Читать книгу Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World - Nicholas Ostler - Страница 28

Be a craftsman in speech, thou mayest be strong, the tongue is a sword to a man, and speech is more valorous than any fighting...

Instruction for King Merikare, line 32 (Egyptian, mid-twentieth century BC)³

The origin of the Egyptian language must be found close at hand, in the Afro-Asiatic or Hamito-Semitic family whose descendant languages cover most of North Africa and the neighbouring areas of the Fertile Crescent (from Palestine round to Iraq) and Arabia. Egyptian has no close relatives in this large family, but its family origins do account for some of its characteristic features, mundane things such as the fact that feminine nouns end in -t.§