COPHTIC, or COPTIC, the language of the Cophth, being the language of the ancient Egyptians, mixed with a little Greek, and written in letters which are chiefly Greek, though fashioned on the model of the enchorial, demotic, or civil characters of the country. It has a form and construction peculiar to itself, having no inflections of the nouns or verbs, but expressing number, case, gender, person, mood, and tense, and forming the possessive pronouns by means of letters and particles prefixed.
Kircher was the first who published a grammar and vocabulary of the Cophth. More lately we have a "Compendious Grammar of the Egyptian Language," Lond. 1830; "Lexicon Egyptiaco-Latinum," Oxon. 1825; "Lexicon Linguae Coptice," Turin, 1835. The only books extant in Cophth are translations of the Scriptures, or of ecclesiastical offices, and others that relate thereto, as grammars and dictionaries.