From: David J. Perry (perryd@telocity.com)
Date: Thu Dec 19 2002 - 16:39:59 EST
Scripsit Michael Everson:
> Recently I saw a piece of epigraphical Greek, and while Latin "h" was
> written in the transliteration, the letter used in the actual Greek
> was ETA.
Yes; that is the whole point here. In all variants of the Greek
alphabet except the Ionic, eta stood for the "h" sound as in English
(hence the equivalent shapes of Eta and H, since it was some western
form of the Greek alphabet that was apparently carried to Italy). After
the Ionic alphabet was officially adopted at Athens, eta became used for
long e in subsequent standardized Greek writing. Epigraphers need to
indicate when they are transcribing into lowercase form, or
transliterating, an Eta that was intended to represent the "h" sound and
have adopted the Roman lc h as the means for doing so.
David
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