Re: If you call me crazy again...

Roger Mills wrote:
>
>John Cowan wrote:
>
> >Dan Jones scripsit:
> >
> >> The original Latin name was /ha:/, IIRC. When initial /h/ became
>silent,
> >
> >What I would like to know is how the people who first wrote Germanic
>languages
> >*more romanico* (as opposed to the Greek-based Gothic script) learned to
> >apply the letter H to their /h/, since Latin had long since lost that
>equation.
>
>
>Just speculating:  (1) perhaps Church Latin maintained the pronunciation?
>or
>(2) Pronunciation of H must have survived _as something_ into the time when
>other European languages (including English) first began to be written.
>English or anglicized Irish monks, who would have been familiar with its
>use?
Just a thought: The Romans were in contact with Germanic peoples very early
- already in Marius' time. Until the loss of [h] in Latin, they surely used
{h} for [h] when writing Germanic words and names. After the Latin loss of
[h], Germanic speakers may still have known how the words were supposed to
sound (when not pronounced by those ineducateable southerners! ;-) ), and
thus realized/remembered {h}=[h], which they'd then use for writing their
own contemporary Germanic.

                                                       Andreas

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