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Episode 4: A Grimm Brother Resurrects the Dead (…language)

The History of English Podcast

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The Aspirated P Sound of the Greek Alphabet

The greeks had to invent letters for sounds that the phoenicians did not have. This included a sound which is often described as an aspirated p sound, but others describe it as more akin to an f sound. So when the greeks adopted the phoenician alphabet, they had to create their own letter for this aspirated p or p f sound. This later became the letter fi, spelled as p i. To day, it was probably pronounced as th by the greeeks, but I'll use the more modern pronunciation fi in the fraternity and serority names. When the etruscans adopted the greek version of the alphabet a few centuries later,

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