This is a very small addition, possibly not even requiring its own thread, but here goes:
The writer stated that the one letter had two different pronunciations: NEW and NEE, implying that it was the same letter. To some extent this is true, but in reality, the NEW pronunciation (actually it should be NOO, but for ease of understanding, it will remain NEW) is the ancient greek iteration of it and NEE is the modern greek spoken today.
This leads on to the next logical stage of reasoning, linguistics.
The japanese developers of Chrono Trigger, while possibly using modern greek as a base, would not use ancient greek simply because of the fact that only linguists, philologists and people who study ancient languages actually know how to speak it and the differences of its alphabet. If it weren't for a small community of people who still practised ancient greek customs and language in a small town found some time last century, we would still assume that the alphabet was the same.
Furthermore, since there are no greek roots in japanese, they would have no reason to study such a language anyway.
Next, I say that the linkage through the ages of 'nu' being linked to water is also ridiculous, not becasuse its not true, but again because of the fact that the developers were not linguists. If the developers wanted to link the Nu to water, they would maybe make it more obvious, naming them after the japanese word for water. Also, while we can trace it all backwards, it would be much harder to find the thing that means water then trace the lineage forward and come up with a name that is viable; there would be too much risk of it being a failure when they could put those man-hours into something else.
All of this leads me to believe that the point which the article is based on is flimsy at best, and the article possibly discredited.
I think it would be more valuable to look into the inflection and deeper meaning of 'Nu' in japanese.
For one there is the example of shinu (using the stem, nu) which means to die. There are probably others but I am not exactly versed in Japanese.
Then again, maybe we are all thinking too hard, and they just thought that the name 'Nu' sounded cool.
So there you have it, my take on the article: The secret of nu.
Think on that for a bit. What do you think?
