Iotacism


Iotacism or itacism is the process of vowel shift by which a number of vowels and diphthongs converged towards the pronunciation in post-classical Greek and Modern Greek. The term "iotacism" refers to the letter iota, the original sign for, with which these vowels came to merge. The alternative term itacism refers to the new pronunciation of the name of the letter eta as after the change.

Vowels and diphthongs involved

Ancient Greek had a broader range of vowels than Modern Greek does. Eta was a long open-mid front unrounded vowel, and upsilon was a close front rounded vowel. Over the course of time, both vowels came to be pronounced like the close front unrounded vowel iota . In addition, certain diphthongs merged to the same pronunciation. Specifically, Epsilon-iota initially became in classical Greek, before later raising to while, later, omicron-iota and upsilon-iota merged with upsilon. As a result of eta and upsilon being affected by iotacism, so were the respective diphthongs.
In Modern Greek the letters and digraphs ι, ει, η, υ, υι, οι, are all pronounced.

Issues in textual criticism

Iotacism caused some words with originally-distinct pronunciations to be pronounced similarly, sometimes the cause of differences between manuscript readings in the New Testament. For example, the upsilon of ὑμεῖς, ὑμῶν hymeis, hymōn "you, your" and the eta of ἡμεῖς, ἡμῶν hēmeis, hēmōn "we, our" could be easily confused if a lector were reading to copyists in a scriptorium. As an example of a relatively minor source of variant readings, some ancient manuscripts spelled words the way they sounded, such as the 4th-century Codex Sinaiticus, which sometimes substitutes a plain iota for the epsilon-iota digraph and sometimes does the reverse.
English-speaking textual critics use the word "itacism" to refer to the phenomenon and extend it loosely for all inconsistencies of spelling involving vowels.