Talk:spj

Parentheses

Does this mean “it’s sometimes sp and sometimes spj” or is (j) actually part of the romanisation? — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 00:11, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

Um, usually the former but not quite in this case. Usually (as in the verb table I've just put up) it indicates weak consonants which are often ignored. Use of the parentheses is rather subjective however - all weak consonants (3, ˤ, j, w) have the potential to be ignored, but some (e.g. word-final ones) are ignored much more often.

This case is different, however, because sp(j) is the verb root, hence not an attested form. The j is never written in the hieroglyphs - it's just put in the transliteration for grammatical purposes - and so some authors (Collier) put it it brackets to indicate permanent omission. I think it's a good practice, but Allen just writes it as spj - so if you think it's too confusing then feel free to change to spj. Hyarmendacil (talk) 02:44, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

It’s just weird really, but when it comes to Egyptian you know best, so I’ll leave it. — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 02:54, 13 July 2013 (UTC)