Egyptian is an Afro-Asiatic language most closely related to Berber, Semitic, and Beja.

Periodization
Egyptian is a fairly typical Afro-Asiatic language. At the heart of Egyptian vocabulary is a root of three consonants. Sometimes there were only two, for example /raʕ/ "sun" (where the [ʕ] represents a voiced pharyngeal fricative); others, such as /nfr/, which means "beautiful"; and some could be as large as five /sḫdḫd/ "be upside-down". Vowels and other consonants were then added to this root in order to derive words, in the same way as Arabic, Hebrew, and other Afro-Asiatic languages do today. However, it is not known what these vowels would have been, since like many other Afro-Asiatic languages, Egyptian does not write vowels; hence "ankh" could represent either "life", "to live" or "living". In transcription, <a>, <i>, and <u> all represent consonants; for example, the name Tutankhamen was written in Egyptian twt-ʕnḫ-ỉmn. Experts have assigned generic sounds to these values as a matter of convenience; however, this artificial pronunciation has often been mistaken for actual pronunciation.
Phonologically, Egyptian contrasted bilabial, labiodental, alveolar, palatal, velar, uvular, pharyngeal, and glottal consonants, in a distribution rather similar to that of Arabic.
Middle Egyptian's basic word order is Verb Subject Object; the equivalent to "the man opens the door", would be a sentence corresponding to "opens the man the door" (wn s ˁ3)
Regarding morphology, Egyptian uses the so-called status constructus construction to combine two or more nouns, similar to Semitic and Berber languages. The early stages of Egyptian possessed no articles, no words for "the" or "a"; later forms used the words p3, t3 and n3 for this purpose. Like other Afro-Asiatic languages, Egyptian uses two grammatical genders, masculine and feminine, similarly to Arabic and Tamasheq. It also uses three grammatical numbers, contrasting singular, dual, and plural forms.

Structure of the language

Main article: Writing in Ancient Egypt Egyptian writing
Further information: Transliteration of ancient Egyptian
While the consonantal phonology of the Egyptian language may be reconstructed, its exact phonetics are unknown, and there are varying opinions on how to classify the individual phonemes. A peculiarity shared with the Semitic languages is the existence of an "emphatic series" in addition to a voiced vs. voiceless opposition.
Since vowels were not written natively, reconstructions of the Egyptian vowel system are much more uncertain, relying on the evidence of Coptic and Greek transcriptions of Egyptian names.
Because Egyptian is also recorded over full two millennia, the Archaic and Late stages being separated by the amount of time that separates Old Latin from modern Italian, it must be assumed that significant phonetic changes would have occurred over that time.
The vocalization of Egyptian is partially known, largely on the basis of reconstruction from Coptic, in which the vowels are written. Recordings of Egyptian words in other languages provide an additional source of evidence. Scribal errors provide evidence of changes in pronunciation over time. The actual pronunciations reconstructed by such means are used only by a few specialists in the language. For all other purposes the Egyptological pronunciation is used.
Egyptian g may represent two phonemes (g
Traditional alef (3) may also have been a alveolar approximant /ɹ/.

Phonology
As a convention, Egyptologists make use of an "Egyptological pronunciation" in which the consonants are given fixed values and vowels are inserted in accordance with essentially arbitrary rules. Two distinct different consonants, Egyptian alef and the Egyptian ayin, are both often pronounced as /a/. The yodh pronounced as /i/, and similarly, w as /u/. Between the other consonants, /e/ is then inserted. Thus, for example, the Egyptian king whose name is most accurately transliterated as Rˁ-ms-sw is transcribed as "Ramesses", meaning "Ra has Fashioned (lit. "Borne") Him".

Egyptological pronunciation

Grammar
Egyptian nouns can be either masculine or feminine (indicated as with other Afro-asiatic languages by adding a -t), and singular, plural (-w / -wt), or dual (-wy / -ty).
Articles (both definite and indefinite) did not develop until Late Egyptian, but are used widely thereafter.

