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From: alderson@netcom16.netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Subject: Re: Greek letter "Phi"
In-Reply-To: clary@sesostris.cnrm.meteo.fr's message of 29 Jan 1997 13:40:18 GMT
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Date: Wed, 29 Jan 1997 19:41:44 GMT
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In article <5cnk02$bur@news.cict.fr> clary@sesostris.cnrm.meteo.fr
(CLARY Olivier) writes:

>Is that earlier [ej] due to an earlier name of the letter or an earlier
>pronunciation of <i> ? (I am not a linguist)

An earlier name of the letter.  The chronology is such that the name may never
have been [phi:]; although /ei/ > /i:/ in the history of Greek, that change may
postdate the change /ph/ > /f/.
-- 
Rich Alderson   You know the sort of thing that you can find in any dictionary
                of a strange language, and which so excites the amateur philo-
                logists, itching to derive one tongue from another that they
                know better: a word that is nearly the same in form and meaning
                as the corresponding word in English, or Latin, or Hebrew, or
                what not.
                                                --J. R. R. Tolkien,
alderson@netcom.com                               _The Notion Club Papers_
