Re: [tied] Old Church Slavonic's crazy orthography

On Fri, 25 Jun 2004 18:31:59 +0200 (CEST), Christopher
Culver <christopher_culver@...> wrote:

>* Why are there two letters representing the same sound /i/, both the
> "backwards-n" still used in Russian Cyrillic, and the dotted "I"
> known in our alphabet? In what situation did the writers use one or
> the other?

The "why" is easy: because in the Greek model, H (êta), I
(iôta), and Y (upsilon) had all merged to /i/. As to when
one or the other was used, I don't theink there ever was a
standard. In general, I seems to be used more after vowels,
and H more after consonants.

>* Why were the several Greek letters xi, psi, omega, and theta
> preserved in OCS if the could be replaced by other characters?

They were mainly used for spelling Greek words.

> And
> was it common in Byzantine Greek to write xi "backwards" in
> comparison to what we see in modern printed Classical Greek?

I don't know.

>* What is the representation in IPA of the sound written with the
> letter yat?

It was originally long [e:], but then it probably became a
falling diphthong [ie], [i&] or [ia]. It develops to /ja/
in the Anlaut and after shibilants in the whole of Slavic.
Otherwise, the developments are:
Bulgarian-Macedonian: /ja/ (/e/ before palatal)
Serbo-Croatian: /e/, /(i)je/, /i/ in the ekavian, jekavian
and ikavian dialects.
Slovene: /e./ (closed /e/)
East Slavic: /je/ or /i/
Polish: /je/ or /ja/ (before hard dental)
Czech: /je/, /i:/ when lengthened
Slovak: /ie/ (still a falling diphthong), /i:/

>Am I correct in assuming that the hard-sign/yeru at the end of a
>masculine noun in the nominative is what remains of PIE -os?

Yes.

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...