Re: [tied] "Rs" in Latin/Greek/IE/etc.

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "P&G" <petegray@...> wrote:

>
> Our information may be too scanty to give a clear answer. > there

is a difference between vowel + rough breathing, and r + rough

> breathing. The former means a sequence of /h/ + vowel and the

second means

> an unvoiced /r/. The unvoiced /r/ stands in contrast to the

voiced /r/

> which we find medially (singly) and finally).

Yeah... I figure I should treat it like a voiceless/aspirated
w: /w^h/. (Which my grandparents' generation have natively in their
dialect, and which I have added to mine. =) )

> Yes. With one single exception, all initial r in Greek was written

with an

> aspirate mark over it (after they invented the marks!) The

exception is

> remarkable.

?

> >When
> > transliterated into Latin, sometimes an H was written if at the
> > beginning of a word, sometimes not (risus, for example).
>
> Risus is a Latin word (derived from rideo).

Oops - I left out the c. I meant riscus, as in "chest/trunk".

>Greek medial
> double R was both described and written as voiced /r/ folowed by

voiceless

> /r/ - hence the writing r - rh.

Ah, alright. Interesting.

> > And then there's the whole matter of some placenames and proper

names

> > in Latin that aren't derived from Greek yet have RHs (Rhea Silvia,
> > Rhoetus, Rhegium, Rhaeti, Rhenus, Rhodanus, etc.)...
>
> The Romans introduced the rh- and -rrh- in the first century BC, and
> sometimes over-corrected, especially in foreign names, e.g. Rhenus.

Ah, so overcorrecting merely because it's foreign? I assume whatever
Rhenus was was Celtic (or perhaps Germanic), and thus would be voiced.

> Rhegium is Greek, as is Rhoetus. Rhea may be affected by the Greek

Rhea.

Curious - Do you (or anyone here) know when the first inscriptions
about Rhea Silvia were made? I'd kinda be interested to find out how
they did spell it. Even as a child I wondered if they had borrowed
her mythological character from the Greek Rhea.

Thank you again for your helpfulness, Peter.