I also feel kindred alliance with those who wish to capture with authority and clarity the true manners of ancient times. Thus one of my obsessions is to see vernacular forms of such languages brought back to life, like spoken Latin. And since I am very fond of all forms of handwriting, including calligraphy, I take particular interest in the manner in which our beloved Romans wrote.
Speaking of calligraphy, I spent this semester abroad in Florence perfecting my Italian, and visited many parts of Italy and also Ireland during my travels there; and I saw more than one ancient Bible filled with illuminated manuscripts — I even saw the very Bible of Saint Francis of Assisi (in Assisi - a beautiful little town; I highly recommend it), as well as numerous writings of his and the confirmation letter from the Pope authorizing the Franciscan order — all in Latin, of course, which was very exciting to read and understand. In any case, the wonderfully overriding theme among all the manuscripts and pages was the use of ‘u’ – even at times with the little “tail” that is has in our modern lowercase letter – in all the Latin where one might find a ‘v’. And more than that, there was no ‘v’ even in the (pre-Dantesque) Italian! all 'u’s instead, which makes me wonder exactly how they pronounced the letter in either language. And the real marvel was seeing a copy of Dante’s Divine Comedy, known as La Divina Comedia in Italian:
I took this picture in awe; and the 'i’s appear to be dotted (such as the ‘ia’ combination at the end of “Comedia”). And also, Dante’s surname is spelled differently; he is known today as Dante Alighieri.
As for the shape of ‘V’ or ‘U’ when dicussing the same Latin letter, a look at the orthographic origins might be in order. The Romans inherited almost everything from the Etruscans, including their alphabet, which was a version of the Greek alphabet used at one time in the Italian colonies of Magna Grecia. The Etruscans used a letter shaped like our ‘Y’, derived from the Greek üpsilon, to represent a sound between dark ‘o’ and ‘u’ (Etruscan had only four vowels that they wrote: ‘a’, ‘e’, ‘i’, ‘o/u’). In later Etruscan, the tail of this letter began to fade away, and what remained instead was a shape like a ‘V’. That’s then the Romans took over, and adopted the Etruscan alphabet with some Greek trappings here and there, as well as a few innovations of their own. The Etruscan ‘Y’ became in shape ‘V’ because it was faster to write and without the tail there was no confusion with other letters. I believe the same can be said of the Romans’ simplification (especially in script) of the shape of ‘V’ into something more like ‘U’; there was for the Romans no confusion with other letters, and it was faster to write.
hi! new here. my question was regarding V and U together. Specifically the Latin phrase from the Aeneid
“forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit”
i prefer no J, as i do not often see J in inscriptions when walking about Rome. But I do not see U’s if my memory serves me well. Would then iuvabit be ivvabit? that seems strange. any help would be great!
The German tradition tends to differentiate between u’s and v’s, the British and French traditions often don’t, but it is also due to any particular scholar’s personal preference. No tradition luckily uses j’s anymore. I strongly prefer using no v’s, as well, but some notable scholars still make the v/u difference (only because of old habit/tradition, I venture to say). All in all, it is to be noted how very young the letters j and v are, systematically differentiated from i’s and u’s as late as early 17th century.
I think u is used because in lower case v’s may seem slightly odd-looking. Therefore as capitals use only V’s, as lower case only u’s, e.g. Vt but ut. This is the practice of for instance the OLD. Note that actually u is only (for the purpose of Latin orthography) the lower-case of V.
forsan et haec olim meminisse iuuabit
FORSAN ET HAEC OLIM MEMINISSE IVVABIT (hardly FORSANETHAECOLIMMEMINISSEIVVABIT)
forsan et haec olim meminisse ivvabit
FORSAN ET HAEC OLIM MEMINISSE IVVABIT
isn’t that confusing to use the 2 V’s or u’s together? and how would you say is the correct pronunciation of iuvabit? I would venture ee-oo-vuh-bit? sorry i’m definitely no linguist
Sorry, I was still editing my post. No, think of u as a lower-case form of V, exactly as m is lower-case of M, for instance (you don’t see m’s in inscriptions, either).
Virgil would probably have written IVVABIT (no lower case back then). It really doesn’t differ from iuuabit. It is pronounced [juˈwaːbit]. But you’re also right in that sometimes successive VV’s are avoided in inscriptions and instead is written for example VOLT. Thus theoretically Virgil might have written IOVABIT.
I do recommend u / V, but of course the choice is yours. It is true it might look a little strange in the beginning, as are many things new to one. In the same manner iuvabit looked odd to those who were accustomed to juvabit. Thus juvabit > iuvabit > iuuabit.
I think it may be because they consider it’s useful to have a graphic distinction between vowel and consonant—as indeed it is.
An amanuensis—who wrote vowel and consonant identically.
Timo, uolt is a common spelling in manuscripts too, and I’d always assumed that it was simply retention of the uol- stem rather than inhibition against doubling the letter. But that wouldn’t account for iouent (for iuuent), a single epigraphic attestation in OLD. That would seem to me to reflect the same vocalization, even if a nonce one. We apparently have the spelling (ad)iuerit (short u) for adiuuerit (or adiouerit) in manuscripts of Old Comedy and elsewhere.
I leaned Latin in school in the late 1950’s, with U u as the vowel and V v as the consonant, and I got accustomed to it. Modern usage with V u as both, looks strange to me. I realise that u started as cursive / minuscule and then lowercase for V. The split between vowel-letter and consonant-letter likely started because the consonant was commoner at the starts of words (in various languages) and the vowel was commoner inside words or at their ends.
Also in many places Latin has sometimes u-consonant, and sometimes u-vowel, after a consonant before a vowel, and I am thankful for the u/v spelling distinction to see which is which. E.g. “milvus” (= kite (the bird)) versus “graduum” (= of steps).