Nouns
Egyptian has suffix, enclitic (called "dependent" by Egyptologists) and independent personal pronouns. These are as follows:
It also has demonstrative pronouns (this, that, these and those), in masculine, feminine, and common plural:
Finally there are interrogative pronouns (what, who, etc.)

Pronouns
Adjectives agree in gender and number with their nouns, for example: s nfr "(the) good man" and st nfrt "(the) good woman".
Attributive adjectives used in phrases fall after the noun they are modifying, such as in "(the) great god" (nṯr ˁ3). However, when used independently as a predicate in an adjectival phrase, such "(the) god (is) great" (ˁ3 nṯr) [lit., "great (is the) god"), the adjective precedes the noun.

Adjectives
Egyptian prepositions come before the noun.

Prepositions
Adverbs are words such as "here" or "where?". In Egyptian, they come at the end of a sentence e.g. zỉ.n nṯr ỉm "the god went there", "there" (ỉm) is the adverb.
Some common Egyptian Adverbs:

Adverbs
Interest in the ancient Egyptian languages continues. For example, it is still taught in several universities. Many resources are in French or German, in addition to English so it can be useful to know one of these languages though not a requirement.
For the film Stargate, Egyptologist Stuart Tyson Smith was commissioned to develop a constructed language to simulate the tongue of ancient Egyptians living alone on another planet for millennia. He also created the Egyptian dialogue for The Mummy (1999 film). In the French comedy Astérix & Obélix: Mission Cléopâtre, a similar attempt was apparently made (source in French). Egyptian taunts and responses are also heard while playing the Egyptian campaign of Age of Mythology
While Egyptian culture is one of the influences of Western civilization, few words of Egyptian origin remain in English. Even those associated with ancient Egypt were usually transmitted in Greek forms. Some examples of Egyptian words that have survived into English include ebony (Egyptian ḥbny), phoenix (Egyptian bnw, literally "heron"; transmitted through Greek), Pharaoh (Egyptian pr-ˁʒ, literally "great house"; transmitted through Greek), as well as the proper names Phineas (Egyptian, pʒ-nḥsy, literally "The black one," used as a generic term for Nubian foreigners) and Susan (Egyptian, sšn, literally "lotus flower"; probably transmitted first from Egyptian into Hebrew).

Modern-day resources

Notes

Literature

Loprieno, Antonio, Ancient Egyptian: A Linguistic Introduction, Cambridge University Press, 1995. ISBN 0-521-44384-9 (hbk) ISBN 0-521-44849-2 (pbk) Overviews

Allen, James P., Middle Egyptian - An Introduction to the Language and Culture of Hieroglyphs, first edition, Cambridge University Press, 1999. ISBN 0-521-65312-6 (hbk) ISBN 0-521-77483-7 (pbk)
Collier, Mark, and Manley, Bill, How to Read Egyptian Hieroglyphs : A Step-by-Step Guide to Teach Yourself, British Museum Press (ISBN 0-7141-1910-5) and University of California Press (ISBN 0-520-21597-4), both in 1998.
Gardiner, Sir Alan H., Egyptian Grammar: Being an Introduction to the Study of Hieroglyphs, Griffith Institute, Oxford, 3rd ed. 1957. ISBN 0-900416-35-1 Grammars

Faulkner, Raymond O., A Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian, Griffith Institute, Oxford, 1962. ISBN 0-900416-32-7 (hardback)
Lesko, Leonard H., A Dictionary of Late Egyptian, 4 Vols., B.C. Scribe Publications, Berkeley, 1982. ISBN 0-930548-03-5 (hbk), ISBN 0-930548-04-3 (pbk).
Shennum, David, English-Egyptian Index of Faulkner's Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian, Undena Publications, 1977. ISBN 0-89003-054-5 Online dictionaries

Coptic language
Demotic
Egyptian hieroglyphs
Egyptian languages
Egyptian numerals
Hieratic
Egyptian Arabic
Transliteration of ancient Egyptian