I was reading a small introduction webpage from the University of Georgia regarding ‘classical latin’ and came acrosss this quote:
“Except for a few purists, all Latinists today write v for consonantal u. This would have puzzled a Roman, who considered U and V to be the same letter.”
I dont get it, as my understanding is that during the classical age of latin they only had the letter ‘V’ for a consonantal u, as the letter ‘U’ was not around at that time? The only other symbol people would use for consonantal u would be the letter ‘U’ itself, which I would of thought purists would not use!
Hoping someone can point me in the right direction.
No. It’s just more efficient to chisel or write “V”. // Minimé. Modò efficacius est “V” litteram caelare scribereve.
Me too, Sesquipedalian, I think it can be quite confusing at times. In Classical times “v” and “u” were the same letter, whether vowel or consonant. I prefer to write “v” myself (and “j” for “i” consonant) because it’s straightforward for machine tranlation. In addition to the intent by purists to write only as the Romans wrote, it had become in part affectation by those nearest our own times to write only “u”, in part a declaration of intent to only pronounce the classical “w” sound for “u/v” consonant and not the later “v” sound.
Id confusius nonnunquàm et mihi videtur, Sesquipedalian. Eadem littera utrum vocalis an consonans aevo classico est “u” et “v”. Meâ parte, “v” scribere praefero (et “j” pro “i” consonans), quòd in vertendo instrumentale utilius est. Separatim conatus puristarum ut omnia secundum Romanos faciant, in usu scriptorum saeculorum proximorum unâ parte sic facere rem ferè putidam factum erat, alterâ parte signum aliquibus “w” non “vi” sonum sonare.
The confusing term here is ‘purists’. I believe that this refers to the practice in earlier times of Latin scholars using ‘u’ and ‘j’ in place of ‘v’ and ‘i’. The Romans did not have a ‘u’ or ‘j’. The letters they did use were ‘v’ and ‘i’, which seem to have been pronounced as a ‘w’ or ‘u’ sound, and as a ‘ee’ ‘y’ sound respectively.
It is clear that there is a difference between these letters used as consonant and as a vowel, but the difference is actually quite slight. The ‘i’ in ‘machina’ is actually not much different from the ‘i’ in ‘iubeo’. If one actually examines the working of the mouth in these two sounds, one will find that a so-called consonantal ‘i’, sounding like a ‘y’, is really just an ‘ee’ sound sliding into the next vowel sound. ‘iubeo’ is pronounced ‘eeoobeo’ (do it slowly). The same is true of ‘v’ as a vowel or consonant. The difference between the sound in ‘puer’ and ‘vocat’ is very slight. pooer and ooOcat is proper pronunciation. Add a little breath and you get a hint of a ‘w’.
As for the ‘purists’ I am not entirely sure where the ‘u’ and ‘j’ entered Latin, but it was likely in the middle ages. Certainly one finds many texts in the 1800s and even later which still use this practice. I believe that this is what your text was referring to by the term ‘purists’. Using the letters ‘v’ and ‘i’ is a reversion to Real Latin. Even better would be to get rid of ‘u’ entirely, but I suspect this would cause a great deal of confusion for a long time. And who decides it? Any beginner textbook that makes this change is shouting into the wind.
That’s strange. I can see “u” with the clearly curved left stroke in examples of handwriting (or both sides curved in examples). And “j” is just a lengthened “i”. In medieval times it didn’t denote “j” consonant, e.g., “iij” = “3”, “filij” = “filii”. I agree the Romans didn’t use a lengthened “i” to signify anything.
Mirum est. Littera “u” cuius sinistra linea planè flexa est (et alicubi utra linea) in exempla chirographorum videri potest. Demagìs modò “i” protracta est “j” littera, quae aevo medio consonans non significabat, exempli gratiâ “iij” tres denotat et “filij” filii. Tibi concurro quoad “j”: aevo classico “i” protracta vel “j” rem novam significans non invenitur.
I was looking in // Inquirebam in hunc librum: Jean Mallon, L’Écriture Latine (Paris, 1939) Vide etiam // See also Bernard Bischoff, Latin Palaeography: Antiquity and the Middle Ages (CUP, 1990) p.64 “Capitalis, older and later Roman cursive”.
