Re: CHAT: Names of Latin alphabet letters

At 8:08 pm -0500 24/1/01, Nik Taylor wrote:
>Raymond Brown wrote:
>> Yep - the Romans hit upon the idea that you could tell if V was /u/ or /w/
>> after /k/ by writing the /k/ differently!  So CV = /ku/ and QV = /kw/, e.g.
>> QVI /kwi:/ = who [relative]; CVI /kuj/ = to whom.
>
>Could /wi/ and /uj/ contrast elsewhere?
In theory, yes.

>E.g., could tui be ambiguous
>between /twi/ and /tuj/?
No - /tw/ is not found.

SV is sometimes /su/ as in SVM and, less often, /sw/ as in SVADERE.
Therefore, in theory, SVI could be ambiguous.  In practice only /sui:/
exists in the language.

Indeed, it is hard to think of any context where this would be a problem,
except after /k/.  Of course, the better solution would've been to have
dropped Q and devize different letters for /u/ and /w/.  Indeed, Claudius
tried to introduce an inverted F to denote the latter and some inscriptions
are found with this letter.  But it didn't survive his principate.

Ray.



=========================================
A mind which thinks at its own expense
will always interfere with language.
                   [J.G. Hamann 1760]
=========================================