what do egyptians speak?
Languages of Egypt Egyptian Arabic Coptic Language Egyptian language Sa'idi Arabic
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 The Egyptian language is a northern Afro @-@ Asiatic language closely related to the Berber and Semitic languages . It has the second longest history of any language ( after Sumerian ) , having been written from c . 3200 BC to the Middle Ages and remaining as a spoken language for longer . The phases of ancient Egyptian are Old Egyptian , Middle Egyptian ( Classical Egyptian ) , Late Egyptian , Demotic and Coptic . Egyptian writings do not show dialect differences before Coptic , but it was probably spoken in regional dialects around Memphis and later Thebes . 

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 Ancient Egyptian has 25 consonants similar to those of other Afro @-@ Asiatic languages . These include pharyngeal and emphatic consonants , voiced and voiceless stops , voiceless fricatives and voiced and voiceless affricates . It has three long and three short vowels , which expanded in Later Egyptian to about nine . The basic word in Egyptian , similar to Semitic and Berber , is a triliteral or biliteral root of consonants and semiconsonants . Suffixes are added to form words . The verb conjugation corresponds to the person . For example , the triconsonantal skeleton S @-@ Ḏ @-@ M is the semantic core of the word ' hear ' ; its basic conjugation is sḏm , ' he hears ' . If the subject is a noun , suffixes are not added to the verb : sḏm ḥmt , ' the woman hears ' . 

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 = = = Classical , Middle , Late , and Demotic Egyptian language = = = 

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 Ancient Egyptian literature was written in the Egyptian language from ancient Egypt 's pharaonic period until the end of Roman domination . It represents the oldest corpus of Egyptian literature . Along with Sumerian literature , it is considered the world 's earliest literature . 

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 Ancient Egyptian was a synthetic language , but it became more analytic later on . Late Egyptian develops prefixal definite and indefinite articles , which replace the older inflectional suffixes . There is a change from the older verb – subject – object word order to subject – verb – object . The Egyptian hieroglyphic , hieratic , and demotic scripts were eventually replaced by the more phonetic Coptic alphabet . Coptic is still used in the liturgy of the Egyptian Orthodox Church , and traces of it are found in modern Egyptian Arabic . 
