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Coptic Language

Faith Q&A › Metropolitan Youssef › Prayer, Fasting and Worship › Coptic Language

The question

I know that overstrokes are used to change Coptic alphabet characters to numbers (except for "So," or "6."), and that an overstroke can combine letters for an abbreviation, such as with IC for "Jesus." However, what do the overstrokes of N & M indicate?

The answer

In this case, different Coptic dialects have different uses in each dialect. In "Sahidic," for example, they use on top of many letters including M and N. But in the Bohairic dialect, it is only used for the two uses that are correctly mentioned in this question.

Answered by His Eminence Metropolitan Youssef (opens in a new tab)

Related questions

Questions answered by His Eminence Metropolitan Youssef (opens in a new tab) of the Coptic Orthodox Diocese of the Southern United States. Question 1877 on the Diocese’s Q&A site. Questions and answers © Coptic Orthodox Diocese of the Southern United States. All rights reserved.