How was the letter V pronounced in Latin? Was it really /w/ like the W of English? This video explores that question in detail. Subscribe to these channels for outstanding content in Latin: SATURA LANX ruclips.net/user/saturalanx ALEXANDER VERONENSIS ruclips.net/user/Alessandroconti399 SCHOLA LATINA ruclips.net/channel/UC7ZWN9ORGp_sqnDm7f74Cqg RVMAK Stefano Vittori's wonderful reconstruction of 1cAD pronunciation, from Petronius: ruclips.net/video/khiootdwfok/видео.html ⚔️ Jackson Crawford's video on the change of /w/ to /v/ in Norse: ruclips.net/video/j4K-pGPT46o/видео.html 🇪🇸 Linguriosa's video about the sound of B and V in Spanish: ruclips.net/video/zHRXPmDx2Ds/видео.html 🇮🇹 See the Podcast Italiano video on raddoppiamento fonosintattico: ruclips.net/video/rOW9OopYXSs/видео.html 🔊 Hear the audio of the Montellese language/dialect of Italy (note that the IPA transcriptions are not all accurate) soundcomparisons.com/?fbclid=IwAR2vMZsVi1IAl6H6lNjQKfk3pDa078mjKPDmZA7WjSTr8gWPSnepefiB0C0#/en/Romance/language/Rce_It_Sth_Cpn_Irp_Montella_Dl Many references to the research I cite can be found in the book Social Variation and the Latin Language by J.N. Adams, pp.183-190, available on Amazon here: amzn.to/3f2PlTv Latin Pronunciation Chronology Spreadsheet: bit.ly/ranierilatinpronunciation If you like, consider joining this channel: ruclips.net/channel/UCLbiwlm3poGNh5XSVlXBkGAjoin 🦂 Support my work on Patreon: www.patreon.com/LukeRanieri ☕️ Support my work with PayPal: paypal.me/lukeranieri 📚 Luke Ranieri Audiobooks: luke-ranieri.myshopify.com 🏛 Ancient Greek in Action · Free Greek Lessons: ruclips.net/p/PLU1WuLg45SixsonRdfNNv-CPNq8xUwgam 👨🏫 My Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata playlist · Free Latin Lessons: ruclips.net/video/j7hd799IznU/видео.html 🦂 ScorpioMartianus (my channel *entirely* in Latin & Ancient Greek) ruclips.net/user/polymathyluke 🌍 polýMATHY website: lukeranieri.com/polymathy/ 😊 polýMATHY on Facebook: facebook.com/lukepolymath 🐦 polýMATHY on Twitter: twitter.com/LukePolymath/ 🎮 Join the Discord community: discord.gg/u4PN2u2 🌅 polýMATHY on Instagram: instagram.com/lukeranieri/ 🦁 Legio XIII Latin Language Podcast: ruclips.net/user/LegioXIII 🎙 Hundreds of hours of Latin & Greek audio: lukeranieri.com/audio 👕 Merch: teespring.com/stores/scorpiomartianus 🦂 www.ScorpioMartianus.com 🦅 www.LukeRanieri.com 📖 My book Ranieri Reverse Recall on Amazon: amzn.to/2nVUfqd 00:00 Intro 01:35 The Short Answer 03:13 Modern Spanish B & V 04:02 Do any modern Romance languages have /w/ ? Corsican 06:06 Montellese 10:00 Greek cognates with Latin: vīnum, ϝοἶνος 11:06 When Latin V starts to change 17:19 Stefano Vittori's rendition of 1cAD pronunciation of B & V 19:11 It's absolutely okay to use /v/ for V in your spoken Latin! 👍 21:43 See these videos about Old Norse and Spanish 22:23 Conclusion
We cannot wait for you to do a nice in-depth video on the Romanian language. The evolution of the language compared to Latin and the other Romance languages. We need you to do some high quality video on the topic. Mulțumesc.
