Talk:Iotacism

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Comments[edit]

"short close front rounded vowel /yː/"

If it is short → /y/

If it is /yː/ → it is long.

--Adolar von Csobánka (Talk) 23:00, 8 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've removed the word "short", as υ could be either short or long. I see no need to give both possibilities in the IPA transcription; "/y/" in itself does not specify anything about length. Vilĉjo (talk) 17:44, 2 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Examples[edit]

I propose that we include examples of this phenomenon,so that readers,especially in English,will begin to understand the wherefore of the peculiar spelling of loan-words such as Phoenix Φοινιξ or Greek Γραικος itself .

The examples you mention are not of iotacism but of similar changes in late Latin and English pronunciations. The original Latin diphthongs ae and oe (which were used for αι and οι in Greek loanwords) became monophthongs /ɛː/ and /eː/ respectively in Late Latin, so phoenix and Graecus both ended up with a long e sound in English. Then, the English long e became /iː/ due to the great vowel shift. This is why we have /iː/ in the English words phoenix and Greek. Note that while φοίνιξ is indeed pronounced with /i/ in Modern Greek, Γραικός is pronounced with /e/ because αι, while it did smooth to a monophthong, did not take part in the shift to /i/. Iceager (talk) 00:33, 21 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]