I have been coming across some weird words in my study and several of them contain the ‘v’ letter, which is not in the Greek Alphabet. It this a result of the Roman Conquest of Greece? or is this like Coptic?
Can you spell out the (wierd) words here? That would help. Modern Greek has ‘v’ sounds. Beta always, and u-psilon as in Aurion are sounded ‘v’. But Ancient Greek? Only it is said Digamma(or Waw:V) was sounded as ‘w’ in English, but not as ‘v’. But if it is a Latin transcription, since Latin ‘v’ was always sounded like ‘oo’ as in ‘took’ or as ‘w’, it can be the transcription of Greek ‘υ’ or ‘ου’ or even ο as is the case of transcribing ‘-ος’ endings to ‘-us’(or ‘-vs’).
I was browsing a Modern Greek site recently that said exactly that, that u-psilon in a dipthong is pronounced as “V”. Is that even true in names like Odysseus? Pronouncing that as Odyssevs would sound really odd.
Also, why on earth did those who came up with the transliteration for Greek words that we see in English decide to use “C” for Kappa? Kappa itself is spelled with a “K”, but when in words it’s transliterated as “C”, which causes things to be pronounced often like an “S” instead of “K.” Kappa even looks like a “K”, so what were they thinking?
My understanding is that an intervocalic Upsilon is pronounced as V.
The Upsilon in Odysseus is not between vowels so it is not pronounced as v.
Both δαυίδ and [size=150]εὐαγγέλιον [/size]have the Upsilon between vowels so I pronounce them as V.
I’m not aware of a tranliteration scheme that uses C for Kappa (that does not mean that there isn’t one.)
Generally C is used for ξ or for χ.
Did you mean why a word like caustic is spelled with a C but the Greek word [size=150]καῦσις [/size]is spelled with a Kappa?
I think there is an English rule something like; If C is followed by an O, U, or A it is pronounced K. Why? No idea.
Everything I’m reading has “Kappa” written in English as “C.” Cyclops for a quick example. In Athenaze the main character’s name is spelled Dicaeopolis in English, and in Greek that “C” is a Kappa. It’s not so bad in that case because at least that English “C” is pronounced like “K”. The English “Y” in Cyclops of course causes its own problem, since that’s an “upsilon” being pronounced with an English long “I” like “eye” instead of the “u” sound it should be. So Cyclops, which is pronounced as if it was syclops should really sound like kuklops, if it was being put into English in a way that made sense.
The Latin letter “k” was seldom used, so the Romans transliterated using “c”. The Romans also used “y” for upsilon, since the Greek upsilon sounded different from Roman “u”. We’ve inherited these transliteration rules.
These kinds of words are part of the furniture, as it were, in English. Consider the word bicycle, which comes from [size=134]κύκλος[/size].
Imagine if we pronounced psychology like the Greek roots.
(What was the name of that Hitchcock film?)
There are a lot of words of Greek origin that are greatly transformed in English, as Democritus said, due to their passage through Latin.
Another example is the Greek diphthong [size=150]αι [/size] ([size=150]παιδογωγος[/size]) becoming ae (paedogogue), and now most English words with ae are just being spelled with the e (pedogogue); thus [size=150]αι[/size] magically transforms into the seemingly unrelated e.
Similarly, [size=150]οι[/size] / [size=150]ωι[/size] becomes oe in Latin, then e in English: Gr. [size=150]κωμωιδια[/size] > L. comoedia > E. comedy (oi > oe > e).
kappa is represented by a C in Latin, rough breathing usually by H, aspirates by consonants follow by H, etc. Thus, what you would expect to be transliterated as Dikaiopolis has both the K and AI replaced with the equivalent Latin phonemes; same as in Cyclops where the K’s are replaced with C and the psi is replaced with PS.
Another thing the Romans did was to transliterate “ει” as “i”, e.g. φειδίας → Phidias.
Now, whether this means that by the time the Romans came to transliterate Greek names, the Greek sound “eyi” had changed to become equivalent to long “i” (sound represented in English by “ee” as in “feet”), I’m afraid I am not expert to say. Modern Greek “ει” certainly seems to be pronounced that way. Perhaps William Annis can help with this?
“Y” before voiced consonants is pronounced “V”, otherwise “F”.
So we have Odyssefs, but also Avra ( for Aura).