Can u make a video about the arch of Titus .located on the via sacra in Rome . It was constructed in c. 81 AD by the Emperor Domitian shortly after the death of his older brother Titus to commemorate Titus's official deification or consecratio and the victory of Titus together with their father, Vespasian, over the Jewish rebellion in Judaea The inscription SENATVS POPVLVSQVE·ROMANVS DIVO·TITO·DIVI·VESPASIANI·F(ILIO) VESPASIANO·AVGVSTO Meaning Senatus Populusque Romanus divo Tito divi Vespasiani filio Vespasiano Augusto The Senate and the Roman people (dedicate this) to the deified Titus Vespasian Augustus, son of the deified Vespasian Why did the Romans spell that way? AVGVSTO Thanks
in western (I think) gascon occitan V is pronounced as /w/ between vowels, though this may be a later development since that's also how - v - from latin - b - is pronounced as in imperfect -avi, -avas, -ava. similarly, J and soft g are both /j/. and that causes alternations like blau/blava and roi/roja (m/f), but this is also seen in dialects where v,j are obstruents.
Already following Dr Jackson Crawford, Linguriosa and Podcast Italiano since a time ago, they are wonderful channels. I'm going for the rest of your suggestions now! Thanks a lot!
Fyi, in romanian egg is "ou", which is pronounced like "ow", an example where the old "v" from "ovum" is pronounced close to "w". I can also think at "rain" which is "ploaie" in romanian. The "uv" from "pluvia"/"pluvium" was replaced by "oa", pronounced close to "wha" from "what". The same goes for "sheep", which is "oaie". The "ov" from the latin "ovis"/"ovium" was replaced by "oa" pronounced close to "wha" from "what".
Actually in Spanish we do have the /w/ sound, in words like “hueso”, “huevo”, “huele”, and many more, because in most Spanish words, stressed “o” became “ue”, and since in the Middle Ages the alphabet only had “u” for small letter “v”, they wrote it with an “h” at the beginning of a word so that they would know to pronounce it as a “u” and not as a “b”
As he said, it comes from a Latin long "o" diphtongization. In Spanish, "ue" or "hue" corresponds to a long "o" in Latin. It doesn't come from a Latin "v". That was the point. In Spanish that Latin sound shifted to a +/- "b" sound. He never said that sound doesn't exist at all in the language, he said it doesn't match the Latin one.
@Mr. Rich B.O.B Exactly, that's right, they wrote "Nahuatl" because if they had written it "Nauatl" everybody would have just read it as "Nabatl", the H served to distinguish the u in these diphthongs sometimes. Of course if the H was removed today we would not have any trouble reading it. We as Spanish natives of course don't really hear the /w/ sound, we just hear it as a "ue". Even when we learn English at school we're taught that the W is a Spanish U. Cheers!
@@Matfer345 Eso es casi palabra por palabra lo que dijo el OP... Pero gracias por añadir lo de la "hi" = "j"! Eso quiere decir que nuestra ortografía de "Hielo" viene de la necesidad de escribir una palabra pronunciada "jelo"? En español moderno la pronunciación de ambas sería bastante distinta...
Hello Luke, This is very similar to Arabic and the language Arabs and Muslims made contact with. Arabic has no /v/ sound. It has the letter "و", which is both the /u/ and the /w/ sound. However, languages like Persian/Farsi, Turkish and Urdu have no /w/ sound, and use only the /v/ sound. For example, the Arabic name "مروة" or "Marwah" becomes "Mervet" in Turkish. The region with sizeable Arabic population is written as "اهواز" in both Arabic and Persian, but it's pronounced "Ahwaz" in Arabic and "Ahvaz" in Persian. Same with Urdu for name like "جاويد", which would be pronounced as "Jawed" in Arabic but "Javed" in Urdu. Interesting topic Luke, thanks again.
this is reminding me of old timey loans Arabs had, like how we loaned /ʃaːwirma/ "Shawarma" from Turkish /t͡ʃevirme/ "to turn over", and /wabbuːr/ "steamship" from French /vapœʁ/ "steam"
That's fascinating. Since Proto-Indo-European favored the /w/ sound so much, it's really cool that the Indo-European languages of Farsi and Urdu are the ones that today use the /v/.
interesting in persian due to arabic influence they have a lot of "redundant" letters which represent same sound, but are there because many loadwords from arabic, which are pronounced slightly different in arabic, but the same in persian
My grandparents' Italian dialect preserved a "w" sound for the "v." (They were from the hill country outside of Avellino.) So, the word for "cow" was pronounced "wacc" with the terminal "a" swallowed. (E la wacc'.) And my last name (the ordinary word for "grape") could be pronounced as U-wa.
