Iskousogos

[R. Rankin]

> Without in any way wishing to quibble with your etymologies, I would be
> grateful to know why 8ab8skig8 would be incorrectly transliterated
> ouabouskigou.  I thought that 8 was interchangeable with ou?  I thought
> that the only issue was knowing when it represented w and when u(:)?

The use of <8> for <ou> is very old.  It predates invention of the Cyrillic
alphabet.  It was formed with the Greek letters upsilon written on top of
o-micron after Greek upsilon fronted and the earlier diphthong [ou] raised to
[u].  The Cyrillic use of the letter Y for /u/ is a graphic variant of earlier
Greek <8> (with the top open, of course).  I don't know how long it's been in
use in the West.  French, of course, underwent the parallel sound change, with
Latin /u:/ fronting to u-umlaut and Latin /o:/ > ou > u afterward.

Bob