-wj

Egyptian

Etymology

-w (“masculine plural ending”) + -j (“dual ending”).

Pronunciation

 

• (reconstructed) IPA^(key): /wVj/ → /wVj/ → /w/

• (Old Egyptian, c. 2500 BCE) IPA^(key): /wVj/

  where V represents an unknown short vowel.

• (Middle Egyptian, c. 1700 BCE) IPA^(key): /wVj/

  where V represents an unknown short vowel.

• (latest Late Egyptian, c. 800 BCE) IPA^(key): /w/

• (modern Egyptological) IPA^(key): /wi/
  • Conventional anglicization: -wi

Suffix

1. Used to form regular masculine dual forms of nouns and adjectives
2. Attaches to the adjective in an adjectival predicate to give its clause exclamatory force

Alternative forms

Alternative hieroglyphic writings of -wj  

-wj	-w

This dual suffix is also often represented by writing the phonetic or determinative glyph twice, e.g. tꜣwj:

References

• Loprieno, Antonio (1995) Ancient Egyptian: A Linguistic Introduction, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, page 60
• James P[eter] Allen (2010) Middle Egyptian: An Introduction to the Language and Culture of Hieroglyphs, 2nd edition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, →ISBN.