Well, also in Italian, in some cases, the letter U acts as a semiconsonant and is pronounced /w/. The sound /w/ appears in diphthongs, when the "u" is close to other vowels. Examples: "uomo" /'wɔ.mo/; "quando" /' kwando/; "ruota" /'rwɔta/ However, in Corsican, the /w/ sound is best represented. ~ greetings for Corsica ~
About corsican it's not just B and V. The language does it for every consonant, each has a strong and weak pronounciation (depending on when the letter is between 2 vowels or not), T is either pronounced T or D, D is D or W, V and B are B or W like said, C before A or U is either Ka or Ga, C before e or i is either Tsh or Dj, M and N have stronger or softer pronounciations, S is either S or Z, Z is either Ts or Dz and so on. It's important to note that in the southern part of the island they have harder pronounciations overall, so the W sound usually becomes V (you can even hear L pronounced as D when in strong position, like Bellu (beautiful) can be heard "Beddu"). Also there is a small error with the example "e voi" at 5:30, it should be written "è voi". the word e means "the" (in plural feminine form), whereas è means "and", and there is a rule that says that every consonant that follows a word that ended with à, è, ì, ò or ù is pronounced in hard form (because it virtually doubles the next consonant like it's said just after in the video), so "è voi" is heard "è boi" because of it, "e voi" would be heard "e woi" (but no one would say that, it has no real meaning, people would say "e vostre", which is pronouced "e wostre").
It's true! And it does in Classical too, I think. It's like wearing a jacket or a sweater: they're both good. They have a slightly different feel but probably get the job done just as well.
Another reason to think that letter "v" represented a /u/ sound is the fact that they used the same grapheme for both the vowel [u] and the (semi)consonant [w]: VNVS ['u:.nus] vs VENIT ['we:.nit]
Growing up in Germany, I learned “Schullatein” (school latin), which is an ahistorical Frankenstein that mixes aspects of the German traditional pronunciation and the reconstructed classical. So we say v and ae like Italian, but c and ti(vowel) like classical, and then oe like the German ö and qu like kv. It’s a strange mix, and many Germans are now striving for a more proper classical pronunciation. That said, I do respect why it was chosen, to make acquisition of the language easier for native German speakers. It also has the advantage of allowing you to appreciate both classical and Medieval or Neo-Latin literature because your pronunciation has features of both. As someone who mostly reads late Medieval / early modern Latin, there are common alternative spellings (penitentia for poenitentia, celo for caelo or coelo, ecclesie as a genitive, and the infamous “eciam”) that pop up so frequently that insisting on classical pronunciation actually makes things more confusing. So, I admire your approach, Luke, in staying flexible and being willing to adjust pronunciation to context. At the end of the day the Schullatein I learned in 5th grade will always be the sound Latin makes in my head. And I guess that’s okay!
And ironically both Latin and German are part of the Indo-European language and they're quite common when it comes to pronunciation, grammar, diphthongs, etc.
Like in the German student song ”Oh, alten Burschenschaften”, where the Latin refrain ”o, quae mutatio rerum” sounds like ”oh, kvä mutazio rerum” with German R? I study German too and heard the song, and after a while I thought; hey, that’s actually Latin, but the pronounciation is weird…
In my native language, Catalan, Latin syllable-final ⟨v⟩ (also intervocalically due to the loss of word-final vowels) evolved into /w/ (written ⟨u⟩). For example "nou" (new, nine, nut), which in Spanish is "nueve, nuevo, nuez". Also, that u-z alteration in "nuez" is due to Old Occitan final /t͡s~d͡z/ becoming /w/ in Catalan.
Holy mary! I'll never regret having added Latin up to pick it up, such a beauteous, classical laguage! You didn't mistake when you chose to pick it up! You're a pride!
