Je Sat, 1 Dec 2001 14:16:02 +0100, "R.P.S."
<[log in to unmask]> skribis:

>> Thomas, I have to tell you this is simply false (or wrong, if you
>> want). In the written form, Greek makes this plural with -OI, not
>> -OJ
>
>Isn't this just a transcription-related matter? In old Greek, o (ò mikrón) +
>i (iôta) was pronounced as a diphthong, just like "oj" in Esperanto.

Then the question becomes: why haven't transcribers chosen -oj (or
-oy) instead of -oi. Maybe... aesthetics?

>
>> In the oral form, the "o" in -OI gets the stress of the word,
>> unlike Espo's unstressed -oj.
>
>I haven't ever heard of such a rule. If you take any text written in old
>Greek, you can see many words ending in -oi/-oj which have the stress on
>another syllable. e.g.: lógos, lógoi, ánthropos, ánthropoi

You're right, we can't generalize on -OI getting the stress of the
word. It depends on the word. Anyway, the formation of Greek's plural
(flexive) and Eo's one (agglutinative) differ in several ways, which I
think is the main point here. If we want a naturalistic justification
for Eo's plural, let's look for it in another language, please.

>As far as I know, the _e_ in _ae_ and _oe_ Latin diphtongs was pronounced
>neither like "e" in Spanish/Italian/Esperanto/Interlingua/... nor like "j"
>in Esperanto. It was a sound between them. Or at least this is what my first
>Latin book tells in it's section about pronunciation: "la e algo cerrada,
>próxima a la i". In other different pronunciations, _oe_ and _ae_ were said
>just like /e/, e.g. in what this book calls "pronunciación tradicional
>española" (Spanish traditional pronunciation).

Yes, because as it seems, every country has its own traditions in this
regard.

--
Marcos