From: Mike Adams  (mikadams@ix.netcom.com)
Date: Fri Feb 02 1996 - 10:05:15 EST
Tim wrote:
>>   I would only add that some suggest that Upsilon has an occassional 
V sound
>> (as in Victory) or W sound (as in Wax).  Examples include the name 
DAUID
>> (David) and EUAGGELION (gospel).
>
You wrote:
>Interesting point, Tim. I wonder when this took place. We find 
historians
>writing Greek in the first and later centuries of our era transliterating
>Roman names like Varus and Vergilius as OUAROS and OUERGILIOS, which 
should
>mean that the OU + vowel was our W sound. But when was the Latin
>EVANGELIUM, representing the Greek EUAGGELION first being pronounced with
>our V sound? Does anyone know?
>
>Carl W. Conrad
I most certainly don't know, but I would add that my Greek friend Eleni, 
as well as a few local Greek restaurant workers use this pronounciation in 
certain dipthongs: TAU, AUTOS, and as you mentioned, EUANGGELION. So 
distraught was my friend with "schoolbook" pronouciation, that I  
incorporated a touch of the "V" sound in discussions with her, and 
generally retain that pronounciation in my oral reading out of respect.
I imagine the U, much like the LL in Spanish, has held many dialectical 
variations over so great a span of distance and years.
Ellen
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