Here’s what I know, or I think I know from my one day internet crash course in Latin. I’m looking for accuracy, spelling and pronunciation.
NVNC AVT NVNQVAM = Now or never
it should be pronounced as " noonc out noonkwam"
The biggest question to me is the V’s in place of the U’s. From what I have read, the Romans had no U in their alphabet so the V was insterted in its place. So the above phrase should be 100% correct as the Romans would have written it. Its important to me that I have it right, so any confirmation would be greatly appreciated. Thanx!
NVNC AVT NVNQVAM is indeed a literal translation of that expression. I’m not sure if that was the actual idiom used by the Romans. I don’t recall seeing an equivalent expression in my reading. (Perhaps nisi nunc numquam? But that’s just a guess.)
The truth of the matter is that Romans didn’t distinguish between the semi-vowel w and the vowel u (nor, for that matter, between the semi-vowel y and the vowel i). They represented both the “w” sound and the “u” sound in inscriptions with the letter V and in writing with the letter u. Hence, you will find many contemporary publications in Latin which use “u” for lowercase consonantal or vocalic “u” and “V” for uppercase consonantal or vocalic “u.” In older publications, however, it is common to find v used uniformly for the “w” sound, and u used uniformly for the “u” sound.
There has been quite a bit of debate here about whether it is better to distinguish between the two sounds by using “V/v” and “U/u”–which, of course, the Romans didn’t do–or to aid beginners and to avoid ambiguity by using only “V” and “u” for both sounds.
Here’s wikipedia’s take on the matter:
Latin orthography did not distinguish between long and short vowels, nor between the vocalic and consonantal uses of I and V. This article adopts the convention used in many modern editions of classical texts (and for instance in the Oxford Latin Dictionary) of using Ii for both vowel and consonant, and V (upper case) and u (lower case) for both vowel and consonant. Other conventions used Ii and Uu for the vowels and Jj and Vv for the consonants — see below. Most modern editions use Vv for consonantal V, Uu fur vowel V, and Ii for both consonantal I and vowel I.
In conclusion, if you use lowercase letters, I recommend “nunc aut numquam”; if you use uppercase letters, “NVNC AVT NVNQVAM.”
If I’ve made a mistake here, others, more knowledgeable, will correct me.
Good luck, whatever your purpose may be. (a tattoo?)
David
According to my teacher at Notre Dame, the Romans had two different scripts, one lower case and the other upper case. In the middle ages, people began to combine the two and use the upper case to mark the beginning of sentences, etc. FYI…
From what I’ve read, the Roman cursive script was much different from the “upper case” script used on inscriptions. In fact, knowing the second isn’t enough to help you read the first. Probably some sort of combination did take place, but I haven’t read much about it.
-David
Replies to Roman script in the ancient world:
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It is called “scriptio continua” because of missing spaces and punctuation marks. There was no lower case:
NVNCAVTNVNQVAM
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In Middle ages the latin scripts vary from region to region. New reformations like the “k”-letter or the “lower case” were made and spread over the different countries. There were much new word-creations like today, non-uniform!
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literature: Bernhard Bischoff: Paläographie des römischen Altertums und des abendländischen Mittelalters. Grundlagen der Germanistik. Bd 24. Berlin 1986.
There may have been no lower case per se, but there was a cursive script, which looked much different than the scriptio continuo of inscriptions and formal writing.