[gothic-l] diphthongs

[Anthony Appleyard]

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  jdm314 at aol.com wrote:-
>     Classical Greek had the following diphthongs (note that u is actually [y]
> in these) ai, au, oi, eu, and in some stages of the language ou and ei too
> (those however smoothed into single vowels relatively early)

Greek upsilon was not [y] in "au eu ou", else the Romans would likely have
transliterated it as "y" in Latin in "au" and "eu" like it is when alone, e.g.
Latin has "Lydia", but "Perseus" and not **"Perseys". The Roman letter "y" was
Greek upsilon taken into Latin to spell Greek words correctly; some modern
languages still call it "ipsilon", and French calls it "i grec" = "Greek `i'".
Greek upsilon was [u] everywhere originally; it became [y] except in "au eu
ou" in Attic, but stayed [u] in Boeotian. Greek omicron-upsilon was originally
the sum of its parts like Southern British English diphthongish long "o" in
"rose", but became [u:] in Attic. Epsilon-iota was the sum of its parts in
classical Greek times, but had changed to [i:] by classical Latin times, and
that is likely why Wulfila used it for Gothic [i:].

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