Coptic Etymological Dictionary (Cambridge Library Collection - Linguistics) Paperback – 31 Oct. 2010

Product as advertised and very promptly delivered

For those of us who cannot quite bring ourselves to remortgage the house in order to be able to afford Crum's dictionary, this handy publication is more than useful.As stated on the back cover, it contains some 2000 Coptic words, approximately two-thirds of the known vocabulary. Each entry is accompanied by cognates, many in Egyptian (complete with Hieroglyphs and transliteration). Other languages are Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic, Syriac, Akkadian and Greek.It is one-way: Coptic to English, and follows a root system rather than purely alphabetic (Coptic) word order. The various dialects (Sahidic, Bohairic, Achmimic, etc) are indicated where relevant.The typeface is somewhat more stylised than I have encountered in Bentley Layton's Grammar, but easily readable.Definitely worth getting for comparative linguistics fans, as well as students of Coptic and Egyptian. In an ideal world it would have been nice to have the other 1000 Coptic words, irrespective of etymologies, but the raison d'etre of this book is etymological. It complements rather than replaces the hideously expensive Crum, but can be used in its own right.NB, there is not a large amount of Greek words - you'll still need a grounding in Greek and (e.g.)the Liddell Lexicon.