Ciao Luke, nella variante romanza (considerata dialetto, ma a tutti gli effetti una variante linguistica) della zona in cui vivo (nell'alto-milanese, a nord-ovest di Milano, anche se ci sono differenze con il "Milanese" un tempo parlato a Milano) la "V" non è mai pronunciata con il suono "W" ma a volte è molto debolmente pronunciata e a volte omessa. Ad esempio: nella frase "T' é 'istu?" sarebbe "T'é vistu?" ossia in italiano "Hai visto?" la "V" in "vistu" (participio passato del verbo "vedere", ossia "to see") viene debolmente pronunciata e in pratica non si sente. In un'altra espressione, "Al va bén" (in italiano "Va bene"), la "V" si pronuncia. Dipende quindi dalle parole e dall'espressione nel complesso: se la parola precedente ad una parola che inizia con "V" termina con una consonante, la "V" di solito viene pronunciata, ma se la parola precedente termina in una vocale, la "V" della parola seguente non viene pronunciata, o viene pronunciata molto debolmente. Credo che un fenomeno analogo fosse presente anche nel Latino (o meglio, nelle possibili tante varianti parlate di Latino nel territorio italiano, se pensi che in Italia fino a poco tempo fa, era sufficiente spostarsi di pochi chilometri di distanza per trovare variazioni nella lingua parlata)
Being severely dyslexic, I totally feel with the author who spelled words wrong, because certain letters kind of sounded similarly to others. Glad our kind is of use. 😄
there wasnt really such a thing as a "wrong" spelling back then. the way i feel is that even today there shouldnt be a "wrong" spelling. only good and bad spellings. "rait" is a perfectly good way to spell "right", but "shdbeidcjdne" is a bad way to spell "right". As someone who has been obsessed over spelling reform my whole life, i see dyslexia not as a disorder but as a perfectly normal side affect of people being made to spell words as if they were pronounced thousands of years ago with different spelling conventions from many different influencers all smashed together.
Ƿi ſ̌ud jwz ledŗz lajk pejnc an y kenƀıs, nat æz kympyƿnınc yƀ fıkſt lyƿgyƿgremz. We should use letters like paints on a canvas, not as components of fixed logograms.
@@servantofaeie1569 but spelling it as rait in way way shape or form has me thinking right. I'd rather stick with right than reform to rait because it only invokes rate in my mind. But then again i don't make an /a/ sound when saying right.
In the classic British history satire “1066 and all that”, they interpret “veni vide vici” as the Roman assessment of the ancient Britons, “weeny, weedy, weaky”.
Hello from Germany, in some Schools in Germany you have to chose betwen Latin and French in 6th grade. I chose Latin and I do not repent it, but they only teach us to translate not speak and pronounce. I am so glad I discovered your channel.
I would love to see a video about the transition of the Greek letter Θ from the sound of T+H to the sound of the letter thorn or the transition of Ф from P+H to F
Another interesting thing is that in the sicilian dialect of Palermo, people pronounce "o" and "e" as semivowels in some context, like in romanian ("eggs" is pronounced "oava")
16:32 this sprachbund idea of yours is interesting. Aramaic and Hebrew went through the same change as well around the same time (begadkefat) (maybe because koine Greek was widespread through the middle east?)
In Portuguese sometimes b and v are interchangeable, so people say both brabo /brabu/ and bravo /bravu/, travesseiro /traviseru/ and trabesseiro /trabiseru/, assoviar /asuvia:/ and assobiar /asubia:/ etc... Also, notice how Portuguese pronunciation is so different from Portuguese orthography? Portuguese phonology seems so distant from Latin phonology. I'd love if you made video about the most divergent romance languages from Latin, in terms of orthography and phonology.
On a side note in some regions of Brazil "bravo" and "brabo" differentiated in their use. "Bravo" usually means "brave", "corageous", "valiant", whereas "brabo" means "angry", "annoyed", "aggressive" or even "prone to violence"
Portuguese orthography is mainly designed to fit European dialects of Portuguese, which is kind of weird, considering there’s a lot more people in Brazil and other Portuguese speaking countries. Nonetheless, if you look at the phonology of European dialects compared to the orthography, it will be closer. So, for example, taking “assobiar” (by the way, in European dialects you won’t generally see assoviar with a v), you would pronounce it more or less like ãsubiar, at least in the Lisbon dialect. Besides that, the weird orthography that doesn’t seem to translate well into pronunciation is, for the most part, just a way of distinguishing between different realizations of the same phoneme that are context dependent. Using the word above, the double s there is used to indicate that the sound there is actually an s, whereas you would normally pronounce it as a z (because it’s intervocalic).
