Re: digraphs
| From: | Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...> |
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| Date: | Tuesday, July 10, 2007, 20:29 |
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On 7/10/07, Lars Finsen <lars.finsen@...> wrote:
> >> Well, the normal is /z/.
> >
> > By whose definition of "normal"? :)
>
> Well, that's what it was invented for.
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.
--
Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>
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