[B-Greek] strange looking pi?

Jason Hare jaihare at gmail.com
Mon Sep 25 20:29:08 EDT 2006


> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Curtis Hinson
> Date: Monday, September 25, 2006 7:45 pm
> Subject: Re: [B-Greek] strange looking pi?
> To: Jim Darlack , B Greek
> Cc: opoudjis at opoudjis.net
> >
> > The
> > information was of additional interest to me because some months
> > back I
> > asked if anyone knew why Greek even has terminal and internal
> > forms of
> > Sigma, instead of having positional forms for all letters like
> > Arabic,
> > or none at all, like English.
> >
> > Bless the Name
> > Curtis Hinson
> > http://curtishinson.com
> >

Hebrew has five final forms: kaf, mem, nun, tsade, and peh. Why would
they choose to have FIVE forms (what a number!) that double their
shape? I mean, Paleo-Hebrew script (that is essentially, the
Phoenician script) had no modified final forms. How can the transition
from Paleo-Hebrew to the Aramaic script adjust this feature?

Is it true that at some points in the history of Greek writing there
was no difference between an initial/medial form and final form of
sigma? At one point, did they not both look like the letter C in
English, or were all mss. uncial in the classical period (not that
much remains)? Personally, I have only set my eyes on edited copies of
classical texts, which are all minuscule and have complete diacritics.

Thanks,
Jason

-- 
Jason A. Hare
jaihare at gmail.com
Joplin, Missouri



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