People in Castille used to pronounce V and B differently until recently. in Valladolid and Salamanca the V was more of a fricative and B explosive bilabial. However, as far back as in roman times, the spanish had a tendency to not differentiate v and b. This is reflected in the latin pun "beatii hispanii quibus vivere bibere est"
That thing about the uvular trill spreading from French into Portuguese is very interesting. It makes a lot of sense, and it also explains why, in Portugal, the closer you are to Lisbon, the more likely you are to pronounce your hard r's as uvular trills. It was the French court influencing the Portuguese one.
Dear Luke, thank you again for your video! (Looking forward for the complete ±50 video-long playlist for each letter, ha ha ! :O ) I especially appreciate your comments in 22:54 and 23:10 (different _veni vidi vici_ pronunciations). Having spent some time learning a language many people think ‘harsh’ (Arabic), I find that kind of stereotypes often depend on the association of the language in question with a limited type of voice and tone. All the Latinists you point to and your own voice acting are excellent demonstrations of the expressive power of Latin. We're lucky to have you.
Thanks so much! Yeah, like German has become thought of us "harsh" due to associations with WWII soldiers; but in the 19th century Mark Twain made fun of German as sounding too soft and sweet.
in english, we have: 1. wine, from latin vinum; 2. wall , from latin vallum; 3. worm, from latin vermis. Robert Ainsworth pointed this out in 1735 (viz, latin u-consonans, "V" is uttered as english "W") incidentally, RA also wrote that the latin i-consonans ("J") is uttered as english "Y", and should be called "ye"! he also said that both latin "c" and latin "g" should be uttered "hard"; truly, there is nothing new under the sun.
I love your discussion of collocation effects (and other things I don't have the terms of art at hand to properly describe). Your discussion of the B sound changing to (what I view as) the very unique Spanish bilabial fricative sound when between vowels was especially illuminating.
Having investigated the phenomenon of the spread of the uvular or guttural R throughout Northern Europe it seems overwhelmingly likely that it spread from France outwards when the traditional alveolar trill shifted to a uvular trill in the 18th century (in certain areas, most notably the Ile de France and more broadly the North); we also know that French was the lingua franca of the educated and noble classes at that time and German for example, as an alternative original source, did not enjoy the same prestige whatsoever. Also given that in Southern German speaking areas, the alveolar trill is still preferred, I think this suggests that uvular R did not originate in Germany. Generally speaking the sociological motivation for a shift in pronunciation can be attributed to things like prestige accents and as French was la langue par excellence at the time imitating certain features of it would have been something sought after.
13:55 very good point! In fact, even today, many Greek speakers learning English (or even people that have been taught English but don't practice it much) can't pronounce the letter w, and approximate it either with β or γ
"Wine" in Hebrew is "yain." Normally an initial Y in Hebrew exchanges with W (Vav). So, it seems there must have been a very ancient Canaanite word *wain. Could the Greek word have come from Canaanite?
@@TeutonicEmperor1198 Perhaps Canaanite merchants introduced some upgraded version of the product, and their jargon became the accepted name for it among Greeks. The Bible says that Noah made wine first thing after the Flood. So wine is among the oldest produce.
You are correct. Wiktionary:wéyh₁ō Etymology[edit] Disputed;[1][2] possibly from *weh₁y- (“to twist; to wrap”) + *-ō,[3][4][5] compare Ancient Greek ὑιήν (huiḗn, “grapevine”), from *wihy-ḗn[5], and Latin vītis (“vine”), from *wéh₁itis, or perhaps borrowed from either Proto-West Semitic *wayn- or Proto-Kartvelian *ɣwino-, if those terms are not instead borrowings of this one.[2][6][7][8] Possibly all ultimately borrowed from an unattested Mediterranean substrate language.[9][10]
@@TeutonicEmperor1198 grapes come from the Mediterranean. They need heat to grow naturally. They couldn't come from the Caucasus. The ancients of what is now Israel, Palestine, Syria and Lebanon were the Canaanites.
I would like to see a video of Old Latin, how it evolved into Classical Latin. And how some modern-day romance languages (especially Spanish) have elements of both of the aforementioned.
