Nouns

Nouns
As in most Afro-Asiatic languages, Egyptian nouns generally have a consonantal root that conveys the semantic value of the noun. The general semantic value of this consonantal root can also be present in verbs or adjectives and adverbs of the same root.


 * For Example:


 * The triliteral root: ʿ -n-ḫ means life, so the noun:  ʿ nḫ means life, but the verb  ʿ nḫ (with a different determinative) means to live.

Gender
As in most Afro-Asiatic languages, Egyptian nouns come in two genders: masculine and feminine, and the feminine gender marker is monoliteral /t/. Certain nouns can switch gender, preserving the noun-stem's semantic meaning, but just changing the gender of the word. For example: s (meaning man) can be made into s.t (meaning woman) by adding the feminine marker.

While this may seem logical, other masc./fem. noun pairs have completely different semantic meanings despite sharing a consonantal root. For example: pr (meaning house) becomes pr.t (meaning festival or procession).

Number
Middle Egyptian has three numbers for nouns: Singular, Dual, and Plural. While singular and plural are commonplace in most Indo-European languages, the concept of a Dual number may seem obscure to a speaker of a Western Language. The dual suffix just indicates that there are two of the noun in question. Duals are a common feature of many languages, such as Arabic, Hebrew, and Ancient Greek.

Suffixes
While the suffixes may be spelled out, often times just a determinative if used to communicate the number of the object. In earlier form of the Egyptian language, the word's determinative would be doubled to indicate the dual or tripled to indicate the plural, but in Middle Egyptian and later forms, vertical lines or dots are used to indicate the number (two lines/dots indicates dual, three indicates plural)  These number determinatives are most often placed after the noun's determinatve.

Personal Names
Personal names are not differentiated from the text except if the name is a king's name in which case it is placed in one of several enclosures, most notably the Cartouche.

Place Names
Geographic locations are common in Middle Egyptian texts and are easy to spot due to their distinctive determinatives (shown below)



Noun Phrases
There are various types of noun phrases that demonstrate various linguistic relationships between nouns. For more information see:

Genitive Constructions

Conjunctive Constructions

Adjectives

Suffix Pronouns