There are many misconceptions about how Egyptian hieroglyphs work and about how difficult they are to learn. Some prospective students imagine that hieroglyphs are only accessible to experienced ancient linguists; others expect that reading hieroglyphs will be a matter of recognising pictures, and don’t realise that a whole language with its own sounds, grammar and vocabulary lies behind the signs.
Pictures or sounds?
One common misunderstanding is that hieroglyphs are just pictures of things, and that you can read them if know what they're pictures of.
Hieroglyphs are pictures of things, but that's only the beginning. Many (but not all) hieroglyphs are used phonetically, which means that in an Egyptian text they represent a sound, or a combination of sounds, not the object they depict. There are two steps to translating a hieroglyphic text: first you convert the hieroglyphs into their sound values (known as ‘transliteration’); then you translate your transliteration using your knowledge of ancient Egyptian grammar and vocabulary, just as you would translate any other language.
Difficult or just different?
Some dead languages have living descendants; familiarity with a descendant language makes it easier to learn the dead parent. For example, speakers of languages like Italian, Spanish, French and even English have a head start when it comes to learning Latin because they already know words, and in some cases grammatical forms, that come from Latin.
Ancient Egyptian has no living descendants: Coptic, which is the final stage of ancient Egyptian, is used as a liturgical language, but there are no longer any first-language speakers. Ancient Egyptian is related to Semitic languages like Arabic and North African languages like Berber. If you speak a language from one of these groups, this may help you understand the structure of Egyptian. If not, ancient Egyptian grammar and vocabulary are likely to seem quite alien to start with.
What are the practical challenges for students of Egyptian hieroglyphs?
For most people, the first hurdle in learning Egyptian is getting to grips with the writing system. This is complex, and even in ancient times was understood only by a very small literate minority.
However, although there are hundreds of hieroglyphs, some are much more common than others. You will start by progressively learning a core set of the most common signs and will use indexed sign lists to look up others until they become familiar.
Another challenge is that, as already mentioned, the grammar and vocabulary of ancient Egyptian may well be very different from that of languages you already know, and you'll need to find a textbook or teacher to explain them to you.
Finally, because Egyptian is a dead language, some of the methods commonly used to learn modern languages aren’t available. For example, you can’t immerse yourself in the language by going to Egypt and speaking ancient Egyptian, or by watching videos or chatting online. Studying grammar will be important if you want to gain a good level of understanding.
Some good news!
So far, I’ve only talked about the challenges. There’s some good news too.
Learning and using a modern language can sometimes feel quite pressured, especially when you're trying to have a conversation and can’t understand a key phrase or come up with a reply quickly enough. This doesn’t happen with a dead language: you can take your time puzzling out a tricky word or phrase, a bit like solving a crossword or logic puzzle.
In addition, most students learn dead languages to read authentic texts and explore ancient cultures. To do this you only need to read the language, you don’t need to speak or translate into it (for some students this can be a useful and enjoyable exercise, but it’s not necessary if you don’t want to - I’ll write more about this in a future article). Removing the need to produce the language can make learning it a lot easier.
If you already know another ancient language such as Latin or Greek, this does make it easier to learn hieroglyphs. This isn't because Latin and Greek are related to Egyptian (in fact they belong to a different family of languages) but because you have already experienced the challenges of learning a dead language and will be familiar with many of the grammatical terms and linguistic concepts used in Middle Egyptian textbooks. However, it’s not necessary to learn one of these languages before starting Egyptian.
In conclusion
Learning Egyptian hieroglyphs is challenging and is different from learning a modern language. Experience of other dead languages can help but is not a prerequisite. Ancient Egyptian has a complex writing system, but so do some modern languages that are nevertheless understood by millions. At the end of the day, Egyptian hieroglyphs represent a language that was once spoken by ordinary people, so there's no reason why a modern student who’s willing to put in the time and effort shouldn't get to grips with it.