Latin Semivowels, and the letters J and U

My apologies for not posting last week! If you read the Bestiaria Latina blog round-ups, you know that I've been working on harvesting all the Latin Aesopic fables I could find at Google Books and other online sources... finally telling myself to stop when I reached 4000 fables! You can see the results of those efforts at the Latin Aesopus wiki. I'm going to try to get back to my regular blogging schedule this week!

Last time, I wrote about the diphthongs in which the vowel sounds go from low (or open) vowels, such as [a], [e] and [o], to high (or closed) vowels, such as [i] and [u], producing diphthongs like [ai] or [au].

This week, I want to say something about what happens when the vowel sound begins with the high, closed vowels [i] and [u] and then modulates into a following vowel sound. The result is what is sometimes called a "semivowel" sound, because the [i] sound becomes what you might transcribe as an English "y" (Latin "j") and the [u] sound becomes what you might transcribe as an English "w" (Latin "v").

Does that pair "y and w" sound familiar? You probably learned a little rhyme in elementary school, about the vowels being "a e i o u and sometimes y and w"...? Well, the reason that y and w are put in a special category in English is because they represent the two high, closed vowels, [i] and [u], which regularly take on the quality of semivowels when they are followed by a vowel sound. If only they would teach about high, closed vowels, so that the little rhyme would make sense! Why "sometimes y and w"...? Because when the high, closed vowels are followed by another vowel, they take on the quality of a semivowel, and that quality is indicated by the English letters "y" (a variant of "i") and "w" (a variant of "u" - as the name of the letter itself tells you, "double-u").

Unlike the diphthongs I discussed last week, these diphthongs with an initial [i] or [u] sound have caused a real crisis for the history of Latin orthography, and there is still not a single approach to this problem today when it comes to Latin printing.

In the ancient Roman alphabet, which consisted of all capital letters, there was a letter I and there was a letter V. You would use these letters when the vowel stood alone, when it followed another vowel, or when it preceded another vowel. I was always written I, and V and was always written V (even when their pronunciation shifted, based on context.

Then, in the Middle Ages, a lower-case alphabet evolved, side by side with the upper-case alphabet, and new spelling conventions were introduced into Latin which had not been part of the old Roman spelling. This is when the letters "j" and "u" - which were not originally part of the Latin alphabet in ancient Rome - made their appearance. For a detailed history of how this came about and its consequences for the spelling of various languages, not just Latin, check out the wikipedia history of J along with the wikipedia history of U, wikipedia history of V and also the wikipedia history of W (the "w" has never been used in writing Latin, but the evolution of this letter is a result of the same process that gave rise to the introduction of the letter "u" into the Latin alphabet).

Although printing conventions vary from century to century, and by country, there was a considerable period of time during which the Latin letter u/v was always printed "V" when it was an upper-case letter, and "u" when it was a lower-case letter, as in the opening words of Vergil's Aeneid: Arma uirumque cano.

This can sometimes be very confusing for beginning Latin students, because in more modern times (I'm not sure just when!), the convention shifted. In most modern Latin texts, the letters u/U are used for the vowel "u" when it is not preceding another vowel, while the letters v/V are used to indicate the way the vowel [u] takes on the quality of a semivowel before another vowel: Arma virumque cano. Here the Latin word vir is spelling with a "v" because the vowel is followed by another vowel, "i" and is pronounced as a semivowel in combination with that following vowel: vir (rather than the older spelling, uir).

What is interesting is that the use of the letter pairs i/I and j/J is much less widely spread. Some Latin texts and Latin dictionaries use the letters j/J for the same purpose as the letters v/V, that is, whenever the vowel [i] takes on the quality of a semivowel because it is followed by another vowel, the letters j/J are used: for example, major instead of maior. Yet you will also frequently see maior, even in Latin texts that regularly use the letter "v" as a semivowel (e.g., vir).

I'll confess that in my own writing of Latin, I freely use the letters v/V and find it rather odd when u/U is used as a semivowel (e.g., uirumque), but I usually never employ the letters j/J when I am writing in Latin. You can see the disarray in modern Latin spelling conventions if you compare different books in print. For example, the paperback Latin dictionary which I like best, John Traupman's Latin & English Dictionary, promotes the use of the letters j/J. Traupman includes "J" as a letter in the alphabet and Latin words that begin with [i] followed by another vowel are listed under the "J" category, rather than the "I" category. Yet in Wheelock's Latin, one of the most popular textbooks, the glossary in the back of the book does not include "J" as a letter, so you find a word like iuvenis, listed under "I" (while in Traupman you will find it under "J").

I am wondering if anybody reading this blog might have a clue about why the use of the letters v/V is so firmly entrenched (even Wheelock spells the word iuvenis with a "v", rather than iuuenis, a spelling you can find in many older texts), while the use of the letters j/J would be less widespread. It's an inconsistency that really troubled me when I was a Latin student - and here I am, over twenty years later, without a good answer to that question. If anybody has a clue about the history of "j/J" in modern Latin orthography, I'd love to know more!

Meanwhile, if I have answered a nagging question you might have had since elementary school about "sometimes y and w," I will have accomplished my goal for this post! :-)

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