# Russian: т- and ф-letters inconsistency



## rushalaim

Why modern Russian pronounces [or*ph*ographija] _"orthography"_ and [or*t*opedija] _"orthopaedics"_ though Greek always uses th-letter ὀρ*θ*ογραφία and Ορ*θ*οπεδική ?


----------



## berndf

In general, Greek _θ_ = Russian _ф_ appears in words directly taken from Greek while Greek _ф_ = Russian _т_ appears in more recent loans imported indirectly via Western European languages like French, Italian or German where Greek _θ _is pronounced like an ordinary _t_.


----------



## fdb

In the pre-1918 orthography they used ѳ "fita" for Greek _θ _in old loan words. Pronounced [f] but written differently.


----------



## rushalaim

It's funny, when Russian scientists who teach science are spelling scientific _"orthography"_-word wrong themselves like [or*f*ografija]. )) 
Isn't it the serious blunder to pronounce [pheos] of _"Theos"_-word in Greek? (There is Russian name [*f*iodor] of Greek _"Theodor"_)


----------



## berndf

Representing the sound [θ] as [f] is not too uncommon. Some languages that don't have a native [θ] sound represent it as [t] (e.g. French and Italian), some as [ s ] (e.g. German) and some as [f] (e.g. Russian). The sound shift [θ] > [f] is also found in languages that have a native [θ] sound, e.g., the Cockney dialect of English.


----------



## rushalaim

berndf said:


> Representing the sound [θ] as [f] is not too uncommon. Some languages that don't have a native [θ] sound represent it as [t] (e.g. French and Italian), some as [ s ] (e.g. German) and some as [f] (e.g. Russian). The sound shift [θ] > [f] is also found in languages that have a native [θ] sound, e.g., the Cockney dialect of English.


The Russian language did not have any f-sound ever at all! And there were not any words with f-sound in Russian. When Greeks gave alphabet to Slavs they gave f-letter for Greek words too. Thus, f-letter is Greek like th-letter too.

<off-topic. Please open a new thread>


----------



## berndf

rushalaim said:


> The Russian language did not have any f-sound ever at all! And there were not any words with f-sound in Russian. When Greeks gave alphabet to Slavs they gave f-letter for Greek words too. Thus, f-letter is Greek like th-letter too.


I see your point: Why would a language import a sound and mapped to another sound that is also foreign to that language? My assumption is that both sounds where imported at the same time from Greek but Russian (and other Slavic languages) failed to differentiate between them. And that's why I noted that mergers of [θ] and [f] are not uncommon.


----------



## fdb

Old Church Slavonic used both Ѳ and Ф in Greek borrowings. Presumably they merged in pronunciation early on.


----------



## ahvalj

rushalaim said:


> The Russian language did not have any f-sound ever at all! And there were not any words with f-sound in Russian. When Greeks gave alphabet to Slavs they gave f-letter for Greek words too. Thus, f-letter is Greek like th-letter too.
> 
> <off-topic. Please open a new thread>


_F_ began to emerge in the Vladimir-Suzdal dialects in the 11–12th centuries: first in cases like _вьторъ>вторъ _(pretonic position in allegro-pronounced words), and later when _въ>в _before a voiceless stop (_дѣвъка>дѣвка_) and word-finally (_сыновъ>сынов_), so that the language received numerous instances of this sound, even if only combinatorial, as a devoiced variant of _v_. In contrast, _ϑ_ never ever developed in any Slavic dialect to my knowledge.


----------



## rushalaim

ahvalj said:


> _F_ began to emerge in the Vladimir-Suzdal dialects in the 11–12th centuries: first in cases like _вьторъ>вторъ _(pretonic position in allegro-pronounced words), and later when _въ>в _before a voiceless stop (_дѣвъка>дѣвка_) and word-finally (_сыновъ>сынов_), so that the language received numerous instances of this sound, even if only combinatorial, as a devoiced variant of _v_. In contrast, _ϑ_ never ever developed in any Slavic dialect to my knowledge.


I think, Greeks brought B-letter into Russian. Perhaps, B-letter was only in written church papers or after monks' teaching for civilians. But oral speech is different till nowadays. Recently, I heard common speech [de*u*ka] for written grammatical _"де*в*ка"_. It's well known, modern _"за*в*тра"_ was pronounced like [za*u*tro].


----------



## berndf

rushalaim said:


> I think, Greeks brought B-letter into Russian. Perhaps, B-letter was only in written church papers or after monks' teaching for civilians. But oral speech is different till nowadays. Recently, I heard common speech [de*u*ka] for written grammatical _"де*в*ка"_. It's well known, modern _"за*в*тра"_ was pronounced like [za*u*tro].


