coptic-pronounce

Phonetic transliteration of Coptic Unicode text into English and Arabic script.

Handles individual Coptic letters, common digraphs (e.g. ⲟⲩ → ou), and liturgical abbreviations such as nomina sacra (Ⲡⲟ̅ⲥ̅ → Pchois).

Install

npm install coptic-pronounce

npmjs.com/package/coptic-pronounce

Usage

CommonJS

const { pronounce } = require('coptic-pronounce');

ES modules

import { pronounce } from 'coptic-pronounce';

Examples

pronounce('ⲡⲛⲟⲩϯ', 'en');
// pnouti

pronounce('ⲡⲛⲟⲩϯ', 'ar');
// بنوتي

pronounce('ⲡⲛⲟⲩϯ ⲁⲛⲟⲕ', 'en');
// pnouti anok

pronounce('ⲡⲛⲟⲩϯ ⲁⲛⲟⲕ', 'ar');
// بنوتي انوك

pronounce(['ⲡⲛⲟⲩϯ ⲁⲛⲟⲕ', 'ⲁⲛⲟⲕ'], 'en');
// ['anok pnouti', 'anok']

lang accepts 'en', 'ar', 'english', or 'arabic'.

Pass a string for a single result, or a string array to transliterate multiple phrases at once (returns an array).

Non-Coptic input is rejected: the first word is checked against Coptic Unicode (U+2C80–U+2CFF), supplemental Coptic letters (U+03E2–U+03EF, e.g. ϯ, ϣ), and combining marks (U+0300–U+036F) for jenkim and overlines.

pronounce('hello', 'en');
// Error: Expected Coptic Unicode text; found "h" (U+0068) in "hello"

TypeScript

Types are included — no @types package needed.

import { pronounce, type PronounceLang } from 'coptic-pronounce';

const lang: PronounceLang = 'en';
const word: string = pronounce('ⲡⲛⲟⲩϯ', lang);
const lines: string[] = pronounce(['ⲡⲛⲟⲩϯ', 'ⲁⲛⲟⲕ'], 'ar');

Works with moduleResolution: "node16", "nodenext", or "bundler".

Combined with Antonios font conversion

If your source text is Latin-encoded Antonios font, convert to Unicode first with coptic-antonios-unicode:

import { toUnicode } from 'coptic-antonios-unicode';
import { pronounce } from 'coptic-pronounce';

const latin = 'P,oic';
const coptic = toUnicode(latin);

pronounce(coptic, 'en'); // Pkhois
pronounce(coptic, 'ar');  // بخويس

API

pronounce(copticText, lang)

| Parameter | Type | Description | |--------------|---------------------|------------------------------------------| | copticText | string | string[] | Coptic Unicode phrase(s) | | lang | string | 'en' / 'english' or 'ar' / 'arabic' |

Returns: string or string[] — same shape as input. Returns '' or [] for empty input.

The first word of the input is validated as Coptic Unicode before transliteration. Throws if a non-Coptic character is found.

For Arabic multi-word output, render with dir="rtl" in HTML.

Liturgical special cases

Both English and Arabic modules include best-effort mappings for common liturgical forms:

| Coptic | English | Arabic | |---------------|-------------|-------------| | Ⲡⲟ̅ⲥ̅ | Pchois | بشويس | | Ⲫϯ | Efnouti | افنوتي | | ⲭ̅ⲥ̅ | Ekrestos | اخرستوس | | ⲉ̅ⲑ̅ⲩ̅ | Eth-ouab | اثؤاب |

Verify against a trusted liturgical reference before using in production.

License

MIT