In a previous article, Pope Shenouda III’s Uncompleted Programme for the Revival of the Coptic Language, I wrote about Pope Shenouda III’s assessment of the programme of reviving our language through production of teaching books (the Saji series, written by Emile Maker Ishak), based on modern educational methods and designs. He was pleased with the increase in the number of Coptic teachers and learners. One of the learners was a little three-year old boy. He wrote in an Introduction to the 1972 third print of the Saji series:
[The production of these books] was accompanied with a great surge in spreading Coptic and speaking in it. With much happiness, I had the occasion to see a little child, in his third year of age, speaking Coptic with astonishing ease, using it to say the Lord’s Prayer, and responding to some questions… This was because his mother was a student of Dr. Emile; and this veritable mother was able to teach her son Coptic. She even brought him to the church [for lessons] so that he could pick some phrases and words.
Pope Shenouda III does not name the child. Who was that child? He must be in his fiftieth now. Can anyone let us know? Perhaps he himself will happen to land on my blog and contact me. It will be tremendously interesting to know his story!
