(urth) Grand Unified Theory

[Dan'l Danehy-Oakes]

Antonio,

I bow to your expertise in how words derive from one another; though I
find etymology endlessly fascinating I am far from expert in it. I
never meant to enter the argument about what was derived from which.

As regards pronunciation, though, for all I know the ancient Romans
may (though VERY improbably) have pronounced "crupta" as we pronounce
"blanko."

Given how much variation takes place in just the English of England,
and how much it shifts in a single lifetime, I find it hard to
conceive that we know how anything was pronounced two millenia before
the invention of recording technology. That Lat. "crupta" was very
similar to Gk. "krypth" I have no doubt, or that (say) Gk Beta was
more-or-less identical to Latin B. But how that B/Beta was pronounced?
Probably not too far from a modern "B", but I would be utterly
unsurprised to learn that it was, say, unvoiced, like a modern P. Can
we know how, say, koine was pronounced, or do we merely build edifices
of more-or-less probable speculations?

This may not be unrelated to my comment on grand unified theories
earlier this week, if only through my own innate skepticism.

-- 
Dan'l Danehy-Oakes