zeta, ksi etc (was: THEORY Ideal system of writing)

On Wednesday, August 11, 2004, at 05:26 , Jim Henry wrote:

> Andreas Johansson wrote:
[snip]
>> 4) An alphabet with additional signs to indicate common sequences. Latin
>> and
>> Greek, of course, already does this - 'x', xi, psi - but our hypothetical
>
> Also the Greek Zeta, according to one textbook - /dz/
No - 'tis the Semitic 'zai' (Hebrew 'zayin'). /dz/ is an widespread
convention in reading ancient Greek. The evidence, however, is that it
varied in the different dialects between [dd] ~ [zd] ~ [zz], with the
latter becoming the norm in the Hellenistic period. Also in the Eastern
Greek (from which Hellenistic, Byzantine & modern Greek alphabets derive)
'xi' was inherited from Semitic 'semk'. But Western Greek |X|, from which
came the Roman |X|, (= /ks/) was an innovation; in the Eastern Greek
alphabet it was pronounced [k_h].

Cf.
http://home.freeuk.com/ray.brown/archaic_alpha.html

Ray
===============================================
http://home.freeuk.com/ray.brown
ray.brown@freeuk.com    (home)
raymond.brown@kingston-college.ac.uk   (work)
===============================================
"A mind which thinks at its own expense will always
interfere with language."         J.G. Hamann, 1760