Hi Luke, very interesting and enlightening explanation about the letter v. The v is Spanish is a topic of endless and passionate discussions. Linguriosa has a very interesting video on the difference(s) between v and b in Spanish.
Salve, Luca! You make an excellent case here. I am a linguist at heart, but sadly not by any extensive training or education. I was a German major/Spanish minor in college 40 years ago. I have since studied Koine Greek in seminary (Eastern Orthodox) and taught myself a bit of Church Slavonic and Latin (ecclesiastical pronunciation since I was studying liturgical texts). When I first encountered the idea that "v" was pronounced "w" in Classical Latin, I was a bit surprised. Again, you've made your case well, and I don't disbelieve you, but I had really thought I was on to something: If you take the name Παβλος in Greek and go two disparate directions, you'll find the "v" pronunciation of the β. In Church Slavonic and in modern Slavic languages, you have "Pavl" Inflected in the accusative/genitive it becomes "Pavla" and in dative "Pavlu," etc. On the other hand, if you go to Spanish, you get Pablo. In other Romance languages, it seemed to me that the "v" sound had mostly dropped out, in Italian: "Paolo", and completely in Portuguese: "Palo." It really seemed to me that Spanish was retaining what might be called a weak "v" (bilabial approximate) that could easily just fall away. So then I thought about two words in Latin. First the 1st person plural present indicative of laudo: laudamus. If that were pronounced "lavdamus" it would make perfect sense as coming from the αυ diphthong in Greek, reflected in the name of the letter "tav" (which would be similar in pronunciation to the Hebrew equivalent, I believe), and in αυτο which became "авто in Russian. Similarly, it seemed to me that a word like "vniversvs" would likely have the letter "v" pronounced like a "u" between consonants or at the beginning of a word before a consonant, but as "v" between vowels. So, as I said, you make a very compelling case. My curiosity and inability to totally let go of my pet hypothesis YET begs me to ask: Is it at all possible that there is anything to it? Could what I describe have happened at some point in history with some regional dialect. Of course, the pronunciation of Greek to which I refer is the more modern and that is no doubt significant. Likewise, it is probably significant that the "b/v" in Spanish when not at the beginning is generally a bilabial approximate. In fact, I learned to never use the fricative like English "v." That is, as I said, a sort of "weak" sound. Ultimately the question in my mind is: is there anything to connect "Pavl" in Slavic to "Pablo" in Spanish through the au diphthong? Or is it, as I fear now, only the illusion of a connection? Very respectfully yours, Mark Harrison P.S. I purchased and downloaded your materials for learning Latin. They follow the same method that I used in 8th grade to get Spanish down. I walked around the house with 501 Spanish Verbs, conjugating verbs and using them in sentences. That created a foundation for advancing quickly because I could apply the different tenses and persons to express ideas we hadn't learned in class yet. It was at the same time that I picked up my grandmother's Latin missal and started getting the idea down of noun declension. Dominus, Domini, Domino, Dominum, Domine - I saw each form in a different context and figured out subject, possessive object, indirect object, direct object, and calling upon. Sadly, I don't have the leisure time now to practice Latin as much, but I'm working on it.
very interesting... this also explains the transition from Etruscan "avle" to Latin "aulus", it must have been a sound similar to /w/ in Etruscan as well
The same video but on the letter C would be nice too!!! Same thing for the letter J/I. Maybe a video on the consonant changes in the radicals of certain verbs (like the french verb avoir (to have) witch has av-, eu-, aur- and ay- as radicals and doesn't look like avere in italian) would be interesting too. Amazing video! Bravo!!!
At long last I get a proper explanation on this issue! I really enjoyed your video. Cheers from Patagonia! (By the way, I bet you would have a field day analyzing the Argentinian variation of Spanish. You probably already have, though)
Welsh used to use W V U and something that resembled a 6 for /w/ and /u/😳 And fun fact, words borrowed from Latin to Welsh (Via Latin) that start with vi are rendered, Gw+vowel, like Gwin (Wine). But then we have words like Ficer and finegr, which were borrowed from Latin via English, which don't look as cool😗
It was definitely hard to accept when I learned in Latin class that the original pronunciation had a /w/ sound; specially being a speaker of Portuguese. It sounded foreign and .... well, wrong. Thanks to hearing the way you speak Latin though, without putting emphasis on the sound at all, as if it were there before and having never made the change to /v/ in many romance languages, it just started sounding normal. Also, it was specially interesting hearing the Montellese dialect where, though clearly pronounced as a /w/ sound it really sounds like almost a short /w/, at least to my ears. I could really picture that being the standard pronunciation by the time of Kikero. :-) Thanks a lot Luke, always super fun watching your videos.
