vastor wrote:And therein lies the problem, the phonetics of j are completely different across europe, and so the rationale for using it evaporates. The case for its usage as a differentiator is inherently flawed as the reader still has to associate a unique sound with it (usually), and is therefore no easier than distinguishing vocalic and consonantal i; if anything it makes it more confusing, as the reader will be naturally inclined to pronounce it in their native tongue when they do encounter it, due to its rarity. So although it might happen to agree phonetically with the german j (I couldn't comment on that), more often than not, it does seem strange or dubious, unlike u which is quite natural for most of europe.
You're not arguing coherently. Why do you now comparing
j to
u? That's a non sequitur. You cannot conflate
u and
v when arguing against the use of
j for consonantal
i. I could just as easily argue that the letter
v should not be used for consonantal
u because there are no modern European languages which use the letter
v for the same sound that
v is often used to represent in classical Latin (i.e. consonantal
u), unlike
i which is quite natural for most of Europe. But of course that argument would make no sense.
vastor wrote:It provides no greater clarity, in fact, quite the opposite, it often obfuscates the issue, firstly due to its obscurity, and secondly due to the phonetic inconsistency across europe of j.
Sure it does. I'd argue it doesn't provide as great of clarity as distinguishing vocalic and consonantal
u, but there is still clarity to be gained by distinguishing vocalic and consonantal
i. Nor is there any greater phonogical consistency across Europe for the letter
v than for
j. In fact, there's probably less so. Besides, in just about every European language I can think of,
v represents a fricative of some sort, but never a labialized velar approximant like Latin's consonantal
u, whereas
j actually does represent a palatal approximant like Latin's consonantal
i in many European languages, as e.g. in most of the Germanic languages (though not English), not to mention the International Phonetic Alphabet.
vastor wrote:I strongly disagree with the argument that both j and u have equal merit. u is quite phonetically consistent across europe, so its case for inclusion has a greater weight. j really has no redeeming features at all. With that said, I do agree that ideally, v and i should represent both their phonetic variants.
You're conflating
u and
v again. Based on your (rather-flimsy) argument of familiarity, we should replace
c with
k whenever it precedes a front vowel in Latin, because not many (any?) modern European languages have hard
c before front vowels.
vastor wrote:But you just said that the pronunciation in english was irrelevant, and now you yourself are using it as an argument for the restoration of the classic letters.
You misunderstand. He's not making an argument for the restoration of classical spelling based on the pronunciation of English. He's using the pronunciation of English as a counterargument to your dismissal of
j without even considering that the retention of
v is just as much, if not more, at odds with your own reasoning.
vastor wrote:I completely agree. And of course we look at it from the perspective of our native tongues, which isn't arrogant or myopic, but completely natural.
As a native English speaker, I would argue that it is indeed myopic to insist that Latin orthography be based as closely as possible on the orthography of one's native language. Whenever you learn a foreign language you must learn the alphabet and spelling conventions that are natural to that language. Why should this be any different for Latin?