Danny Wier wrote:
> Ed Heil writes:
>=20
> >Fun Trivia about Greek You Probably Already Know:
>=20
> Cool, I'm a master at useless trivia.
>=20
> Correct. But E ~ E: and O ~ O: occurs in many languages. And as a mat=
ter=20
> of fact, modern Indo-Aryan languages, including Hindi-Urdu, have e ~ E:=
(<=20
> Sanskrit ai) and o ~ O: (< Skt au).
>=20
> But I wonder if epsilon and eta had the same vocal quality except lengt=
h,=20
> omicron and omega likewise. It does seem more 'natural'. Especially i=
n=20
> light of the existence of the 'spurious diphthongs' you mention:
Actually, if eta and epsilon had the same quality, there would have
been no need to use the "spurious diphthongs" ou =3D o: and ei =3D e:.=20
These would have been identical to omega and eta respectively. A
quality difference is necessary to account for the complexity of the
orthography (and phonological changes).
> Confusing. I actually have a couple Greek fonts that use the character=
s=20
> epsilon-circumflex and omicron-circumflex (circumflex normally is only =
be=20
> used on long vowels); I wonder if that what they're for...
I don't remember. Could be that.
=20
> >Oh, to top it all off, eta represented two different values too. In
> >addition to [E:] it represented a long version of the "a" sound in
> >English "hat" [&:] -- this sound arose from a lowering of [a:] in
> >certain positions, most famously at the ends of words such as in the
> >first declension ending.
>=20
> That makes sense; since the feminine ending -e is obviously a shift of =
PIE=20
> -a: (< -ah, possibly Nostratic link with Semitic -at > -ah?). Umlaut?
I would not know. :) The interesting thing is that in some dialects
the eta from -a (&:) changed back to a but the eta from long e (E:)
did not. That's how we know there were two different sounds
represented by that letter -- some etas participated in sound changes,
and some didn't, depending on whether they were from PIE a or not.
=20
> By the way, German converts Greek ai/Latin ae to a-umlaut, and oi/Latin=
oe=20
> to o-umlaut. Examples: Ge <=C4gypt> 'Egypt' from Gk <Aigyptos>, and=20
> <=F6kumenisch> 'ecumenical' from <oikumene:> 'household'. How did thes=
e=20
> fronted vowels (especially the latter, the front mid round) come about?
I do not know, but I would guess that this is a spelling
pronunciation -- that Germans had used oe, ae to describe umlauts, and
that they then read those values in to Latin oe and ae diphthongs.=20
But I'm no Germanicist.
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Boxcars are pulling an Ed of sorts out of town.
edheil@postmark.net
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