I’m reading Horrocks’ Greek - a history of the language and its speakers. He claims that the initial sounds of ἡμᾶς and ὑμᾶς had already merged by 150 BC. Although he’s saying that υ/η had merged only “in certain circumstances (e.g. in initial pretonic syllables, particularly where a labial context would encourage dissimilation of a rounded front vowel) and/or in certain words of high frequency (e.g. personal pronouns)” (p. 118), this seems quite early to me. Is this view generally accepted now?
This involves two vowel mergers, υ → ι and η → ι. Allen’s discussion of η → ι merger on pages 74-75 of Vox Graeca is far more convincing to me than Horrocks’, relies on several strands of evidence, and postulates a far later date (grammarians told us exactly what they were doing with their lips!). Similarly for υ → ι, which Allen suggests is 1200(!) years later (pg 68).
I think that this all gets back to Horrocks’ very mistaken reliance on Teodorsson that I discussed in the “Euphony” thread. See also the Ruijgh paper that I posted there.
As Joel said, that is very early. I’m not sure that there is a “consensus” in this area, but from what I’ve read a common view is that the Koine in the 1st century had lost vowel length and the mergers were: υ=οι, ει=ι, ο=ω, ε=αι, and η was still a distinct phoneme. The η → ι merger happened before the υ → ι merger, and there is a lot of evidence that υ/οι remained a distinct phoneme well past Antiquity.
He doesnt say υ and η have completely merged, but only in particular situations, like ἡμᾶς and ὑμᾶς. To me it would seem that the these two words might be quite easily mixed up in writing even if they are pronouced differently, because they are similar graphically.
I on the contrary have some difficulty understanding how those two words could have started to overlap without some other ones to replace them. There are obvious examples of personal pronouns taking over various persons (English You singular and You plural, for example), but mixing those up seems like it was bound to create matchless confusion. Wasn’t that particular example one of those that were gathered by the oponents of the Katharevousa speech in the XIX century, according to whom “Katharevousa isn’t a viable alternative, because such common and essential words such as ἡμᾶς and ὑμᾶς would be pronounced indistinctively”?
I think that’s a very good point and one that Horrocks doesn’t address, not at least in that particular chapter. On the other hand, if they were still pronounced differently, mixing them up in writing would not seem so surprising, especially as the two words are graphically similar. I at least make that sort of mistake pretty often, which you might have noticed in my Textkit posts (although I correct my mistakes afterwards if I notice them…).
I’m not sure I’d say Η and Υ are graphically similar, η and υ I can see being confused (being almost inversions of each other) but the uppercase forms are quite distinct. Greek eventually replaced those forms with the modern ones, and the impetus seems to have been the sound merger. If they merged so early on, then why did it take so long for the new forms to develop? A glance at this chart http://www.foundalis.com/lan/perspron.htm shows that the pronouns have been incredibly stable for a couple thousand years, with the sole exception of the 1/2 person plurals. The shift in pronunciation seems to be the best explanation for this as no ambiguity was created in any of the pronouns except those.
What I meant is that ἡμᾶς and ὑμᾶς share three letters out of four, nothing more; and beside that, I don’t think it’s unheard of for someone to write “you” instead of “we” or vice versa even if the two words are both acoustically and graphically quite different (at least I do this sort of thing if my attention is diverted when I’m writing, or if I’m planning to write something and then change my plan in the middle of writing).
For this particular case, Horrocks produces as evidence a private letter where ἡμᾶς is written where ὑμᾶς should stand, and takes it as evidence that the sounds have merged. My point was that I suspect that there might be other explanations.