Re: Hebrew?

Quoting Rodlox <Rodlox@...>:

> > On Oct 1, 2004, at 2:49 AM, Rodlox wrote:
> > >> Your message came through to my computer with a lower-case aesh and a
> > >> capital aesh, and then a lowercase OE ligature ("oesh"?).  Those don't
> > >> seem to make sense in context, so what were you actually asking about?
> >
> > >  one looks like a conjoined  AE....and hte other, like a conjoined OE.
> > >  btw, what's a "ligature"? *curious*
> >
> > Oh, then that *is* what you meant?
> > "ligature" = more than one letter written as one.  i.e. your
> > 'conjoined' letters.
> > So the question is, what *sounds* do you mean by AE and OE?  I can
> > think of a number of possibilities for each one, based on their use in
> > Latin, Old English, Modern English, French, and other languages.
>
>  the sounds of Latin/Classical Greek/Hebrew.
>
Well, Classical Greek and Hebrew aren't normally written in the Latin script,
and no transliteration I've seen employ the ae- and oe-ligatures, unless we
count the traditional latinization of Greek names, in which they correspond to
Classical Greek /aj/ and /oj/ (which in modern Greek has gone to /e/ and /i/).

In Classical Latin, they were, of course, similarly /aj/ and /oj/, presumably
pronounced [aj] and [oj] or thereabouts. Already in Antiquity, however, they
went to [e]-like sounds, with the result that in Medieval Latin we commonly see
_letus_ and _pena_ for Classical _laetus_ and _poena_.

                                                Andreas

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