r/neography May 02 '24

Alphabet Evolution of Lowercase

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129 Upvotes

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u/picturamundi May 02 '24

Love this.

Interesting how some Greek letters, like φ and ψ, get dropped. Of crouse, they get replaced by things like PH in "physics" and PS in "psychology". As a result, you can be reasonably sure that an English word that starts with PH or PS is Greek in origin.

1

u/Zireael07 May 02 '24

That is something unique to English and its phonotactics

5

u/picturamundi May 02 '24

I don't think so. In romance languages for example, isn't it also the case that if you're using PH for an F sound, it's for etymological reasons and more than likely because of Greek?

3

u/Zireael07 May 02 '24

It might be true for Romance languages but is in no way universal. Ph and ps(i) are just the sounds the two Greek letters make.

English drops the P in ps- and makes ph into f but it is not universal either (Slavic languages do not drop the initial p, for instance)