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Re: CHAT: C in Greek Alphabet

From:Ph.D. <phil@...>
Date:Friday, April 6, 2007, 22:49
R A Brown wrote:
> > Ph.D. wrote: > > I was in a bookstore last Saturday just looking > > through their languages section. I picked the > > book "Teach Yourself Ancient Greek" off the > > shelf and looked through it. I noticed that the > > book used the Latin capital C and lowercase > > c in the Greek texts in place of the usual sigma > > (with no distinction between initial and final > > sigma). > > The lower case forms of the Greek alphabet are, > like the lower case forms of the Roman alphabet, > medieval developments. Certainly the ancients knew > nothing about differing forms for final and non-final > sigma. > > > A note in the front of the book said > > they were doing this because the use of C > > rather than the traditional form "was becoming > > the norm in works of Ancient Greek." > > The sigma familiar in the Roman period (and, there- > fore, Hellenistic period) was C. In Latin the word > _sigma_ [neut., genitive: sigmatis), as well as being > the name of the Greek letter, also denoted a semi- > circular couch. > > There was in fact quite a variety of forms for sigma > in the ancient Greek alphabets. From what I can tell, > the form Σ with serifs became the normal one in > lapidary inscriptions by the 2nd cent BC, but clearly > C was the normal hand-written form in the Hellenistic > period and continued in use in the Byzantine period, > hence the Cyrillic C, and the very common abbreviations > IC XC (Jesus Christ). The forms σ and ς are, as I said > above, medieval cursive developments.
Sorry to resurrect an old thread. I meant to reply to this, but got sidetracked. I'm aware that C was the norm in ancient Greek hand- writing, but my question was really, Why make such a change at this point? I mean the traditional forms of sigma are very well established. What gain is there in making such a change today? The ancients didn't use punctuation or (normally) spaces between words, yet we add those when printing ancient Greek or Latin texts. --Ph. D.

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Eugene Oh <un.doing@...>