My Kemetic Family- we have work to do where the revival of our language is concerned! It has been enjoyable connecting to each other and to our heritage through the short conversations weve had, but already weve hit a snag. Some of us stick with the Manuel de Codage (MdC), so called dictionary-speak, some go with Budge and other Egyptologists and stick that arbitrary e between the consonants of the MdC, and some of us are breaking new ground and spelling Kemetic words the way we think they were meant to be pronounced. While all of these methods are valid according to the intent of the speaker/writer, a level of scientific methodology is crying out to be applied here(!), so that we can all agree on some pattern in the interim of the linguistic research, that will be recognizable to all of us. Due to the extinction of mdw-ntr as a spoken language, the natural transference of a mother tongue to its offspring has become a science project of linguistic gymnastics. The natural steps of language are like the crossing of a river. You have one river bank- a concept; in the middle of the river you have a stone to jump across on- the verbal symbol of your concept; on the other riverbank- the receiver of the concept. Nice n easy...But because our original stone sank into the river, a whole bevy of rocks has become necessary to piece back together what is normally a natural mother-to-child process. Now if you as a child of Kemet wants to understand what your mother is saying, the connection looks something like this: The riverbank- your mothers concept; first stone- written mdw-ntr, rich in symbols but dry of vowels; second stone- Manuel de Codage, a representation of mdw-ntr symbols that is meant for writing and *not* pronunciation; third stone- the arbitrary e added to give dimension to the MdC; fourth stone- painstaking comparative analysis of languages in and around Kemet in the attempt to reconstruct a standardized pronunciation; and the other riverbank- you, the child who will listen, learn and repeat, and bring the language back to spoken life. The first stones have been laid in the river. Im guessing that last stone must be covered in slippery moss, because although we speculate, theorize, and conjecture, no plan has yet been organized to drop it in! We need to use our collaborative efforts to create both an interim agreement on pronunciation and spelling so that we can maintain our interest in speaking to one another, and we need to organize a formal team and lay the groundwork for the major project of which languages will be used in the final analysis; of how the collection of words will be broken down into manageable groups to be analyzed by various teams; and once a pronunciation has been standardized, how we represent those sounds with English spelling. Lets get to it! *PLEASE NOTE: If your knowledge of mdw-ntr is limited to the near side of the riverbank, please do not stick your theories, opinions, and baseless ideas into this project. That would be like trying to wake someone from a coma with no medical knowledge. But if you are serious and feel that you can contribute, come on in! Tell us what stone youre currently standing on in the river, and what your plan is for getting that last stone in place. Once we have a team, a plan, and some building materials for this last stage of the language bridge, we may actually get somewhere rather that standing around and waiting for the sound of that splash thats never going to happen if we dont take action.
Posted on: Mon, 20 Jan 2014 03:40:59 +0000
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