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Re: OT: "Yugoslavia" in Greek

From:<morphemeaddict@...>
Date:Saturday, November 10, 2007, 4:14
In a message dated 11/9/2007 9:17:20 PM Central Standard Time,
haggenkennedy@GMAIL.COM writes:


> At the time I thought it was inexplicable, but later I understood that > diphthongs like those, starting with "y" and "w" are heard by Greeks as > a gamma. The phoneme is similar, of course. More or less what happens > with B and V, or interdental sounds that are pronounced as /f/ or /v/ by > native speakers who lack the sound in their language (as when the French > say "sink" meaning "think", for example). > > That's where you see how words like "iatros" (doctor) in Ancient Greek > became "giatros" in Modern Greek. Examples abound. >
So to modern Greeks there is a sound there, audible as a gamma, that is simply a result of the Greek pronunciation, rather than any original sound or spelling. Whoduh thunkit? stevo </HTML>

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Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>