Peust, Carsten: Egyptian phonology: an introduction to the phonology of a dead language (Göttingen, 1999)

yfqms (assuming metathesis) and to SG\2LJKH "handful" (Hoch 1994: no. 446).
Another possibility is to connect this word to gd > SGIA, bAIA "hand", see Meeks
(1997: 50).

First attested after the New Kingdom

• Demotic iri hrd "to grind one's teeth" > ^pOApA, b3p&ApeA, cf. Hebrew p~\T} "to
grind one's teeth".

• Sahidic GAA&I and variants (type of pottery), from Aramaic qlby (Westendorf
1965/77: 452).

3.7.4 Velar no. 4: Egyptian /k±w/ <q>

Whereas palatalization of <k> seems to be bound to phonetic conditions, palatalization of
<q> cannot be predicted. We therefore have to consider velar no. 4 to be a phoneme on its
own which has always been distinct from velar no. 3. The nature of the opposition is,
however, not immediately evident. It is only clear that it cannot have originally been one
of velar vs. palatal places of articulation (E5° discussion on velar no. 3).
We find that /n/ preceding velar no. 4 can appear as /m/ in Coptic (recognized already by
Sethe 1899-1902: I, § 227a), just as it often does preceding <m>, <p>, or <b> (Kg* § 3.16.1):

• cnq "to (make) flow or similarly" > s.b(0*K /'omk/ "to swallow"

• hnq.t "beer" > ^NKC /'hnW, ^e^KI /'hemki/

• snq "to sick" > sCO)NK~C(DAK, bCCuNK

• dj-snq "to suckle" > sTCNKO~TCAKO

• qnqn "to beat" > sr\J\KJ\ et var "to play a musical instrument".

From this admittedly weak evidence I conclude that velars no. 3 and no. 4 were originally
distinguished by the absence or presence of the feature [labial]. There is no way of know-
ing whether these labialized velars were spoken with lip-rounding (/kw/) or with double
closure (/kp/). Wherever I indicate phonetic interpretations in this book, I will render
velar no. 4 as /kw/ for convenience, but this is nothing more than an ad-hoc decision.
In a New Kingdom magical text there appears to be a word play involving nhp "morning"
and an obscure word nhq (Westendorf 1962: §39). This seems to support the assumption
that <q> could have had a labial coarticulation.

Edel (1988) identifies d'iqtih, a transcription of a foreign toponym from the New
Kingdom, with the Greek name ©npai^ which appears as te-qa- in linear-B texts. The
correspondence Greek (5 - linear-B q clearly points to the early Greek phoneme /gw/. If
Edel's identification is correct, it confirms the labiovelar character of Egyptian <q>.
While the grapheme <q> most commonly expresses velar no. 4 in native Egyptian words,
there is no evidence that velar no. 4 ever occurred in loan words from Semitic. I have no
example of a word borrowed with <q> which turned out as non-palatalized K in Coptic.116

16 Cf. Vergote's (1945: 40) remark: "Le qof des mots d'emprunt semitiques semble
avoir adopte de preference l'artieulation postpalatale".