The origins of ERCOMAI

Randall Buth ButhFam at compuserve.com
Thu Jun 6 08:22:08 EDT 2002


shalom Ward,

>
>I'd be interested to have Carl tell us a little more about digamma in the 
>history of the language. Was it found everywhere, or only in some
dialects? 
>How certain is the evidence we have for it? Are there any texts which 
>preserve it, or where is its record found? In inscriptions? What were the 
>circumstances of it being dropped from the Greek language? I have thought 
>English - our letter symbol for " th", for example.)
>
>Regards,

I'll let Carl answer you at length, though I'll drop in a brief note 
that may simplify this for many. 

You are talking about "w". The sound of English [w].

(Di-gamma is a funny name based on the shape 
of the letter, it looked like a couple of gamma's. However, the other name 
for this letter in Greek is VAV ("waw" to pre-Hellenistic, pre-Koine 
people)

W is a weak letter within language systems in general. For example, in the 
history of Hebrew/Canaanite words that began with "w" shifted into "y". 
It is not surprising from general linguistics to see a word-initial "w"
fall out or 
get assimilated in Greek. 
W is a consonantal patterning of a vocoid, an OU vocoid, which is how
Latin names with "v" (=[w] for Cicero and Caesar "weni widi wiki") 
were usually transcribed in Greek. 
In Semitic many languages had shifts of [aw] to [o]. 
Greek, with more vowels in its starting system went through more 
complicated development with [aw] and ended up with a "Spanish" 
accented [av] in the Roman period Koine. ([v] was a bilabial 
fricative.) 

ERRWSO

Randall Buth
Jerusalem



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