[XeTeX] Off topic (interesting) question

BPJ bpj at melroch.se
Sat Aug 20 14:29:53 CEST 2022


The Indo-European root is _*weyd-_ 'see' > _*weydtōr_ 'seer, knower,
examiner' > ἵστωρ. According to Rix's small historical grammar which is the
only relevant source I have to hand at the moment Attic has _hVs-_ for
_*wVs-_ (V = a vowel), although the only example he gives is ἕσπερος, cf..
Latin _vesper_. He doesn't say whether it is exceptionless but the argument
from silence ought to be that it is. (The normal source of Greek _h-_ is
PIE _*s-_, but _*y-_ — yod — also gives Greek _h-_ cf. ἧπαρ, Latin _iecur_.)

I note that Herodotus spoke and wrote Ionian which was a psilotic
(h-dropping) dialect, which may have influenced the preferred spelling of
ἱστορία in later times, but it would seem that _historia_ is actually the
spelling, and early on pronunciation, which Atticizing Latin literati would
be expected to adopt. Non-psilotic diacriticization of Ionic texts on the
other hand is Atticizing hypercorrection from a time when all Greek had
become psilotic.

Note also that not just English but all Germanic languages write and
pronounce _h_ in this word, so the post-medieval consensus clearly is in
favor of _h_ as far as Latin is concerned.

Over and out from a once-upon-a-time Indo-Europeanist (although mainly
Germanicist!)

/Benct

Den lör 20 aug. 2022 11:24Apostolos Syropoulos via XeTeX <xetex at tug.org>
skrev:

>
> Hi everybody,
>
> Many readers of this mailing list are
> native English language speakers and
> the following question is for them.
>
> Someone claimed that English people (I say
> more generally English language speakers)
>  learn at school why you write history and
> not istory. Since I do not know I'd this holds, I
> am asking: Is this true? Does someone who
> has graduated from high-school know the
> reason why this happens?
>
> Kindest regards,
>
> Apostolos Syropoulos
>
>
> Στάλθηκε από το Ταχυδρομείο Yahoo σε Android
> <https://go.onelink.me/107872968?pid=InProduct&c=Global_Internal_YGrowth_AndroidEmailSig__AndroidUsers&af_wl=ym&af_sub1=Internal&af_sub2=Global_YGrowth&af_sub3=EmailSignature>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://tug.org/pipermail/xetex/attachments/20220820/7ce9baf2/attachment.html>


More information about the XeTeX mailing list.