R: Re: Ancient Greek Phonology

Nik wrote:


> Oskar Gudlaugsson wrote:
> > Obviously, this is not a symmetrical vowel system. What's up with that?
> > Why's there no /u/ or /o/?
>
> According to the article on Greek in The World's Major Languages,
> Ancient (Attic) Greek had the following monophthongs (some of these were
> indicated by digraphs):
>
> i i: y y:
> e e:         o o:
> E:             O:
>        a a:
>
> However, in another section, it gives the pronunciations of the letters,
> and there is no short /e/, but is a short /E/.  At any rate, it does
> seem asymmetrical
So does my book.
But how's this possible? Ancient Greek /E:/ gave Modern Greek /i/ while /e/,
which should be nearer to /i/, retained its pronounciation?

Luca