Don't forget that the Greeks brought *all *the letters to Russian. The writing system for Russian is based on a writing system for OCS and that has medieval Greek as main source and in medieval Greek B was (and still is in modern Greek) pronounced [v].


----------



## rushalaim

berndf said:


> Don't forget that the Greeks brought *all *the letters to Russian. The writing system for Russian is based on a writing system for OCS and that has medieval Greek as main source and in medieval Greek B was (and still is in modern Greek) pronounced [v].


Agree. Do you hint at the similar case in German v-letter with f-sound pronunciation?


----------



## berndf

rushalaim said:


> Agree. Do you hint at the similar case in German v-letter with f-sound pronunciation?


That story is a bit different. When Germanic languages started to be spelled with Latin letters, the Latin letter _u/v_ was already pronounced [v] if used as a consonant and not [w] any more. But old Germanic languages did not distinguish between the sounds [f] and [v] and did not need both letters. [v] was only an intervocalic pronunciation variant of [f]. That's why we find, e.g., in English _one wol*f*_ but _two wol*v*es_. In Middle High German the use of the letters _f _and _v_ became arbitrary, probably because the southern dialects that dominated Middle High German spelling lost the voiced variant [v] and had only [f] as the pronunciation of both letters. This is still so in Bavarian dialects.


----------



## ahvalj

rushalaim said:


> I think, Greeks brought B-letter into Russian. Perhaps, B-letter was only in written church papers or after monks' teaching for civilians. But oral speech is different till nowadays. Recently, I heard common speech [de*u*ka] for written grammatical _"де*в*ка"_. It's well known, modern _"за*в*тра"_ was pronounced like [za*u*tro].


These are dialectal differences. The original Slavic sound was _w, _it is still retained in Lower Sorbian. Other Slavic languages and dialects have developed various modifications of it. The dialects of the Russian North, including that at the basis of the standard language, mostly have a plain _v,_ devoiced in certain conditions into a plain _f,_ and this situation emerged very early, in the first centuries of the 2nd millennium.


----------



## rushalaim

berndf said:


> In general, Greek _θ_ = Russian _ф_ appears in words directly taken from Greek while Greek _ф_ = Russian _т_ appears in more recent loans imported indirectly via Western European languages like French, Italian or German where Greek _θ _is pronounced like an ordinary _t_.


There was Peter the Great's scientist Trediakowski (1748) who wrote his article and named it "or*t*ografija" (but modern Russian scientists use "or*f*ografija" spelling). Did he borrow that spelling from Dutch?


----------



## berndf

All Western European language except English pronounce the Greek _θ_ /t/. It is hard to say if it was Dutch, German, French, Italian, (modern pronunciation of) Latin or whatever.


----------



## ahvalj

This change _ѳ→т _was part of the shift from Byzantine to Western European cultural orientation. Newer words, borrowed or created since the beginning of the 18th century mostly followed the Latin and Western European rendition of Greek sounds. Before that, the Middle Greek pronunciation was the model. Also, some older words in the course of the 18th century changed their pronunciation: _вивліоѳика→библиотека, Омир→Гомер_. By the way, I find _v, f_ and _i_ to be better sounding that _b, t_ and _e_.

Trediakovskiy's variant was an experiment, the language has retained Smotritskiy's variant with _ѳ_.

The most modern manifestation of these processes is the fate of _αυ_ and _ευ_ in the 20th century: previously almost always bоrowed as _ав_ and _эв/ев _(the post-ancient Greek pronunciation), in the course of the last 100 years newer words with these historical diphthongs began to be rendered through bisyllabic _ау_ and _эу/еу_ (_автомобиль_ but _аутотренинг;_ _эвкариоты_ and _эукариоты_). The weirdest exception is _холокост,_ taken directly from English (must have been either _*олокавст,_ or _*голокавст, or *голокауст, _cp. _голография_ and _каустик_).


----------



## Lusus Naturae

I saw a curious case of φ > t: blasphemo > *blastemare >  bestemmiare, lastimar, ... 
Are there similar cases?


----------



## danielstan

I may be out of topic, but I cannot help myself...

Romanian has the verb '_a blestema_' (with regional variants: '_blăstema_', '_blestăma_','_blăstăma_') and the etymological dictionary says it is inherited from a reconstructed
low Latin *_blastimare/*blastemare (= blasphemare)_

Reference: dexonline


----------



## Awwal12

ahvalj said:


> By the way, I find _v, f_ and _i_ to be better sounding that _b, t_ and _e_.


As for me, I don't like [f]/[fʲ] at all. But anyway, we cannot seriously take our subjective preferences as valid arguments here (not that it matters anyway).


----------

