"Zinnia" .. The last village speaks the language of the people of ancient Egypt

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Between hieroglyphics and Arabic, several languages ​​lived in the Nile Valley, circulated by the Egyptians and knew their letters and symbols, remained what remained but was eventually written to go, and just as Islam entered Egypt, it spread slowly, so also the Arabic language imposed itself and the decline of the Egyptian Coptic language.

Decades later, the old language was absent and disappeared only in Zinnia, in the far south of Egypt, where its people kept it and inherited it for generations to come.

The isolated village of Zinnia
In Luxor, the southernmost part of Egypt, there is a small village with the tourist city Kebili, a village that inherited Egypt's heritage from its temples and sun.

When he visited Egypt in 1671, Father Vanslip, a European traveler, said that in the town of Luxor, he met the last man who still preserved the ancient Egyptian language. The sentence was metaphorical. The man was deaf and aging, but fortunately, the departure of the last man did not end the ancient Egyptian language, and the language and its words remained resistant to extinction.

The student at the Faculty of Archeology and the son of the village of Zeina Mohammed Badr, assumed the task of introducing the village, and in the ancient Egyptian language, which is still on the tongues of Zenin.

Mohamed is always preoccupied with republishing historical stories about ancient Egypt, telling the history of the Pharaohs, and restoring ancient Egyptian civilization to its glow, glow and pride.

The twentieth young man tells of the secret of his attempts to spread the language of the people of ancient Egypt, and the secret of keeping the Zinnia in the old language (Zinnia is an isolated village in Upper Egypt, which was not inhabited by Arabs from the Arabian Peninsula, as well as they confronted the movement of Erian Effendi).

Erian Effendi Movement
Erian Efendi, or historically reminiscent of "modern pronunciation," means the unity that Pope Cyril IV inaugurated between the Egyptian Church and the Greek Church in the 18th century, by using Greek letters to speak the Egyptian language.

Badr explains: "In the sense that my name is Muhammad, Muhammad is spoken, Abnoudi, for example, speaks of Avnotti, waterfalls said in the modern word Ashlil, and so, of course, this was a distortion rejected by the Christians of Zinnia. .

Wei Wei incident
The objection of the Coptic Zenith to the ecclesiastical unity between the Egyptian and Greek churches was historically recorded in a famous incident, when Pope Cyril IV visited the monastery of Muharraq and prayed with the monks.At the end of the prayer, he said, "Ashleel", instead of Ashelal, a Coptic word meaning "prayer". The prayer is mocking him, saying "Wei Wei Wei Afgosnan Ashlil," meaning "Wei Wei Wei tell us Ashil," and so far the word is still circulating to ridicule or exclamation "Wah" in the Sa الصعيدdian dialect, and "Yiiiii" in other Egyptian dialects.

The Coptic language is still present in the vernacular of the Egyptian vernacular until now. Some use the word "kouta" as an alternative to tomatoes, "towel" means towel, "shenna and rana" for those who are famous, "ken" in the quietest sense, and "oba" to express Surprising and exclamation point.

According to Badr, "the vernacular dialect succeeded in making a distinctive mixture of Egyptian dialects, and just as the Zenith preserves the ancient language, as well as the churches preserves songs and melodies of ancient Egypt, and still use it today."

Zainia opens its doors to teach the Coptic language to preserve the ancient Egyptian heritage and offers free lessons to visitors.

Christians make up about 25% of the village's population, with an estimated 600 families.

In March 2019, Google added the Coptic language to the Gbord application, the virtual keyboard app, in sixty newly added languages, despite the fact that the Coptic language is classified as extinct.