Re: The Roman alphabet and its original letter names.

On Thursday 13 February 2003 10:43 pm, Nik Taylor wrote:
> Steven Williams wrote:
> > So, how _did_ the ancient Romans sing the 'ABC Song'?
>
> Vowels were named by their sound, nasals, fricatives, and liquids were
> /e/ plus the consonant, stops were consonant plus /e/, except that Q and
> K were /ku/ and /ka/ respectively; y and z were Greek borrowings and
> were, I think, called "I graeca" and "zeta" respectively.  I think X was
> /eks/, so:
>
> A   /a/
> B   /be/
> C   /ke/
> D   /de/
> E   /e/
> F   /ef/
> G   /ge/
> H   /he/
> I/J /i/
> K   /ka/
> L   /el/
> M   /em/
> N   /en/
> O   /o/
> P   /pe/
> Q   /ku/
> R   /er/
> S   /es/
> T   /te/
> U/V /u/
> X   /eks/
> Y   /y/ or "i graeca"
> Z   /zeta/
>

So, basically the same as french or Spanish?

Reply