Re: CHAT: Names of Latin alphabet letters

On Wed, Jan 24, 2001 at 10:28:43PM +0000, Raymond Brown wrote:
> It was changed because in Vulgar Latin they 'dropped their aitches', i.e.
> /h/ became silent.  This meant the names of the letters A and H were the
> same!  It seems they tried to keep the /h/ going medially as /ah(h)a/, but
> /akka/ was what they said.
I've been told that <h> is sometimes pronounced [k] in church Latin, e.g.
<mihi> [miki]. My classicist friend says that <h> in at least *some* words was
probably actually [?] early on, and [k] would be an approximation of the
glottal stop in a language lacking it. In addition, I've noticed that
"annihilate" in Spanish is in fact <aniquilar> /aniki"lar/!

> [I previously wrote: ]
> >but there was also the name <vi>/<ui>, sygnifying the union of the
> >shapes of the letters <I> and <V>. I'd be curious to know where the AHD got
> >this information...
>
> So would I - "sygnifying the union of the shapes of the letters <I> and
> <V>" looks like an early urban myth to me.
To me, too. Oh well, they can't all be winners. BTW, I hadn't noticed my
typo before; obviously the combination of the facts that a) I was writing
about the etymology of the name of the letter Y and b) that I'm reading
Thomas Malory's works in school* caused me to write <sygnifying> :)

* The English used by Malory was full of <y> where we would today write <i>.
Oddly, I find the letter kind of ugly if used immoderately, and would prefer
for aesthetic reasons replacing most <y>s with <i>, but it seems Malory's
taste prefered the opposite.

--
Eric Christopherson / *Aiworegs Ghristobhorosyo