The Belarusian is the the only Slavic language that represent /w/ in spelling (AFAIK in Ukrainian in some variants /w/ is also possible, but it continues to write etymologically), and the story of unique Cyrillic letter ў has Latin connection (however not direct, but as meta-idea (as it is very often about writing system). The Old-Belarusian (a.k.a. Old-Ukrainian, West-Ruthenian and many other names) was widely used in Grand Duchy of Lithuania as official and bureaucratic language, however, as it was common in Middle-ages, written language was distinct enough from oral languages and we use spelling errors to reconstruct feature of oral language, fortunately we have unique sources Old-Belarusian oral language made in Arabic alphabet (there were invited settlement of Tatars, who are created many interesting sources in specially adapted Arabic script). So we can restore with high accuracy that /w/ was already a distinctive feature of theretime Belarusian language. However, in the end XVII century after some cruel political events leaded to weakening of powers, Old-Belarusian was replaced by Polish in official use, and nobility almost lost Old-Belarusian language, that was followed in the end of next century by division of The Commonwealth and increasing russification process. The Belarusian survived between rural population only. So when Belarusian (or we can say New-Belarusian) began to be revitalized the Old-Belarusian written Cyrillic tradition was almost entirely lost, and up to begin of XX century revitalization attempt was done mostly on Latin graphic (firstly with essential Polish influence on it but progressively diminishing). And exactly in the second half of XIX one of the revitalisers Francišak Bahuševič hit a problem, that almost all folk phonologies have distinct /w/, what was not presented in theretime Polish graphic (the transition of ł in Polish happens latter), and he didn't know how to represent this sound in spelling. Then he came to the classical Latin education for inspiration and borrowed ŭ (u-breve) for this function. (Decades latter Zamenhof who was born in Biełastok (modern Polish Białystok) used the same idea (or even directly inspired) in Esperanto). When Cyrillic influence in New-Belarusian began to increase, the ŭ letter was adopted in Cyrillic as ў, (it also has good already existed parallel in й /j/). This way was unique ў invented, between Slavic languages with Cyrillic graphic, Belarusian is the only language who uses it (there are some non-Slavic languages in former-USSR who use it, when in early Soviet era Cyrillic alphabets were (created)/(substituted Arabic) for them, but htis is different story). Other interesting story about Latin V related to GDL, Belarus and Lithuania is exactly word Lithuania in English. (Disclaimer: I don't want to provoke political/hot discussion, so I just state neutral enough position that both Belarus and Lithuania are true heirs of GDL, have this in mind before comment). So from my POV spelling Lithuania isn't correct, because in the time when this word was coined in Latin, there was not difference between V and U, so it definitely was LITHVANIA, where NIA frequent ending for lands in medieval Latin (I'm curious why they used TH here probably for aesthetic reason) so the root was LITHVA what is very consistent with all Сyrillic sources Літва (hope I'm correct about usage of 8th and 10th i). But I assume when XIX-XX centuries restored noun Lithuania from mediaeval sources the knowledge that here is exception for reading rules in Latin was not available.
I just feel free to be happy now thanks to you, Luke. It's been perfectly okay and pleasant to me listening to the restored pronunciation since long ago but at the same time I just enjoy my labiodental v's. Success 🙌 !
