From: Trevor & Julie Peterson (spedrson@thesimpsons.com)
Date: Wed Sep 20 2000 - 20:35:07 EDT
It's interesting to observe some of the naming conventions for Latin letters
in languages other than English. German, for instance, actually calls "y"
uepsilon. And I've heard that French calls it something that translates as
"Greek 'u.'" If the recommended pronunciation of a German u-umlaut is
correct, it would make some degree of sense that we not transliterate it as
u, since Greek OU is much closer to the sound our "u" makes. So I would
guess it has something to do with the sound the letters make, rather than
their appearance. (But keep in mind that the Greek capital upsilon looks
like an English "Y." So there's a certain amount of ambiguity built into
the form of the letter itself.)
Trevor Peterson
The Catholic University of America
Department of Semitic and Egyptian Languages and Literatures
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Eric and Karol-Ann Weiss [mailto:eweiss@gte.net]
> Sent: Wednesday, September 20, 2000 7:49 PM
> To: Biblical Greek
> Subject: [b-greek] why "y" and not "u"
>
>
> Maybe this has been asked before ... but why in most or many books is
> "y" the English transliteration for upsilon, rather than "u". I know
> many English words derived from Greek words have a "y" where the Greek
> original has upsilon. But why did this scholarly convention develop and
> why does it persist? I don't think the omicron-upsilon diphthong is
> translitered "oy" (unless you're a Yiddish-speaking Greek scholar!) - so
> if it's transliterated as "ou" then why is upsilon by itself
> transliterated by "y"?
>
> --
> "Eric S. and Karol-Ann Weiss"
> http://home1.gte.net/eweiss/index.htm
> S.D.G.
>
>
>
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