Re: CHAT: Names of Latin alphabet letters

At 2:29 pm -0500 22/1/01, John Cowan wrote:
>It turns out that it was the Etruscans who gave the alphabet
>letters their modern European names, breaking with the
>Greek < Phoenician names alpha < alef, beta < bet, etc.
>
>Their convention was:
>
>1)
>Vowels were named after the vowel sound.
>
>2)
>Stop consonants were named by *suffixing* the stop with /e/.
>
>3)
>Sonorant consonants were named by *prefixing* the stop with /e/.
I've understood that the sonorants were just given their sounds by the
Etruscans, i.e. syllabic /n/, /m/ and also /f/, /s/ etc and that the
Romans, whose phonology did not have any syllabic sonorants.  Indeed,
Etruscan orthography turns up some remarkable combinations of consonants,
unless we are to understand that some at least, and possibly all, sonorants
could act as syllabic nuclei.  The Romans 'heard' these as [@n], [@m],
[@f], [@s] etc and rendered them as /en/, /em/, /ef/, /es/ etc.

Indeed, it is possible the Etruscan stops were /b@/, /k@/ etc in the way
that these letters are commonly still 'named' when teaching young children
to read (e.g. /k@/ /&/ /t@/ = /k&t/ ) and that the @-less Romans rendered
them as /be/, /ke/ etc.

>This pattern is remarkably well preserved in Modern English, allowing
>for vowel shortening in closed syllables, the change of /e/ to /i/
>in the Great Vowel Shift, and the softening of "c" and "g", which were
>originally always /k/ and /g/.
Yep.
[...]
>
>Irregulars:
>
>h
>/ejtS/
<-- Old French /atS@/ <-- VL /akka/ (for /ahha/) <-- CL /ha/
Presumably the Latin was from Etruscan /h@/ with the shwa sounding more
open after /h/.

>k
>/kei/ (perhaps influenced by name of "j"?)
T'other way round: /dZei/ was originally /dZai/ when the letter was first
distinguished from {i} /ai/ (cf French {i} /i/, {j} /Zi/).  The familiar
modern name /dZei/ was reformed on the analogy of /kai/

/kei/ <-- (Old) French /ka/  <-- Latin /ka/

>q
>/kju/
/kju/ <-- (Old) French /ky/  <-- Latin /ku/

>Post-Etruscan Letters:
>
>j
>/dZei/
See above

>v
>/vi/
On the analogy of /bi/, /ci/, /di/ etc, etc.

>w
>/d@b@(l)ju/
from the time before {v} parted company from {u} and {V} was called by the
vowel name.  For the origin of the letter, read the Bayeux Tapestry where
William the Bastard, otherwise known as William the Conqueror, has the
initial of name sometimes spelled {VV}, sometimes with the twoVs joined at
the top (i.e. W) and sometimes with the two Vs overlapping (as {W} is still
often written, at least in Britain).

>y
>/wai/
From Old English /y/.  When the sound became unrounded to /i/, initial
lip-rounding was kept, presumably in order yo keep the name distinct from
that of {i}!  Hence Middle English /wi/ and modern /wai/.

>z
>/zi/ or /zEd/ <-- Old French zede (M.Fr. zède) <-- Latin (and Greek) /ze:ta/
-----------------------------------------------------------------

At 6:42 pm -0500 22/1/01, Nik Taylor wrote:
[...]
>So, did the Romans say:
>A /a/
>B /be/
>C /ke/
>D /de/
>E /e/
>F /ef/
>G /ge/
Yes, except the two vowels were long: /a:/ and /e:/,
and the preconsonantal /e/ was short, i.e. [E]

>H ? (/he/?)
No - /ha/ in Classical Latin - Vulgar Latin */akka/ <-- */ahha/

>I /i/
>K /ka/ (< kappa?)
Rather from Etruscan /ka/ (see below)
And I is /i:/

>L /el/
>M /em/
>N /en/
>O /o/
>P /pe/
>Q /ku/?
Yep, from Etruscan /ku/, from Greek /koppa/ (see below)
And, of course, the vowel above was /o:/

