Meroitic/Lesson1/Phonology and Orthography

Orthography

Demotic	𐦠	𐦡	𐦢	𐦣	𐦤	𐦥	𐦦	𐦧	𐦨	𐦩	𐦪	𐦫	𐦬	𐦭	𐦯	𐦱	𐦲	𐦳	𐦮	𐦴	𐦵	𐦶	𐦷
Hieroglyphic	𐦀	𐦁	𐦂	𐦃	𐦄	𐦅	𐦆	𐦈	𐦉	𐦊	𐦌	𐦏	𐦐	𐦑	𐦓	𐦕	𐦖	𐦗	𐦒	𐦘	𐦚	𐦜	𐦝
Reference No.	A1	H6	A30	F1	M17	V4	E1	Q3	G17	N35	M23	D21	E22	AA1	M8	R34	G39	N29	W11	V13	O4	F16	D4
Conventional transliteration	a	e	i	o	y	w	b	p	m	n	ne	r	l	ḫ	s	se	k	q	h̲	t	te	to	d
Unicode Name	a	e	i	o	ya	wa	ba	pa	ma	na	ne	ra	la	kha	sa	se	ka	qa	hh	ta	te	to	da
Karanog IV	a	e	i	ê	y	w	b	p	m	n	ñ	r	l	ḫ	š	s	k	q	h̲	t	te	tê	z
Rowan	a	ə	i	o	ya	wa	ba	pa	ma	ne	n	ra (1)	la	cha	s	se	ka	qa	kh	te	t	tu	ra ~ da
Rilly	a or u	e, ə or no vowel	i	u ~ o	ya	wa	ba	pa	ma	na	ne ~ nə ~ n	ra	la	ɣa	sa	se ~ sə ~ s	ka	​kᵂa	ɣᵂa	ta	te ~ tə ~ t	tu~to	ra
Saharan transliteration	a (ɔ)	ø (no or weak vowel)	e	i	y	w	b	f	m	n	nø	r	l	j (ɟ)	s	sø	c	k	g	t	tø	ti	d

The Meroitic script has 4 vowel signs: a, e, i, o, 15 open consonant signs and 4 closed consonant signs (se, ne, te, to). The vowel "a" can only occur at the start of a word. e and i can only start words in early Meroitic. Otherwise, words always start with a consonant sign.

ɣ (voiced velar fricative), c (voiceless palatal stop) and j (voiced palatal stop) are all foreign sounds to English. The Meroitic l and w are phonetically different from their English counterparts.

There are different approaches to actually vocalizing Meroitic.

Traditional Approach

The Meroitic script can be read as a strict alphasyllabary. This means consonant signs open syllables and vowels close them. An closed consonant already has an inherent vowel and so cannot be followed by a vowel sign.

Examples

• abr /abara/ - "man"
• mk /maka/ - "god"
• ant /anata/ - "priest"
• perite /perite/ - "agent"

The traditional approach prevailed because Meroitic remained a poorly undeciphered language. It allowed for easy, speculative vocalization that was not expected to reflect how the language was actually pronounced. One problem with the traditional approach is that it does not allow words to end with a consonant sound although we know for a fact that some Meroitic place names did end in consonants. Better approaches were developed from expert study of Meroitic words and names with known Greek, Coptic and Egyptian translations.