Re: Jewish names

At 17:42 30.7.2000 +0300, Dan Sulani wrote:
>There is nothing over the upsilon in the Greek version of the name "Moses".
>Artifact of the font they used? Is the dieresis present in other printed
>versions?
The sequence omega-upsilon can only be disyllabic.  Ambiguity arises only
with alpha, epsilon, eta, omicron before upsilon and alpha, epsilon,
omicron, upsilon before iota.

As to the question of the sound value of upsilon: it was [u], but became
[y] in Attic and the Koine', where omicron-iota, upsilon-iota also were
[y].  This pronunciation persisted untill fairly recently (15th century or
so.)  Long enough to get into the earliest Albanian documents written in
Greek letters.



/BP 8^)>
--
  B.Philip Jonsson mailto:bpX@netg.se mailto:melrochX@mail.com (delete X)
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