>R /er/
>S /es/
>T /te/
>U /u/
>X /eks/
{ex} /eks/ is found, but the 'proper' Latin name was {ix} /Iks/ which was
apparently a deliberate reversal of Greek /ksi/.  /eks/ was a later formed
on analogy with /ef/, /es/ etc.  Interestingly, French perpetuates /iks/
while English has /Eks/

>Y ?
>Z /zeta/
These last two were deliberate borrowings from Greek and retain their Greek
names current at that time, namely:

/hy:/
/ze:ta/

In Attic and Koine Greek, initial [y] is never found, it was always [hy].

The name _(h)y psilon_ (plain y) was used by grammarians in post classical
times to distinguish the letter from the digraph {oi} which came to be
pronounced [y]; likewise _e psilon_ (plain e) was later used to distinguish
{e} from the digraph {ai} which came be pronounced, as it still is in
modern Greek, /e/.  Hence, the modern Greek names _ypsilo(n)_ and
_epsilo(n)_ respectively.  But in the ancient language they were {hy} and
{ei} (originally [e:], but by the time of the Koine [i:]).
-------------------------------------------------------------------

At 2:10 am +0000 23/1/01, Lars Henrik Mathiesen wrote:
[snip]
>
>The usual story, which Nik also surmises, is that the Etruscans had 3
>velar stop phonemes, or at least were sensitive to the distinction
>between the realizations of /k/ in /ki-/, /ka-/, and /ko-/ --- so they
>used gamma, kappa and qoph (Greek qoppa?) for the three sounds. (Gamma
>for fronted /k/ since they didn't have (or write) voiced velar stops,
>and the unvoiced velars in the Greek source alphabet matched the other
>/k/s better).
>
>Since they couldn't all three be called /ke:/, they broke the system
>slightly. The English names descend regularly from /ke:/, /ka:/ and
>/ku:/.
Yep - this is quite clear from Etruscan sources.

>> h
>> /ejtS/
>
>German and Scandinavian have names for this letter very similar to the
>ones for k, i.e., as if descended from /ha:/. But it may be a
>post-Roman analogical formation.
Nope - the German & Scandinavians have reverted to the Classical Latin
original, while we & the Romance nations perpetuate from derived through
the spoken language from Vulgar Latin.

>The French have /aS/, I suspect they inflicted it on the English too.
>
Well, 'twas the Normans who brought the name across.  Both modern English
'aitch' /eitS/ and the modern French 'ache' /aS/ are derived from Old
French /a(:)tS@/.

[snip]
>
>> Post-Etruscan Letters:
>>
>
>G actually belongs here, it's a Roman invention.
Yep - in earliest Latin both /k/ and /g/ are written C.  This proved a tad
akward and, as the Romans didn't want to spoil earlier monuments, they hit
upon the simple solution of just adding a small stoke to the tail of C if
it represented /g/; hence G was born!

At that time they had inherited Z from Etruscan which came between F and H.
Since /z/ was not a phoneme in Latin they letter was not used, except in
reciting the alphabet.  So they simply dropped it and replaced it by the
new latter G   :)

Later, in 1st cent. BC, the bilingual upper class were borrowing Greek
words with the non-Roman /y/ and /z/ sounds, so they simply borrowed the
Greek letters with their Greek names and stuck them at then end after X.

[....]
>
>> y
>> /wai/
>
>Now this is a mystery.
Middle English /wi/ for [y].

>I assume the Romans called it ypsilon;
No, _ypsilo(n)_ is a post-classical invention (see above); the Romans
called it /hy:/

>French
>uses i-grec.
...also Spanish: i-griega.   But most languages seem to have a name derived
from the medieval & modern Greek _ypsilo(n)_.

Ray.








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