics.

Hieroglyphic writing is phonetic...

That means symbols stand for certain sounds (unlike the Englishalphabet where some letters have many sounds or can be silent). Let's

start out with an example, the word freight. While the F, R, and T sound the "normal" way, the G and H are silent and the E and I make

one sound (long A). There are 7 letters in the word, but only 4 sounds(F, R, long A, and T) are heard. So to spell freight with hieroglyphs,

you'd use the symbols for those 4 sounds:

Four different sounds are used to say "freight," so four symbols-- nomore, no less-- are needed to write it the Egyptian way.

Our spelling is more complicated than it needs to be. Like, why do we

spell phone with a PH when we have a perfectly good F just going towaste? And why bother with C when we already have K and S? Why

have double letters (like the M's in rummy) when we only pronounce itonce? And then there are words like knight, technique, and phlegm!

When you use hieroglyphs, you spell your words phonetically (the wayit sounds), so you leave out silent letters:

height: the E,G, and second H are silentmaybe: A and E are long, the Y is silenthey: the EY sounds like a long A

Christmas: the CH sounds like K, the T is pretty much silent,and the A sounds more like a short I

rogue: the U and E are silent

saxophone: the X is really a KS sound, the PH is an F sound,



and the E is silent

Alone or in pairs, vowels stand for lots of different sounds. And

sometimes they're silent. When any English letter (whether it's a vowel

or a consonant) is silent, don't include a hieroglyph for it.

Some English sounds weren't spoken in ancient Egypt...

English and ancient Egyptian aren't from the same language family, so

some of the sounds they said don't exist in our alphabet. And some of the sounds we make did not exist in Egyptian. For example, they didn't

need a hieroglyph for the TH sound because they didn't say any wordscontaining that sound.

You'll notice in the chart at the bottom that some sounds (like F and V)

that are different to us weren't distinguished by the ancient Egyptians,so we have to use the same hieroglyph. Why F and V? Because these

two sounds are articulated in roughly the same place in your mouth. Trysaying "ffffff" and then change it to "vvvvvv." See how changing the

flow of air in your mouth makes a subtle difference in the sound?

Vowels were often left out...

The Egyptians often used only hieroglyphs for consonant sounds to

write their words. Thus, you can spell freight like this:

F-R-T or

But is that freight, fort, or feret? You have to look at the word in the

context of the rest of the sentence to figure it out. Or you could use a

determinative...

Q: If you leave out the vowels, what does (G-S) mean?

1. Gus

2. goose

A: Either one. We can't tell unless a determinative is written with the



other hieroglyphs.

A determinative is a hieroglyph that has no sound. It's just there to givea clue to the meaning of the word. Determinatives were tacked on to the

ends of words to indicate its general meaning:

goose Gus

The two determinatives above and the hieroglyphs listed below are justa few of the thousands that were used by ancient Egyptians. Now you

can understand why it took several years for a scribe to learn how to

write! But now you should be able to at least write your name.

Sound or Letter Example Hieroglyph

shortA cat, bar

longA make, air, way, hey

B baby

soft C nice, circus

hard C camel, sick , Christmas

CH cheese, catch, picture

D dog, add

short E earn, pet

long E be, bleach, Mar y, radio

F f ish, phone, tough



soft G gor geous, gym, judge

hard G girl, ghost

H how, who

short I hid, bit

long I hide, bite, eye

J jungle, judge

K pick , k id, technology, clique

L lead, bell

M mummy

N Nile

short O dog, all, shawl

long O r ose, sew, mow, boat

OO f ood, blue

OO book, push

P pet

QU Q+U sounds like K+W, socombine the K and Whieroglyphics

R rain



soft S sit, nice, rats

sharp S fission, measure

z-like S rays, loser

SH ship, sugar, mission, friction,machine

T tiger

TH

Egyptians had no sound for TH

as pronounced in this and that.Closest match is the D sound.

TH

Egyptians had no sound for TH

as pronounced in think andmath. Closest match is the T

sound.

short U cut, a bout, ugly

long U r ude, f ood, blue

V viper

W wind, what, cow

X examine

hard Y crayon, yes

vowel Y use hieroglyph for long E inwords like ready and Mar y

vowel Y use hieroglyph for short andlong I in words like gym and

byte

Z zebra, dogs, fission, Xerox

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Learn All About Reading Heiroglyphics