Strangeness of U (was Re: CHAT behove etc (was: Natlag: Middle English impersonal verbs))

R A Brown wrote:
> Yes - it simply dates back to the time when U and V were the same
> letter. If _u_ came before a vowel, then it was /v/, but if it came
> before a consonant then it was a vowel (with one of the possible
> pronunciations of |u|).
>
> When the two letters were differentiated, those final Es could'v been
> dropped, but most people continued, and still continue, the write them.
> It is just habit.
A similar phenomenon is the avoidance of initial {u} to represent /w/ in
Spanish.  For example, _huevo_ not *_uevo_, due to the fact that uevo
would've been analyzed as /bebo/ (vevo) in the days when the two letters
were variants, thus, the letter {h} was added.

This kind of oddity seems, to me, to be rather uncommon in conscripts.

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