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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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In reply to:
I was referring to English v's/w's, of course.
I suspected as much, that's why I appended the  . I am intrigued by the English pronunciation of "w", as it appears to be unique among the European languages with which I have come in contact. I vonder vhether anybody knows vhere it comes from, or vhy ve say it the vay ve do?
Did your earlier comment mean that English speople speaking Latin pronounce the letter "v" in the same way that they pronounce the letter "w" in English? I have never learned Latin, but the few phrases I have heard with a "v" in them were not pronounced as though they were spelled with an English "w" - "vene, vidi, vici" doesn't come out as "wene, widi, wici". Or do you mean that "v" and "w" have different values in Latin, but are pronounced identically by English speakers of Latin?
I hope that you can bear with me, as this is an interesting subject, even if one that appears to be straining my limited comprehension. Thanks
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newbie
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newbie
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Yes, I meant 'v' pronounced as 'w' - I have really heard it somewhere. If the 'where' pops up in my head I'll let you know.
And back to your 'w' - we have a letter representing something very similar. It is the letter begining my first name which is really a 'crossed L'. Imagine an L followed by slash (L/) and then move the slash backwards, to meet the bend point in L - you got it! We pronounce L as L, so it really makes a difference. Thus, my name is 'Woo-kush' rather (stress on the first syllable) than 'Loo-'.
Wookush
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Carpal Tunnel
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Yes, I meant 'v' pronounced as 'w' - I have really heard it somewhere. Yrch! In that case, you have my total sympathy - that would be an abomination. The only excuse I could imagine for such execrable pronunciation would be a bizarre lisp. I have honestly never heard any English speaker of Latin pronounce "v" as "w" - it would ruin the sound of my all-time favourite pun - from The First War of Indian Independence - "peccavi."
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old hand
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old hand
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Can't resist to add my piece to this imbroglio . In old Roman inscriptions there is no letter "U", but "V" stands for the U- and V-sounds indiscriminately (there is no "W" either, of course). And as I learnt it, the English pronounciation of "w", e.g. in well, is sort of a "consonantized u", so this would indicate that Romans also pronounced their "V" in this way in certain positions before vo wels.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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consonantized
Aah! You verbed a novn.
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old hand
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verbed a novn
And can ve nov talk of vacwm cleaners?
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veteran
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OP
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Trying to kill several birds with one missive, (so I have an excuse for a miss), Lukas did a good job giving an idea of how you can define sounds without hearing them. In the case of Latin, defining sounds of words is easier due to the fact the Classical Latin was almost perfectly phonetic.
To you and Cap Kiwi, I have to apologize for the fact that I can't cite a book or other work with specifics; it's been nearly 40 years since I graduated from college (where I read stuff in Latin almost daily, not because I was a Classics scholar, but because my field was medieval lit. and history, so of course you always had to go to the original text of works which were very often in Latin.
And yes, there are regional variations on Late Latin pronunciation and no doubt always have been, which I'm sure accounts for the fact that Latin morphed into a number of distinct Romance languages instead of into only one. I first became aware of the fact that not all Latin pronuncations are equal when I listened to a recording of the Bach B-min. Mass sung (in Latin, of course) by a choral group from an eastern European country (I forget which, after all these years) who pronounced soft C like TS, which is how C (with no diacritical mark) is pronounced in Serbo-Croat.
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veteran
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The W sound for Latin V was the classical pronunciation, and so Veni Vidi Vici was pronounced waynie, weedy, weaky. Hard to imagine Caesar talking like Elmer Fudd.
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Carpal Tunnel
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In reply to:
the English pronounciation of "w", e.g. in well, is sort of a "consonantized u", so this would indicate that Romans also pronounced their "V" in this way in certain positions before vowels.
Ta muchly, wsieber, it's nice to finally find that out. I suspect that there would not be much call for shanks' vacwm cleaners outside Wales.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Reminds me of a game Johnny Carson used to play, one in which he gave the answer and the players were supposed to come up with a question (a little bit like Jeopardy, I guess.)
It was called Nine-W. To which the question was, "Do you spell your name with a V, Herr Wagner?"
Another one was Holdup. The answer: How does one get very fast service in a bank?
TEd
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