Re: USAGE: Ancient Greek 'eu'

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
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