Nicole McDonald wrote:
> I've studied the Hebrew language and even I noticed a pattern between
old
> Hebrew (vel Phoenician) and the Greek alphabet. [cf. Homeric Greek
(Clyde
> Pharr) - Section 501 and corresponding footnotes] Notice how 'K' is
almost
> always an initial letter and then only before 'A'. (F. Wheelock)
>
> 'C' comes from 'gamma' when it looked something like this '>' and during
an
> age when it was common to see ox writing (David Crystal - Encyclopedia
of
> Language) it appeared a lot like this '<'. 'G' was added later to make a
> distinction between the voiced /g/ and the voiceless /c/ sounds of
Latin.
There is something that seems odd about how Latin ended up with the letter
G, as opposed to just using K for [k] and C (from gamma) for [g]. The
usual explanation I have seen is that it's due to Etruscan influence, and
Etruscan didn't distinguish between voiced and voiceless consonants, so
Latin ended up using C for both [k] and [g], and then came up with G to
distinguish it from C. But if that's the case, why then didn't Latin
have the same situation with T vs D, and P vs B? These letters are
used to make the same distinctions as their Greek originals, so why not
K and C/Gamma?
> I believe 'K' may have been used in words that have derived from some
> proto-Latin language (e.g. Etruscan or Oscan) and especially a few
borrowed
> from Greek when it somehow showed up, albeit rarely, in the middle of a
> word.
>
> It doesn't help our research that many of the scribes often exchanged
the
> letters 'C' and 'K' where they thought it might have been applicable.
(i.e.
> Kalendas, Karthago, Kaeso). At least 'Kalendas' and 'Calendas' mean the
same
> thing in Latin. In German, it's also acceptable to interchange 'C' and
'K'
> in words like 'Code, Kode' and 'Cord, Kord'. We don't have this luxury
in
> English. Consider the following words: 'clan' is a symbol of heritage
and
> 'klan' is a symbol of biggotry. 'Catsup' and 'Ketchup' don't quite cut
this
> idea of interchange though. ;)
German has tended to make spelling more consistent and "German" over time,
so that the C in words borrowed from Latin or one of the Romance languages
gets replaced by K (for hard C) and Z (for soft C). This results in a
more
logical spelling, since K and Z have consistent sound values whereas C
does
not.
Latin did the same, but in the opposite direction. Instead of replacing
C with K, it tended to replace K (and Q) with C, to provide a single way
of
representing the [k] sound (except for keeping Q before V).
--
Will
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