[B-Greek] rough breathing in the 1st century

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Wed Sep 13 09:26:14 EDT 2006


On Sep 13, 2006, at 9:05 AM, Eric Weiss wrote:

> Everything I've read says that the "rough breathing" was no longer  
> used or sounded by
>   the 1st century (i.e., NT times). Yet we still see elided  
> prepositions differentiated by
>   whether or not the initial vowel of the word they precede has a  
> rough or smooth
>   breathing. If there was no longer an initial "h" sound, why did,  
> e.g., EF' (for EPI) and
>   AF' (for APO) persist instead of EP' and AP', etc., being used  
> before all vowel-initial
>   words? I.e., why is it AF' hAMARTIAS and AP' AGGELOU, and not AP'
>   hAMARTIAS/AGGELOU? Why is there still OUK and OUC, and not just OUK?

I expect that Randall will be able to add something more significant  
to this, but I think
it's probably worth calling attention to the discussion in BDF §14.

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad2 at mac.com
WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/





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