Dear All, Emile Maher Ishak (now Fr. Shenouda Maher Ishak) and his work have featured prominently in many lively debates on the pronunciation of the Coptic language in the past, on this forum and elsewhere. Regrettably few, if any, have been able to consult Dr Ishak's magnum opus on Coptic phonology directly. Without doubt the inaccessibility of the work, held to my knowledge at only two UK university libraries, has needlessly hindered research on Coptic phonology and Coptic Studies in general.
Today I am publishing his D.Phil Thesis submitted to the University of Oxford in 1975. ‘The phonetics and phonology of the Bohairic dialect of Coptic and the survival of Coptic words in the colloquial and Classical Arabic of Egypt and of Coptic grammatical constructions in colloquial Egyptian Arabic’ is to date the most exhaustive study on Bohairic Coptic pronunciation and Coptic survivals in the colloquial Arabic of Egypt. I hope the accessibility of Dr Ishak's thesis will engender debate and further research. You can download the thesis from my blog Copticsounds. Regards, Ambrose