I agree. It would be nice to see some consistency. We are expected to implicitly differentiate phonetically, consonantal i (j) from vocalic i, yet consonantal u (v) and vocalic u distinctions are explicitly denoted in texts. Personally I would prefer the puritanistic approach of single characters for both vowel and consonant, the beneficial side effect of which would be that actual inscriptions could then be more easily interpreted.
Examples of ancient handwriting with “u” forms found at the Vindolanda fort you can see online here: Vide exempla palaeographiae in castro Vindolandae inventa et “u” litteram ostendentia per hanc paginam in interrete:
Note also this in the same ref. (which I only just noticed): Hoc etiam ibidem nota (quod modò animadverti):
I thought this was interesting because the long i used at word ends in Vindolanda examples serves the function, it seems to me, of “j” in medieval script. Hoc mihi curae est quià possible est “i” litteram protractam et terminantem Vindolandae sicut “j” aevo medio servire, ut mihi videtur.
Yes, some writers or editors of the sixteenth/seventeenth centuries do that, nov.ialiste. Ita, nov.ialiste. Nonnulli scriptores vel redactores sexto vel septimo decimo saeculis sic faciunt.
Our lowercase ‘u’ comes from Carolingian minuscule, itself a development of the Uncial script (hence the rounded shape) which is believed to have its origin in Old Latin Cursive. It was used with both its consonantal and vocalic values. The distinct lowercase ‘v’ came much later and was at first merely a variant of ‘u’ when initial, such that we see ‘vpon’ and ‘haue’ for ‘upon’ and ‘have’ in early printed English. Eventually (starting around the mid-sixteenth century) ‘u’ and ‘v’ came to acquire their modern phonemic distinction in the printing conventions of all the western European languages, but capital ‘V’ was still undistinguished until ‘U’ came about much latter.
Lots of modern Latin texts (though not beginners’ texts) use only ‘u’ for lowercase and only ‘V’ for uppercase, and this is the most historically justifiable method. Replacing lowercase ‘u’ with lowercase ‘v’ everywhere would be rather foolish.
Yes, two points have been made here that I really didn’t make clear in my post. I wasn’t thinking of Roman handwriting at all, but inscriptions, and more formal writing. Roman handwriting is something else entirely! There is a great deal of variation in forms in Roman handwriting to be sure, and I recall it being one of my toughest challenges back in my University days.
As for the letters ‘u’ and ‘v’, what Imber Ranae writes about Carolingian miniscule rings a bell. I did a Palaeography course many years ago, but I admit I have forgotten a lot of it, and what is left by no means qualifies me as an expert!
My preferred version of these letters is to never see a ‘j’, as that just seems wrong on so many levels (though my old composition text, Bennett’s Composition, uses the ‘j’ as a consonant), and to use ‘u’ as a vowel and ‘v’ as a consonant. My second choice would be ‘v’ in both places, followed a long, long, way off by ‘u’ in both places. Very frustratingly, a new composition text I recently obtained by Richard Ashdowne and James Morwood uses only ‘u’. Why anyone would choose to do this in a country in which the Latin exam board at A levels specifies consonantal ‘v’ and ‘u’ as a vowel is totally beyond me, and spoils an otherwise completely reasonable and practical book. The energy needed to explain to my students why they can’t find ‘uir’ or ‘seruus’ in their dictionary is beyond my patience. Even my brighter students are really thrown off by this, and it causes all sorts of problems come exam time.
I suspect pure pedantry is at work here, and I am disappointed in the two gentlemen who wrote the text.
I have to admit, I’m so used to reading without j that when I do encounter it, it stops me dead in my tracks. In an ideal world, I think both i and v should have been used to represent their respective consonantal and vocalic sounds, rather than the strange situation we have today where it’s most often the case with i, but not v. Appearances of j today seem unnatural and peculiar, to me at least.
That begs the question! Bischoff prefers the term “canonical capitals” rather than “rustic capitals” because it’s less value-laden. Jean Mallon’s Paléographie Romaine (1952) is much about this, you could say. When you look at bookhand, apart from cursive, the “u” is there, I believe.
