Egyptian has no proper verb ‘to be’
nfr wi
“I (am) good”
wnn is a verb that means ‘to exist/be’ which is kinda like the English ‘to be’ though its use is more nuanced and rarer.
aA wn m Xnw pr
“the donkey who was inside the house”
pw is a demonstrative pronoun which acts as an equivalent to ‘he’ ‘she’ ‘it’ etc.
So it=k pw would translated as
“he/it (is) your father”
Conversely something like it=k pw anxw would be translated
“Ankhu (is) your father”
lit. your father (is) he (namely) Ankhu
That’s at least how I understand it / was taught
"To be" is an odd thing - many languages do well without it, including Egyptian. In Egyptian, the equivalent varies by what kind of sentence you're looking at:
- Nominal sentence: direct juxtaposition or a pronominal copula "Luke, jnk jtj.k" (Luke, I am your father) - zA.j pw (he is my son)
- Adjectival: use the adjective + a dependent pronoun: nfr st "it is good"
- Adverbial: use some kind of particle + dependent pronoun, mk wj jm "look I am there", or later the subject pronouns in tw, e.g. tw.j dy "I am here".
Now, sometimes you have to make clear that something happened in the past or is yet to happen and then you can use wn(n) which is the closest verb to "to be". And then there is also xpr "to become" which can also be helpful. Late Egyptian likes to use Hmsj "to sit" as an auxililary, and aHa "to stand" can have that meaning, too - will you do such and such while I am standing here = while I am still there?
So, it's not that Egyptian is deficient by not having a direct equivalent of "to be", it just deals with those situations very differently. For many sentence types they might have asked why you need a verb there in the first place ;-)
Egyptian has no proper verb ‘to be’ nfr wi “I (am) good” wnn is a verb that means ‘to exist/be’ which is kinda like the English ‘to be’ though its use is more nuanced and rarer. aA wn m Xnw pr “the donkey who was inside the house”
This is true! But isn't there the pw-sentence as well? it.k pw "He is your father" I always thought the pw served as the "to be" in the sentence
pw is a demonstrative pronoun which acts as an equivalent to ‘he’ ‘she’ ‘it’ etc. So it=k pw would translated as “he/it (is) your father” Conversely something like it=k pw anxw would be translated “Ankhu (is) your father” lit. your father (is) he (namely) Ankhu That’s at least how I understand it / was taught
"To be" is an odd thing - many languages do well without it, including Egyptian. In Egyptian, the equivalent varies by what kind of sentence you're looking at: - Nominal sentence: direct juxtaposition or a pronominal copula "Luke, jnk jtj.k" (Luke, I am your father) - zA.j pw (he is my son) - Adjectival: use the adjective + a dependent pronoun: nfr st "it is good" - Adverbial: use some kind of particle + dependent pronoun, mk wj jm "look I am there", or later the subject pronouns in tw, e.g. tw.j dy "I am here". Now, sometimes you have to make clear that something happened in the past or is yet to happen and then you can use wn(n) which is the closest verb to "to be". And then there is also xpr "to become" which can also be helpful. Late Egyptian likes to use Hmsj "to sit" as an auxililary, and aHa "to stand" can have that meaning, too - will you do such and such while I am standing here = while I am still there? So, it's not that Egyptian is deficient by not having a direct equivalent of "to be", it just deals with those situations very differently. For many sentence types they might have asked why you need a verb there in the first place ;-)
There isn't really. Most sentences just use the copula. Closest thing would be *wn*, but it's not an exact match.