Coptic

Coptic is the final stage of the Egyptian branch of Afro-Asiatic, a group of closely related dialects representing the most recent development of the Egyptian language. It was the everyday language of Egypt from around the third century AD until it was gradually supplanted as a vernacular by Arabic following the Arab conquest, ceasing ordinary spoken use between the tenth and twelfth centuries. It survives today only as the liturgical language of the Coptic Orthodox and Coptic Catholic Churches, written in the Coptic alphabet, a Greek-based script with seven additional letters borrowed from Demotic Egyptian.