CHAT Achilles & the tortoise

Peter Bleackley wrote:
> Staving Andreas Johansson:
>
>> Ah. For some reason it didn't occur to me that "Calends" could be an
>> anglicization of _Calendae_ (or _Kalendae_, as my Latin dictionary
>> spells it).
>
> Indeed, I am more familiar with it with the K spelling, which raises an
> interesting question, as in Latin, K is most often found in words of Greek
> origin.
In Archaic Latin, the rules for C, Q and K were basically:
  - If the sound is /g/, C is used. (I think.)
  - If the sound is /k/, then:
    - If the next sound is /o/, /u/ or /w/, Q is used.
    - If the next sound is /a/, K is used
    - Otherwise, C is used.

These rules were adopted from the Etruscan, which inherited gamma, kappa
and qoppa(?) from Greek, all to write one sound: /k/.

By Classical Latin, they'd almost lost them, to be replaced with:
  - If the sound is /g/, G is used.
  - If the sound is /k/, then:
    - If the next sound is /w/, Q is used.
   (- If the word derives from Greek, K may be used.)
    - Otherwise, C is used.
A handful of words, most notably Kalendae, slipt through and were often
written with /k/.

--
| Tristan.               |       To be nobody-but-yourself in a world
| kesuari@yahoo!.com.au  |  which is doing its best to, night and day,
|                        |                 to make you everybody else---
|                        |          means to fight the hardest battle
|                        |            which any human being can fight;
|                        |                    and never stop fighting.
|                        |      --- E. E. Cummings, "A Miscellany"
|                        |
|                        |     In the fight between you and the world,
|                        |                             back the world.
|                        |      --- Franz Kafka,
|                        |         "RS's 1974 Expectation of Days"

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