Re: Quick Latin pronunciation question

2008/5/25 Ingmar Roerdinkholder <ingmar.roerdinkholder@...>:
> Latin orthography had no "u" and no "j", both u and v were written "v" and
> both "i" and "j" as "i".
>
> So, might there be a possibility that TVVM, later written as "tuum", was
> actually pronounced as something like [twum], and PATRICII as [patrikji], from
> sing PATRICIVS [patrikjus]?
Yes, in Vulgar Latin and the late pronunciation of Classical Latin.

> C was still [k] before i and e (and ae, oe, y), as it
> is still in Sard and in loanwords in Germanic such as Kaiser (German) or keizer
> (Dutch) from Caesar.
Somewhere after the time around the beginning of the CE all native
speakers of Latin started to pronounce C before E, I or Y as a
[tS] or [tsj] sound.  In the last centuries of the Empire inscriptions
started to confuse CI + vowel and TI + vowel, but it is likely that
C before these vowels began to be spoken as a palatal sound
[c] or [kj] considerably much earlier than this, without there
arising a phonemic contrast.

> Or that the "u" of endings such as -us, -um was already [U], and the "i"
> of "is", "i" already [I]? That were the sounds developping into Romance [o] and
> [e] later.
> So: tuum [tuUm] or even [tuU~] with nasal [U] (French ton)  and patricii
> [patrikjI].
At some time before inscriptions started to confuse E/I and V/O this
happened, but we can't know exactly when.

> Just some thoughts.
>
> Ingmar
>
>
>
> On Sun, 25 May 2008 16:00:49 +1000, Tristan McLeay
> <conlang@...> wrote:
>
>>In Latin, how were ii and uu pronounced? I think they usually occur
>>between a root and an affix, for instance "tuum" or "Patricii". "uu" in
>>English borrowings is of course pronounced as either /ju:@/ (continuum)
>>or /ju:/ (vacuum) with presumably no historical reason. I can't think
>>of any English words with "ii" in them from Latin though.
>>
>>--
>>Tristan.
>


--
/ BP

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