Re: Y not? (was: Of Haa/hhet & other matters)

Henrik Theiling <theiling@...> wrote:
> Hi!
> Ray Brown <ray.brown@...> writes:
>> No. |Y| was still pronounced [y] in Greek in Claudius' timeand presumably was
>> pronounced that way by educated Romans.Claudius' new letter was the for the
>> unstressed sound spelled
>> |u| by some writers and |i| by others in
>> lacruma ~ lacrima
>> maxumus ~ maximus
>> lubet ~ libet
Ah!  I did not know that.  Actually, I could have known that,
because I read Sihler's _New Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin_
and he mentions it there (§69b) but I didn't know about the
Claudian letters when I read it; most descriptions of them just say
it was for spelling Greek upsilon. :p   Sihler suggests it was a schwa,
which might sensibly assimilate to a 'u' spelling with a following
labial.  I kind of agree -- given that, to me, half an H is a perfectly
sensible way of spelling it (especially given what the Greeks used it
for).  But that's probably also influenced by my opinion that Latin
had a lot more schwas than we give it credit for :p

> Is it a coincidence that this i/u is always in front of labials?
> Labials could've changed [i] to [y], then.
No coincidence, that actually is the explanation. Other examples are
aurufex ~ aurifex, pontufex ~ pontifex, optumus ~ optimus, etc.


	*Muke!
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