[B-Greek] rho with *smooth* breathing???
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Sun Sep 14 06:00:15 EDT 2003
At 8:54 AM +0200 9/14/03, dlucas wrote:
>el 12/9/03 17:59, Carl W. Conrad en cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu escribió:
>
>> At 10:53 AM -0400 9/12/03, bgreek at ntresources.com wrote:
>>> I was just reading v. 4 of the Unicode charts and note that they have
>>> assigned U+1FE4 to a character named "Greek small letter rho with
>>> psili"--i.e., rho with smooth breathing.
>>>
>>> Does such a creature exist? Or am I just having a bad memory day? :)
>>
>> Older printed editions of Greek texts not uncommonly used a rho with smooth
>> breathing followed by a rho with rough breathing, the understanding being
>> that the rho was trilled and aspirated afterwards. See Smyth §13 for this.
>> --
>I think initial rho with smooth breathing is also used in modern editions to
>represent psilosis: fragments by Alcaeus, Sappho, East Ionic inscriptions
>ktl (e. g.: Page in Lyrica Graeca Selecta (1968) writes R(WITH SMOOTH
>BREATHING)UESQE in Alcaeus 109.
That's a good point; I'd forgotten that Lesbian Aeolic does have that
characteristic of psilosis--loss of aspiration in initial rho.
--
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/
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