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Wednesday, 13 April 2022

Nuts and Bolts: etacism and iotacism.

 There's something glorious and cherishable about a really random and useless piece of information.

Etacism and iotacism are all to do with the pronunciation of Ancient Greek.

If you pronounce the letter eta:



as did the early modern scholar Erasmus (1466 - 1536), that is as the ea in the English word great, then that's etacism.

If you pronounce it to rhyme with the English word bee, as do modern Greeks and as did the early modern scholar Reuchlin (1455 - 1522) then that's iotacism.

I'm charmed, even though I can't honestly say that I care.

Word To Use Today: well, how about one which originally had the letter eta in it? And then you can yourself choose how to pronounce it. 

The word Penelope has two: in Greek it's written Πηνελόπη, and, rather gloriously, we tend to pronounce the first one another way entirely. 

Pēnē (πήνη) means weft (as in weaving) and ōps (ὤψ) means face.


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