Id affirmat de quo litigatur! Nomen canonicarum majuscularum (seu scripturae capitalis canonicae) ante rusticarum (seu rusticae capitalis) mavult Bischoff quià minùs detrimentosum. Liber Johannis Mallon, Paléographie Romaine enim (anno millesimo nongentesimo quinquagesimo duo proditus), rem multò spectat, quod dici potest. Librariis in scripturis, separatim scripturae cursivae, “u” forma invenitur, nisi fallor.
[quote=“ptolemyauletes”]
My preferred version of these letters is to never see a ‘j’, as that just seems wrong on so many levels…
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What levels, ptolemyauletes? // > Quibus in aequoribus, ptolemyauletes?
Well, I just don’t like it, how’s that?
No, actually It does just seem wrong to me on a gut level, and I tend to see its use as somewhat pedantic. Certainly, its appearance in the Bennett’s Composition that I use always throws off my students, so that is one point. Also, most dictionaries one finds do not use the letter j, although there are some exceptions, some notable. The lack of consistency is frustrating, but perhaps expected and maybe good at the same time. Things shuldn’t always be easy.
Teaching A levels in Britain where the exam board specifically uses ‘i’ and ‘u’ and ‘v’ means that any dictionaries or texts that stray from this pattern are problems. But perhaps that is too much spoonfeeding? It is certanly not too difficult to grasp the concept of the different letters, but I like to give my students every edge they can get, and make it as simple as possible. They can worry about nonsense like this when they are at University.
Lastly, the Romans didn’t use ‘j’, so why the hell would we?
Like Sidney Smith’s housewives fighting from their windows overhead, ptolemyauletes, we’ll never agree because we are arguing from different premises.
Sicut illae matres familias, ptolemyauletes, ex fenestris supra Sidneyum Smith Reverendum trans angiportum altercantes, nunquàm conveniemus qui adversis ex praemissis disputemus. [quod facetius est latiné post saeculum septimum decimum]
That’s too much, vastor. Why would someone write “j” in latin because it was pronounced in English in a certain way? Maybe the reasons for writing “j” aren’t as obvious to everyone as I assumed.
Nimis est, vastor. Quid est quod aliquis “j” litteram latinè scribit eâ ratione modo speciale sonitur ea littera anglicé? Fortassè minùs clara omnibus quàm priùs imaginatus sum argumenta pro “j” litterâ.
What levels, ptolemyauletes? // > Quibus in aequoribus, ptolemyauletes?
Well, I just don’t like it, how’s that?
…
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Hehe… Do you cringe when you see “Julius Caesar” instead of “Iulius Caesar”? Or do you prefer “IVLIVS CAESAR”?
BTW, I always assumed that a J was just written to indicate a “consonantal” letter “I” (whether it is really consonantal or not, I don’t know), as opposed to using “I” for a vowel.
Of course, the English j is just that: English. To, for example, a German student, the use of the letter j in Latin would in no way seem strange or dubious, since the German pronunciation of the letter is exactly as in Latin, a consonantical i. Their problems come when they start to learn English, and have to learn that the letter j for some strange reason is not pronounced “correctly”, but as a fricative with a preceding d (i.e. /dʒ/).
Possibly for the greater clearity? Of course, if we abstain from j, we ought to make no distinction between u and v either. If we aspire to a restored classical pronunciation the two letters v and j are exactly parallel: both are post-classical inventions, both are used to represent semivowels (/w/ and /j/) as opposed to the corresponding pure vowels, and both have a pronunciation in English (/v/ and /dʒ/) that differs from the Latin pronunciation.
In my opinion, the use of u, v, i, but not j, is an unfortuante compromise (again, if we aspire to classical pronunciation). Granted, the aversion to j can easily be understood today: simply due to its rarity in modern text, it is not surprising if it seems strange and exotic. But why did this orthography gain ground in the first place? May it be due to the national Italian (and German) pronunciations? Consonantical /u/ is then pronounced /v/, which is not the corresponding semivowel, and so a different letter may be warranted. But consonantical /i/ is still /j/, so the spelling with i is not absurd (note that the letter j is not used in Italian). In those places where consonantical /u/ actually is realised as the semivowel /w/, i.e. in the combination qu and (sometimes) su, the sound is spelled with u, and so the usage is consistent with that of i.
But from an English point of view, the u, v, i orthography is illogical.
