Egyptian Arabic - Coptic Substratum

Coptic Substratum

Egyptian Arabic appears to have retained a significant Coptic substratum in its lexicon, phonology, and syntax. Coptic was the latest stage of the indigenous Egyptian language spoken until the mid-17th century when it was finally completely supplanted by Egyptian Arabic. Some features that Egyptian Arabic shares with the original ancient Egyptian language include certain prefix and suffix verbal conjugations, certain emphatic and glottalized consonants, as well as a large number of biliteral and triliteral lexical correspondences.

Two syntactic features that are particular to Egyptian Arabic inherited from Coptic are:

• postposed demonstratives "this" and "that" are placed after the noun.

Examples: /ir-rˤaːɡil da/ "this man" (lit. "the man this"; in Literary Arabic /haːðaː r-raɡul/) and /il-bint I-di/ "this girl" (lit. "the girl this"; in Literary Arabic /haːðihi l-bint/).

• Wh words (i.e. "who", "when", "why" remain in their "logical" positions in a sentence rather than being preposed, or moved to the front of the sentence, as in Literary Arabic or English).

Examples:

• /rˤaːħ masˤrI ʔimta/ (راح مصر إمتا؟) "When (/ʔimta/) did he go to Egypt/Cairo?" (lit. "He went to Egypt/Cairo when?")
• /rˤaːħ masˤrI leːh/ (راح مصر ليه؟) "Why (/leːh/) did he go to Egypt/Cairo? (lit. "He went to Egypt/Cairo why?")
• /miːn rˤaːħ masˤr/ or /miːn illi rˤaːħ masˤr/ (مين راح مصر؟) "Who (/miːn/) went to Egypt/Cairo? (literally - same order)

The same sentences in Literary Arabic (with all the question words (wh-words) in the beginning of the sentence) would be:

• متى ذهب إلى مصر؟ /mataː ðahaba ʔilaː misˤr/
• لِمَ ذهب إلى مصر؟ /lima ðahaba ʔilaː misˤr/
• من ذهب إلى مصر؟ /man ðahaba ʔilaː misˤr/

Also since Coptic, like other North African languages, lacked interdental consonants it could possibly have influenced the manifestation of their occurrences in Classical Arabic /θ/ /ð/ /ðˤ/ as their dental counterparts /t/ /d/ and the emphatic dental /dˤ/ respectively. (see consonants)