off:alphabet soup

[Le Monsieur]

On Fri, 6 Sep 1996, Ted Jackson jr. EL 84 wrote:
> Which came first, the letter "V" or "U"?

"V", which represented today's U,V,and W was pronounced in Latin as a "W"
when a consonant and as a "U" when a vowel, much in the same way "Y" can
be either a consonant or a vowel.  (Note that the letters "U" and "W" were
absent from the ancient Latin alphabet.  E.g., the word vacuum was
originally written "vacvvm" and pronounced "WAH koo um", and the
immortalized phrase "Veni, Vidi, Vici" was NOT pronounced "Venny, Viddy,
Vichy", but rather "Wenny, Weedy, Weeky".  Yes, the Latin "C" was always
hard, even preceding "e" and "i", since the letter "K", later borrowed
from the Greek letter kappa (you figure) was also not a part of the
ancient Latin alphabet (with the exception of two words:  "kalendar" and
one other).

[ Of course, the word "kalendar" was borrowed from the Greeks because the
Latin calendar system itself was merely a variation of the Greek calendar,
which in turn was ripped off from the ancient Middle East (the
Assyrians?).]

Also of note is the absence of the letters "J" and "Y".  In Latin, the
letter "I" took the place of what we now know as "Y" in that "I" could be
either a consonant or a vowel.  Hence the word "iacio", meaning "to
throw", "to toss" or "to shoot forth" (and from which evolves such
colorful English words as "ejaculate" and our favorite: "ejection"), is
usually written "jacio" in high school Latin textbooks, but still
pronounced "YAHK ee oh".

> When did they cease to be interchangeable, as in the Roman-looking
> characters on T&M where the letter U is depicted as a V?

I assume when the letter U came into existence, whenever that was.

As you can see, the letters J,K,W,and Y are the youngest letters of the
Western alphabet, though I'm not sure of their exact order of appearance.

Damon Capehart        | "As their numbers dwindled from 70 to 8, the
aka Le Monsieur       |  dwarves began to suspect Hungry..."
dcapehar at utdallas.edu |