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.
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Although you write "keep the f", it is actually the case that countries such as Spain had a spelling reform to change these words to use f instead of the ph they were using up until this point.– Robert FurberCommented Nov 27, 2018 at 13:45
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3 Answers
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.
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6+1. But why did the French use "ph" for /f/, if the French language was already using "f" for this phoneme?– user9383Commented Jun 1, 2015 at 20:20
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1@WS2 What about "philosophie", "photographe", "phénomène" etc.? Commented Nov 27, 2018 at 13:37
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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.
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2If it was like Hindi, the sounds were [p] for π and [pʰ] for φ. This is what the references (such as Wikipedia) I've seen say; I'm not sure how scholars know this, since the earlier pronunciations died out centuries ago. Commented Oct 12, 2012 at 20:26
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").
answered Mar 30, 2011 at 6:10
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Ok, yes, Romans...Greeks phi..this does make sense....many thanks.– user6697Commented Mar 30, 2011 at 6:22
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6More accurately, the Greek letter φ was pronounced in Classical times as an aspirated /pͪ/ (a bit like /ph/ in "uphill"), and when the Romans borrowed Greek words with that letter they transcribed it as 'ph'. Subsequently the sound changed in Greek to /f/, and Latin (and other languages which had further borrowed the words from Latin) changed them accordingly. "ph" for /f/ is not just in English - it is found at least in French and German as well, though Spanish (for example) has preferred to respell the words with "f". (It's also independently in Welsh and Irish) Commented Mar 30, 2011 at 11:06
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12Latin pedis did not become English foot. Rather, both pedis and foot are descendants of a common PIE root. The change from *p to *f in the Germanic languages is due to Grimm's Law, which is very different from what happened in Greek/Latin.– JSBձոգչCommented Mar 30, 2011 at 13:09