[gothic-l] diphthongs

[jdm314 at AOL.COM]

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In a message dated 9/7/00 5:44:59 AM, MCLSSAA2 at fs2.mt.umist.ac.uk wrote:

<< 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:]. >>

OK, I hate to sound childish, but: I knew all that, I just didn't want to go
into that much detail! In any case, you got it all right... if this were
Greek-L I might want to add details about "spurious" vs. "genuine" diphthongs
and other pedantries, but it ain't so I won't.
    There is only one thing I wanted to respond to though:

> 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.

    Not necessarily. Notice how that English speakers can usually spot the
difference between, say, a [u] and a [y], but I don't think anyone makes any
mention of the difference between a [au] and a [ay]... aren't, for example,
the diphthongs in German composed of various odd vowels that would normally
require umlauts? YOu won't see that mentioned in many books. When speaking of
Yiddish (a language I know better) people obsess on how un-english the kh [x]
sound is, yet no one seems to notice that the Yiddish <oy> has a front
rounded vowel in it!
    What I am clumsily trying to say is that it's easier to spot a slightly
unusual vowel on its own then when it's hiding in a diphthong. Another point
to make here is that Greek did distinguish between [u:] and [y(:)] so Romans
wanting to accurately represent the language needed two different symbols for
that. Greek does not, however, distinguish between [au] and [ay], unless you
count odd words like Taygete, which is 4 syllables long anyway, so no
diphthong.
    On this issue, I think reasonable people can disagree. In fact, I've seen
books on Greek phonology claim that the upsilon in diphthongs was pronounced
[u], and I've seen them claim it was [y], so apparently reasonable Hellenists
DO disagree on this.

    Er... OK, we now return you to your regularly scheduled dead language.


JDM

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