About two dozen signs write a single consonant each. Egyptologists call them the uniliteral signs, or loosely "the alphabet". They are the most common signs in any text, so they come first. You will learn them in five groups, in dictionary order. (You already know from Groups and Quadrats how signs are grouped, and from Writing Without Vowels that they write consonants only.)
Key idea
| Sign | Code | What it shows | Letter | How to think of it |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 𓄿 | G1 | Egyptian vulture | ꜣ | a weak throat sound; said "a" by convention |
| 𓇋 | M17 | flowering reed | j | yod: y or a glottal stop |
| 𓇌 | M17A | two flowering reeds | y | y (also written with two strokes 𓏭) |
| 𓂝 | D36 | forearm | ꜥ | a sound made deep in the throat, Arabic ʿayn |
| 𓅱 | G43 | quail chick | w | w (also the coil 𓏲) |
Sounds that are not vowels
These five are hard for English speakers because they sound like vowels to us. They are not. ꜣ was a weak consonant; scholars think it began as a kind of r or l sound and later became a glottal stop, the catch in "uh-oh", and its exact value is debated. ꜥ is a sound made by tightening the throat, still used in Arabic (ʿayn). j, the "yod", was a y sound or a glottal stop, and w was w. Egyptologists say ꜣ and ꜥ as "a", j as "i" and w as "u" when they read aloud, but that is a convention.
Notice the yod letter: this course writes j, as Allen’s grammar does. Gardiner and other older books use a special i with a mark (ỉ or ꞽ), and some print plain i. In the answer boxes you may type j, i, ỉ or ꞽ.
Why it works
Common mistake
Worked example: Name the sound
- The forearm is Gardiner D36.
- It writes the throat consonant ꜥ (typed a in MdC).
Answer: ꜥ
Worked example: Two ways to write y
- The two flowering reeds 𓇌.
- Or two oblique strokes 𓏭, which also mark the dual.
Answer: 𓇌 and 𓏭