[B-Greek] Getting to know you, Sigma

Curtis Hinson curtis at curtishinson.com
Thu Feb 16 05:50:07 EST 2006


Greetings, listers,

I have just thought of an obvious and simple question that it never 
occurred to me to ask, for some reason.   Why do  we have two forms of 
sigma in Greek?  Does anyone really even know?  I have been around Greek 
for a while now and I never once recall hearing this question asked or 
addressed, only taken for granted that it is so.

I have been working on Arabic and it caused me to wonder why Greek only 
has this one character that has an initial/medial form plus a final 
lunate form, instead of all or none.  I suspect the question gets into 
linguistic history, but I'm sitting comfortably here so bring it on.  I 
didn't turn up anything on this in the archive so maybe it's time to add 
this to the BGreek megabrain.

Bless the Name
Curtis Hinson
http://curtishinson.com

-- 
My local weather at the time of this email:
61F (16C), Fair

Server status:
 04:32:32 up 101 days, 10:07,  2 users,  load average: 0.06, 0.21, 0.39




More information about the B-Greek mailing list