Re: Greek & Latin vowels (was: CHAT letter names etc)

On Wed, Mar 03, 2004 at 01:44:03PM +0000, Ray Brown wrote:
> >That just seems very odd to me. :)
>
> Then natlangs just are odd   :)
Oh, I knew that!  I guess it's just my early English terminology training that
makes /O/ and /o/ feel more natural as "short" and "long", respectively,
than the other way around.  Plus that feeling has now been reinforced by
exposure to many Romance languages.  So at this point, seeing the
reversal in Greek struck me as quite extraordinary. :)

> The qualitative difference between omicron and omega was probably not
> great in the later period. The evidence with E, EI, and H is much clearer.
So originally there was /o/ and /o:/, which briefly became /o/ and /O:/
and then /o/ and /O/ before merging into /o/?

> Thus it's incorrect, in fact, to say that in (early) Classical Greek,
> short /o/ and /e/ were high and long /o/ and /e/ were low vowels. The
> truth is that, like Middle English, the two short mid vowels, /o/ and /e/,
> each had _two_ contrasting long vowels: one high and one low, thus:
>           Short    Long
> mid-high           OY  'oo'
> mid         O
> mid-low            Ω (omega) 'oa'
> and..
>           Short    Long
> mid-high           EI  'ee'
> mid         E
> mid-low            H (eta) 'ea'
Oh.  (:)) Interesting.  Thanks!  (I didn't know that about Middle English,
either.)

One other question: most of the names of the Greek consonants seem to be
borrowed from the Semitic names, with fairly straightforward
phonological munging.  Others had their name based on the names of
another letter by analogy rhyme, like Mu from Nu, or Zeta from
Eta/Theta.  But where the heck did the names Rho and Sigma come from?
They seem much further from the modern Hebrew names (Resh and S[h]in)
than the other borrowed names.

-Mark

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