Re: Hellenish oddities

Oskar Gudlaugsson wrote:
>> >* orthographic initials <mp> <nt> <gk> pronounced [b d g]...I haven't
seen
>> >any initial [mp]'s or such in my book of Ancient Greek, so I'm presuming
>> >the nasals are just a spelling trick; the sample words given were all
loan-
>> >words, so I thought voiced stops could be an import to accommodate the
new words.
Eric Christopherson wrote:
>I think the words with initial nasal+stop are all loans, but I know that
>intervocalically they're pronounced [mb], [nd], [Ng], as in [olimbos].>
 Yes; a Greek friend explained that initial nasal+stop is simply the way of
indicating /stops/ in loan words-- as in that famous Greek delicacy,
mbar-mbe-kiou, offered at a restaurant in Detroit.

>Also, Elliott Lash wrote:
>>  Two examples of the "ft" at the beginning are
>> "ftero" "feather" and "ftano" "I arrive"
>
>Do those have [ft] in modern Greek? I thought they were still [pt].>
There seems to be some variation here-- my friend pronounced 'seven' as epta
or efta; similarly 'eight' as okto or [oxto].  This may be a reflection of
the fact there are _two_ modern Greeks, demotiki and katharevousa, but I'm
not sure......
Perconally, the little of modern Gk. I learned suggested it was a rather
neat language.