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The symbols used as a written language in ancient Egypt were called hieroglyphics. Hieroglyphs are sounds in the form of pictures. The pictures stand for certain sounds of the letters, not like the confusing English alphabet where the same letters can have different sounds or can be silent.
When we spell a word like phone, we use the ph instead of a perfectly good f. We also use the extra e at the end. Silent and weird confusing combinations are what make the English language so hard to learn. The ancient Egyptians didn’t use confusing mixes or make the sounds of letters silent. They would spell a word how it sounded. Egyptians would spell the word phone by using fon. Instead of using silent sounds and weird combinations of letters, they spelled phone how they thought it sounded. The word knife in ancient Egypt would be spelled nif. The word these in the Egyptian language would be spelled thes, though the th sound of the word is all one picture. This is because the Egyptians had all the same letters and sounds that the English alphabet has, but they also have some of the weird combinations like ch and th all in one picture. For the vowels in the English alphabet there are always two ways of saying them, the long way and the short way. The ancient Egyptians also thought of this, because for each vowel they have different pictures for both the long way as in road and the short way of saying them as in rod. Each letter has its own picture for the long vowels, but the letter I has the same picture for each sound. The vulture can mean the short A, short E, or the short O sound because they all sound similar. Some consonants like the letter c have hard ways of saying them as in sick and soft ways as in nice instead of long and short. Not a lot of letters do this, though. Now you are ready to learn hieroglyphs!!!
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