Due to the nature of following current international events I've been checking out YouTube more than I usually do, and one thing led to another and I ended up on a video of prayer services at a Zoroastrian temple in Yazd. Watching the prayers (go to 1:30) I was struck by how Muslim they seemed to me. I have read that Muslim prayer 5 times a day was in part an attempt to one up the Zoroastrians, who pray 3 times a day. In any case, I decided to see what a Coptic prayer was like, Coptic being the ritual language of the Christians of Egypt. I don't know if the Coptic prayer was in Coptic or Arabic, I honestly can't tell them apart (I know that Coptic is not a Semitic language), but I was struck by how Muslim it sounded to me as well. I was reminded of when a Korean friend explained how the Buddhist channel and the Catholic channel in Korea were sometimes hard to distinguish because they featured people in robes (presumably priests) praying a lot (my friend was raised a Roman Catholic). Anyway, YouTube clips below.
Zoroastrian temple (embed disabled, so follow the link).
Coptic prayer....
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Sometimes you come across connections that have been lost for a very long time. I recently came across a link between Egypt and Ireland!
Coptic Orthodox Christians fast every Wednesday in commemoration
of Christ's betrayal by Judas Iscariot, and every Friday in
commemoration of his crucifixion.
From:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fasting_and_abstinence_of_the_Coptic_Ortho…
In the Irish language the Days of the week are:
* Monday: An Luain or Dé Luain - Latin Lunae, "of the Moon"
* Tuesday: An Mháirt or Dé Máirt - Latin Martis, "of Mars"
* Wednesday: An Chéadaoin or Dé Céadaoin - Old Irish, "first fasting"
* Thursday: An Déardaoin or Déardaoin - Old Irish, "day between fastings"
* Friday: An Aoine or Dé hAoine - Old Irish, "fasting"
* Saturday: An Satharn or Dé Sathairn - Latin Saturni, "of Saturn"
* Sunday: An Domhnach or Dé Domhnaigh - Latin Dominica, "of the Lord"
From:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_calendar#Days_of_the_week_-_Laethant…
It appears that the Irish monastic tradition followed the same fasting practices as the Coptic monks. Fascinating!
theodore of tarsus was born in byzantine territory, and likely studied in antioch when it was ruled by the sassanid persians. but he ended his life in the late 7th century as archbishop of canterbury.
The level of similarity shouldn't be that surprising. If religion relies on basic human instincts and behavior then the successful religions will be likely to adopt similar rituals. Furthermore, in some of these cases, like Islam and Coptic Christianity the religions have been in close contact for a long time so cultural exchange can occur.
Incidentally, although Coptic is not a Semitic language, it is in the Afro-Asiatic family of languages which includes the Semitic languages as a subgroup. In fact, Coptic is in the Egyptian subgroup of the Afro-Asiatic family. I'm not a linguist, but if I'm not mistaken the Egyptian subgroup is the subgroup most closely related to the Semitic subgroup.
In regards to language classification there are complicated issues here that I don't fully understand. Part of the issue is that languages don't form as good a nested hierarchy as one would like since there is a lot more horizontal cross over. Egyptian Arabic for example has a lot of Coptic elements.
I guess it makes it easier to convert if you don't have to change your habits too much.
For those who didn't know, Coptic is the last stage of the language of Ancient Egypt. Coptic is written in the greek alphabet with a few characters derived from demotic hieroglyphs. But yeah. Listening to it, the language is pretty clearly not Arabic, though the singing style is pretty Muslem sounding.
Incidentally, although Coptic is not a Semitic language, it is in the Afro-Asiatic family of languages which includes the Semitic languages as a subgroup. In fact, Coptic is in the Egyptian subgroup of the Afro-Asiatic family. I'm not a linguist, but if I'm not mistaken the Egyptian subgroup is the subgroup most closely related to the Semitic subgroup.
yes. but i think they're far enough that it is only of academic note. kind of like how hungarian and finnic languages are clearly related, but the relationship is distant enough that it's not relevant (like the relationship between finnish, estonian and some of the russian finnic is). OTOH, arabic, aramaic and hebrew are close enough that their similarities are obvious to anyone listening. just like i can hear that farsi is obviously related to northern indian languages, especially when they get emotive and use strident, short and simple phrases (reverting back to the "core" vocab).
At least for the video it's probably not just a matter of language similarities; the music is surely a large factor. If you translated the words into (say) French while leaving the melody untouched I'd bet a lot native English speakers would still identify it as sounding Islamic.
Actually that could be an interesting experiment. Might be something interesting for a linguist to try (if it hasn't been done already, which it probably has).
I'd say the Zoroastrian prayers sound/look more Hindu than Muslim to me...especially since Old Persian and Avestan are much more similar to Sanskrit in terms of phonology AND vocabulary than modern persian is to any indic language.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wYrctE2EpY