Yahoo Answers is shutting down on May 4th, 2021 (Eastern Time) and beginning April 20th, 2021 (Eastern Time) the Yahoo Answers website will be in read-only mode. There will be no changes to other Yahoo properties or services, or your Yahoo account. You can find more information about the Yahoo Answers shutdown and how to download your data on this help page.
Trending News
Why ph and not f in borrowings from GREEK?
words of Greek origin in English (like phone or phantom) use 'ph' for the sound eff
since the Greeks use 'phi' -a circle bisected by a vertical line - why transliterate it as 'ph' and not 'f.'?
I suspect the Romans began it,though they had an 'f' too,just like ours.
1 Answer
- 1 decade agoFavorite Answer
Actually, the sound in classical Greek represented by ɸ was not the 'F' sound in Latin; it was an aspirated bilabial plosive, which sounds like the 'p' in the English words 'pour' or 'pie'—as opposed to the un-aspirated 'P', which would have sounded like the 'p' in 'spew' or 'sport,' and was represented in Greek by π.
In Greek, the two p-sounds were distinct, and when Latin borrowed Greek words, that distinction was carried through (at least in spelling). Roughly, ɸ sounds like a regular P followed by a short burst of air, which (I suspect) is why the Romans transliterated it as 'PH.' However, because Latin did not contain such a distinction, this sound was likely only pronounced by the educated elite. It was, however, for a time a way of differentiating the three sounds, PH, P, and F.
In modern Greek, however, the ɸ sound has evolved into a labiodental fricative, which sounds like the Latin F, or the 'f' in 'four.' So, it is now, in fact, closer to the English pronunciation.
