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The problem is that the ancient and modern Greek alphabets are slightly different. The ancient pronunciations map more easily on to our alphabet. I find the mod
by nephihaha 6mo ago
The problem is that the ancient and modern Greek alphabets are slightly different. The ancient pronunciations map more easily on to our alphabet. I find the modern ones less intuitive e.g. beta being a V sound. There is an example below, where someone writes Bravo in modern Greek, and uses "mu beta" for the "b" sound and "beta" for the "v" sound.
- ARandomerDude 6mo agoFor ancient Greek, two great books are: Greek: an Intensive Course by Hansen and Quinn. Basics of Biblical Greek by William Mounce Both are standard texts with solutions easily available online.
- wvbdmp 6mo agoB/V shifts or mergers are very common, notably in many Spanish variants they will, for example, write “vaca”, betraying the latin root “vacca”, but very clearly say “baca”. Coming from a language that clearly differentates between these sounds, it’s surprising how close they are.
- ck45 6mo agoFor me the most clear example (in English and other languages that borrowed from Latin) is "to move" and "mobile".
- ventana 6mo agoAs a fun fact, both Cyrillic letters Б б sounding "b" and В в sounding "v" were historically derived from Greek Β β.