Peter Kirk writes > This is more complicated than it looks. The Greek form Istimboli is > impossible for the period as Greek had no [b] sound, for Î was > pronounced [v] except that later and perhaps already at that period ÎÏ > was pronounced [b] at least in foreign words. So is the Greek consonant > cluster ÎÎ, or ÎÏ, or ÎÎÏ, or what? Also is the previous consonant > cluster ÏÏ as transliterated, or ÏÎ corresponding to "isthmus"? And then > what are the Greek vowels?
I was only trying to grasp the sense of Gerd's throw-away remark (which I hope he will explain), but I appreciate the difficulties you raise, especially the point about the Greek beta as the phoneme /v/ . That particular difficulty at least doesn't apply to the Ottoman b, if we look for a Turkish -bul < ÏÎÎÎÏ. Raymond Mercier http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/RaymondM
