Re: CHAT: Opperlands

>
>Hmm...does anyone happen to know why _stygius_ has a {y} when the Greek
>word it comes from, _stugios_, has a {u}?
Ooh, I get this one!

The Greek letter "upsilon" was a rounded front vowel in the popluar Attic
dialect, and a rounded back vowel originally and in some other dialects; the
lower-case looked like our "u" and the upper-case looked like our "y".  So
transliteration of an "upsilon" into a "u" or a "y" is a matter of taste,
convention, and context.

(There's lots of fun trivia about Greeks and u's....  Greek lost "w" very
early, and the Attic dialects didn't even have a letter for "u" anymore, since
upsilon was a *front* high rounded vowel; the orthography for a back high
rounded vowel was "omicron-upsilon;" to confuse things further I believe that
was also the orthography for a long rounded mid-high vowel.  In any case, the
Greeks were really screwed for orthography when adapting all those Roman words
starting with V (=[w])....  They had to represent them with "ou" --
"oualerianus" = "valerianus"!)

Ed

--
Ed Heil * edheil@atdot.org
      "When you get your Ph. D.
      How happy you will be
      When you get a job at Wendy's
      And are honored with 'Employee of the Month.'"
       -- Bare Naked Ladies, "Never Is Enough"