Re: digraphs

Den 10. jul. 2007 kl. 22.29 skrev Mark J. Reed:

> Depending on what you mean by "invented". There's evidence that the
> letter it comes from stood for /dz/ originally, and that's the value
> it had in early Latin.  But sound changes conflated /dz/ and /r/,
> rendering <z> redundant, so it was dropped by the Classical period.
> When it was later re-borrowed from Greek, it was to represent /z/,
> which existed in Greek but not Latin; but it was quite possibly
> pronounced /dz/ in Vulgar Latin even then.
Interesting, that may explain the modern Italian use of it too, which
I suppose the Germans have borrowed from them. The letter har older
roots than that, though.

LEF