Re: Greek letter names (was Greek & Latin vowels etc)

This has been rejected once because, apparently, it contained "an
attachment of type 'TEXT/ENRICHED'" - tho how on earth it picked up such
an attachment, I don't know. I think I've removed the uninvite attachment,
  so I'll try again and hope......

On Friday, March 5, 2004, at 12:33 PM, Steg Belsky wrote:

> On Thursday, March 4, 2004, at 10:13  PM, Ray Brown wrote:
>
>> śa:de:  (similar to modern upper-case M, but the 'valley' in the
>> middle
>> comes only half-way down) whose sound was probably /s_e/ (X_SAMPA for
>> velarized or pharyngealized s, i.e. "emphatic s" of Arabic, which in
>> real
>> IPA is 's' with a tilde through the middle of it). The corresponding
>> Hebrew letter is pronounced /ts/ in modern Hebrew. This letter was
>> used in
>> Crete, Thera, Melos, Sikinos, Corinth, Korkyra (Corcyra, Corfu),
>> Sikyon,
>> Argolis and Lokris to denote Greek /s/. The Doric name for the letter
>> is
>> 'san' which suggests a conflation of the Semitic names śa:de: and ši:n
>> (see below).
>>
>> Ray
>
>
>
> Eeeep confusion alert!
> Since |S-acute| is usually used in Semitic linguistics for the Hebrew
> |sin|, Lateral-S, using it for Emphatic-S is cognitively dissonant. :-P
>
Thanks for pointing that out. Ideally, I would've used "s with tilde
through the middle" (i.e. the IPA symbol); I just couldn't bring myself to
use the X-SAMPA convention and write /s_ea:de:/. That /s_e/ is cognitively
dissonant to me   :)

Books here generally denote it as 's' with a dot beneath it; it tried that
but my mailer didn't like it. In despair I used the s-acute, thinking it
wasn't otherwise used.  Sorry - and thanks for alerting me to the
confusion.

I wonder how many people actually even read it as s-acute. I happen to
read your mail on a web-browser earlier today (Mozilla in Windows) and the
darn signs appeared as pilcrows!  But back on the Mac this evening the
misuded s-acutes have reappeared.

Ach - it's 2004 and we're suffer from the tyranny of ASCII   :=(
 =========================================================================
=========================
On Friday, March 5, 2004, at 03:26 PM, Mark J. Reed wrote:
>
> On Thu, Mar 04, 2004 at 08:13:28PM +0000, Ray Brown wrote:
> I discuss the origin of the archaic Greek alphabet on:
> http://home.freeuk.com/ray.brown/archaic_alpha.html
>
> Wow.
But I've just noticed two typos on the page :=(

> Okay, excuse me while I go move "The Origin of Greek Letter Names" out
> of the "Mark Explains . . . " section of my website to the "Mark Knows
> Nothing
> About . . . " section.  :\
Don't be so harsh on yourself. We learn from one another. You've put me
right on some linguistic points before now. Leave your "The Origin of
Greek Letter Names" where it is and just modify it, as I do mine sometimes
when people mail me with more info.

> I also *thought* I had a sensible browser for Unicode purposes, but it
> looks darn funky.  Will have to investigate what's going on in the font
> arena; /
>
> ʔ/, for instance, is showing up as a some sort of stylized
> lowercase g.
Ugh. I've had no joy with Internet Explorer either in Windows or on the
Mac (tho as you say you thought you had a sensible Browser, I guess it ain'
t IE :)  Someone told me the thing can be configured, but I've found it
less hassle to download Mozilla. I've found both the Windows & Mac
versions of Mozilla read Unicode OK.  I've just checked with Opera on my
Mac and that's fine - haven't tried Opera in Windows.

It's a nuisance that all Browsers don't seem to have full Unicode
compatibility. I have wondered if it were worth trying to put my stuff
into PDF format.

Ray
===============================================
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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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