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[Wilson Gray]

On Thu, Jul 9, 2015 at 10:34 AM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
wrote:

> 'oxi


Homer made do with a monosyllabic long omicron, spelled "ou." OTOH, moderns
have coalesced Homer's diphthonged "nai" into the /nE/ that Larry notes,
but without bothering to update the spelling. The legendary linguist, Mario
Pei, noted this phenomenon when he pointed out - or, perhaps, merely
asserted - that Greek-speaking sheep of today supposedly say "vee, vee,"
instead of  "baa, baa," as all other good, Indo-European-speaking sheep do,
because the Greeks have retained the ancient orthography, despite the fact
that the sounds represented by that orthography are no longer extant.



-- 
-Wilson
-----
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-Mark Twain

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