Re: Hellenish oddities

On Sat, Nov 25, 2000 at 11:28:19AM +0100, BP Jonsson wrote:
> At 12:44 2000-11-22 -0600, Eric Christopherson wrote:
> >Hmm, this still seems quite counterintuitive to me (I know, many things in
> >linguistics are). When I try it at least, I have to put a short pause
> >between [p_h] and [t_h]. Is it possible without a pause or vowel in between,
> >or would the pause just be an accepted part of the pronunciation?
>
> The double aspirates are probably just an Ancient Greek spelling
> convention.  It is anatomically very hard/impossible to pronounce two
> aspirates without a vowel between them (since aspiration is essentially
> voicelessness in the beginning of the following vowel), and besides
> Sanskrit writes plain voiced stop + voiced aspirate in cognate words.
Thank you, Philip! That's what I've been thinking all along :)

--
Eric Christopherson / *Aiworegs Ghristobhorosyo