“Ph” for the /f/ sound; Is Old English responsible for this swap?

Question

Is Old English responsible for creating the /f/ sound from ph, as in Philip, Pharoah, Physics, Sophia, etc? Many European countries keep the f for all of their /f/-sounding letters, as in Sofia and Stefan, for example.

Answer 1

Old English is definitely not responsible for this.

All of the words that you mentioned are Greek in origin, and they all contained the Greek letter φ (phi). In Classical Greek this was pronounced as an aspirated [pʰ], which the Latins wrote as ph when they borrowed the words from Greek. Later this sound changed into an [f] in both Greek and Latin, and was passed as such into French, and then into English.

Once the idea that ph was pronounced [f] was established, it spread to a few other areas, as well. Borrowings from Hebrew and other Semitic languages sometimes use ph, especially since the Hebrew letter פ can be [p] or [f] depending on context. Vietnamese regularly uses ph for [f], in this case because the modern Vietnamese orthography was designed by the French.

Answer 2

The Romans. They translated Greek phi (φ) as "ph" and pronounced it closer to "p" than "f". Native Latin words were spelled with the "f". Ironically, a lot of Latin p-words became f-words (e.g., pedis became "foot").

Answer 3

There were two p, t, and k sounds in ancient Greek. The softer (aspirated) sounds were transliterated in Latin as ph, th, and ch. Then, in Greek, all three sounds weakened; respectively they sounded like f, th (as in think), and the soft throaty sound in German ich or the x in Spanish Mexico. Neither Greek nor Latin changed the way the sounds were written. More than 1000 years later, English was born and then written down by people trained in Latin; they kept the Latin conventions for transliterating Greek words. You can read a more in-depth explanation about the history of these spellings at tellingvoice.com.