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2023-01-19 01:15 dustin  
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when entering the third cave of his journey, ^ finds that the big predecessors of the letter "c" were "gimel" and "gamma". so wasn't "g" supposed to become the third letter? how come that "c" got that position while "g" is only seventh? there seems to be a strange relation between both letters! now that he thinks about it, they're also shaped very similarly...  
  
history of the letter "c":  
  
| the egyptian origin was likely a throw stick glyph (left shape of the cave). some suggested a camel instead, mainly because the semitic name for that animal was "gamal", but that seems very speculative.  
  
| both the phoenician letter "gimel" and the greek "gamma" (middle shape) kept the basic shape of two angular lines. so far, all those letters were pronounced [g] as in "game".  
  
| the etruscians adapted the letter but started to make the angle more round (see bottom-right shape). but their old italic language did not use the [g] sound, so they used the letter for the similar [k] sound instead (as in "king", or, in fact, also in "caesar" which is often spoken historically incorrectly!).  
  
| this sound change lead to a kind of redundance because the letters "k" and "q" also represented the [k] sound. later, when the romans adapted the old italic alphabet, they had three letters for [k] but no letter for [g] (which the romans did use).   
  
| so what to do? first, the romans used the letter "c" for both [g] and [k] sounds. but this led to misunderstandings of some words, so they decided to add an "accent line" to the "c" whenever it should be spoken [g]. and that's how a new letter was born - the "g"! :d  
  
for puzzle fans:  
one question remains: how come that "g" ended up in seventh position of the alphabet? given its history, wouldn't you expect it to be next to the "c" instead? the funny thing is that it's actually possible to get a clue how "g" got seventh position if you have a closer look at the greek alphabet! if you don't know the answer already, i invite you to think about it without just looking it up! answer, of course, in the fourth-next cave of this series! :d  
  
cave difficulty: 1/10

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2023-01-19 01:31 dustin  
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forgot to mention: the phoenician "gimel" is not shown in the cave but it's shaped like a "1".  
  
link to the map of the intro cave, showing the greek alphabet ("for puzzle fans"):  
<a href="https://boulderdash.krissz.hu/images/caves/OibRhTJYXoxJ.png?type=20230113003958" target="external">https://boulderdash.krissz.hu/images/caves/OibRhTJYXoxJ.png?type=20230113003958</a>

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2023-01-19 01:46 dustin  
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forgot to mention 2: while the ancient greek spoke the "gamma" as [g], it has a different sound nowadays, one that does not exist in english language but is similar to a [r] created in the throat.

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2023-01-19 16:46 Arno  
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very interesting! :-) "the [r] created in the throat" sounds to me like the [r] as in french (in words like raclette, grand-père, etc...). or it is the "hard g" as we use in nl, a growling/snoring sound from the back of the throat.  
(in nl, people in the north/middle regions use this "hard G" while in the southern regions (and in flemish belgium) a "soft G" is spoken which is heard when the tongue almost touches the soft palate...)  
  
by the way,  dustin , may i see your run of "classic remix of  Arno  1517"? i'm curious whether we did some things different there. :-)

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2023-01-19 17:57 dustin  
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thx  Arno , i'm fascinated by the abc history research too! :d  
  
i just looked it up. the "gamma" sound does not seem to exist in french exactly, but it does exist in dutch! according to wikipedia, the "g" in "gaan" is voiced exactly like the gamma! :d  
  
wikipedia article on the sound:  
  
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiced_velar_fricative" target="external">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiced_velar_fricative</a>  
  
run free btw :d

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2023-01-19 22:26 Arno  
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ah, that's indeed similar to the "soft g" as the dutch in the southern regions pronounce it. :-)  
  
and thx for the run!

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2023-01-19 23:20 dustin  
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now i also understand why it's called a "soft g", or what the sound has to do with a "game-[g]" at all. it's as if i want to make a [g] sound, but i don't bring the upper and lower part of my inside mouth together as closely, is that right? hard to describe, but i think i can pronounce it properly now. i know a greek boy, i'll ask him next time i see him :d  
  
the same "soft g" exists also in berlin dialect, although i never heard someone who speaks it ;)

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2023-01-20 10:22 Arno  
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that's it indeed, for the "soft G" the tongue is brought very close to the upper part of the mouth, but does not touch it (while this is the case with the game-g).  
  
the "hard g", which i mostly use since i've grown up in the centre of nl, is also similar to the j in spanish, in words like "don juan", "barajas", etc..  
  
the "game-g", as far as i know, we don't use in dutch language, except for words which we adopted from other languages (mostly english). :-)

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2023-01-21 01:48 dustin  
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according to my quick research, the "hard g" should be the sound represented as [x] in the international phoenetic alphabet. this is how spanish "j" is spoken, and also, for example, the number "acht" which is spelled and pronounced the same way in dutch and german! :d  
  
wikipedia article:  
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_velar_fricative" target="external">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_velar_fricative</a>  
  
btw, in german, we use the letter "c" almost only in digraphs and trigraphs:  
  
"ch" is spoken [x] (the "hard g") after a, o, u, and like the greek "chi" otherwise (that sound does not exist in dutch unless i overlooked something).  
  
"ck" is spoken [k] (as in "king")  
  
"sch" is spoken like the english [sh].  
  
the only occurance of single "c"s in german is in germanized foreign words such as "clown" or "cafe". for the [k] sound, we usually use the letter "k".  
  
i find this remarkable because in many languages, including english, it's the other way round: "c" is usually used for the [k] sound, while the letter "k" occurs very rarely :d  
  
so the redundance of the two letters "c" and "k" for the same [k] sound, caused by the etruscians long ago, is still very present today, and most languages seem to have decided for one main letter for the sound and struggle to make use of the remaining letter :d  
  
i just thought this was fitting with the cave :d