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Re: USAGE: Ancient Greek 'eu'

From:Ray Brown <ray.brown@...>
Date:Sunday, February 1, 2004, 23:24
On Thursday, January 29, 2004, at 01:35 PM, Andreas Johansson wrote:

> Various people are telling me that 'eu' in Ancient Greek was [Ev]/[Ef]
i.e. phonemically /ev/. It seems to have acquired that sound by the Byzantine period, i.e. about 4th cent CE, and has kept it ever since.
> like in > Modern Greek and that is was a true diphthong [Eu]. > > What's actually known about it's phonetic value in Ancient Greeks, esp > Classical Attic and Koine, and what's generally assumed?
There is no evidence that ancient greek possessed either the [f] or [v] sounds. Indeed, the Roman habit of transcribing phi as |ph| rather than |f| is fairly clear testimony that the fricative sound had not developed at that period. The spelling AY and EY, of course, were established earlier than the shift from [u] --> [y] in Ionic and Attic Greek in the 5th cent BCE. Some early inscriptions have the diphthongs spelled AF and EF, i.e. with a 'vau' or "digamma", as it was later called. There is, in fact, no evidence at all that the ancient Greek digraphs meant anything other than what they appear to denote, i.e. [aw] and [ew] respectively. (We cannot, of course, know how high or low the [e] actually was). It does seem likely that where these diphthongs occurred before vowels, the [w] was geminate. When the change from [w] --> [v] happened (not exactly an unknown change : ) is not clear. Evidence in Jewish catacombs in Rome in the 2nd & 3rd cents. CE, indicate a diphthongal pronunciation was still current. It was during the late Hellenistic period and probably occurred at different times in different places before eventually establishing itself as the Byzantine norm. Of course, all the above also pertains to the less common diphthong HY /e: w/, but not to the 'spurious diphthong' OY (modern /u/) which is another story :) Ray =============================================== http://home.freeuk.com/ray.brown ray.brown@freeuk.com (home) raymond.brown@kingston-college.ac.uk (work) =============================================== "A mind which thinks at its own expense will always interfere with language." J.G. Hamann, 1760

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John Cowan <cowan@...>