I am a bohairic Coptic speaker which is the northern dialect of old Egyptian in its last stage. And surprisingly the bilabial fricative started to exist Coptic after a while. Like for example the word ⲧⲟⲩⲃⲟ (which means “to holy”) is pronounced as “Touvo”. And eventually, after the Arab conquest to Egypt, the language was subjected to some degrees of Arabization that actually made some Coptic speakers pronounce it as “Touwo”. Imo it had this phonological change because of Arabic replacing Coptic over the centuries so sounds from Coptic were hard to pronounce for Arabic-speaking Egyptians. For instance the ⲡ sound became a b, because P being harder to pronounce for Arabic speakers. As for the w sound itself, it was written as ⲟⲩ. Like for example the word ⲟⲩⲱⲛϣ. It means wolf and it sounds like “wōnsh” or the word ⲟⲩⲁϩⲙⲓ which means apartment and it sounds like “wahmi”. There are like 3 pronunciations to bohairic coptic nowadays. There is the ecclesiastical pronunciation which was made back in the 19th century during the time of the Egyptian pope Kyrillos the fourth. Which has some issues since they used the phonology of modern greek as a datum of making this pronunciation. So it produced sounds we Egyptians are not familiar with such as the th sound or the modern delta sound. And there is the late Coptic pronunciation, which is the coptic pronunciation used in churches in Egypt before pope Kyrillos pronunciation reforms. And those reforms took place because late coptic was heavily influenced by Arabic, so it killed of sounds that were originally in coptic and added sounds that didn’t exist. And the third pronunciation is the reconstructed classical pronunciation, which is also called the 2nd century pronunciation which is the most accurate since researchers use the phonology of an older stage of Greek that existed back in the 2nd century. I am sorry for the long comment, but your passion for languages and how you talk about them made me do the same and talk about them as much as you do 😂 ⲛⲟϥⲣⲓ ⲉⲃⲟⲗ ϧⲉⲛ ⲭⲏⲙⲓ (Greetings from Egypt) ❤️
Interesting. So is it true that our ethnonym have sounded Wulgarum in Latin? In the written sources from 4th and 5th century, it is recorded in genitive plural as Vulgarum. So when did happen the transition from W to B in the ethnonym of the Bulgarians?
People have been regressed and ended up speaking other languages including Latin as part of their previous lives in the study of reincarnation. However, keeping away from arguments on reincarnation itself, it seems like an interesting exercise to study any recordings of speaking during sessions.
In Gascon, too, the /w/ sound is present often intervocalically instead of [β] (in other dialects). Example; in some parts you'll hear "aver" [a'βe], in other parts you'll hear "auer" [a'we] meaning "to have", etc. I think the same is also true of Catalan.
Idk if i’ve already said it, but in western gascon, -v- between vowels is /w/, and word initally it’s /b/. Of course -v- includes words that used to have b, such as the imperfect cantava. Besides you’ve got tons of alternations like blau/blava (blue, they can both have w), and roi/roja (red, they can both have /j/)
When teaching my students the pronunciation of "v" I start by reminding them that v=u, and then have them pronounce the initial "v" in vinum as a "u." It adds a syllable, of course. so I have them say it slowly, then I have them speed up the pronunciation until the natural result is the "w." You can do this with the initial o in the Greek equivalent. Turns out, certain vowels just morph that way, given the shapes our mouths make as we speak quickly. The trick is sticking to the pronunciations that lead to those mouth shapes in the first place.
Ancient Hebrew had a w sound which became v in modern pronunciation too. It is a common sound change. Although I think in their case, it might have been the Germanic language speakers pronouncing it that changed it.
@@ryuko4478 I don't understand. Traditions of what? Pronunciation? I wonder how they would document that. Did they write out descriptions of how they pronounced things like the Romans did?
@@stevenv6463 Jews have many many traditions of how to pronounce Hebrew, famously stuff like Babylonian Hebrew, Tiberian Hebrew, Palestinian Hebrew, etc. and yes they wrote about how they pronounced things as well as write down the hebrew in different scripts giving us extra hints, many traditions survive to this day, Modern Hebrew vowels are based on the Modern Sephardic tradition for example. For an example of a text talking about how to pronounce Hebrew check out Hidayat al-Qari (Horayat ha-Qore in Hebrew) for example.
@@stevenv6463 to be specific Tiberian Hebrew, when written in Arabic they used to confused /w/ and write it with the letter for /b/, there are even texts discussing how Iraqi Jews pronounce it differently (as [w]) and that fricated /b/ sounds exactly like /w/, [w] still exists in Tiberian Hebrew but it's only specific situations like after a long pretonic /u/ or in the conjugation [wu] "and". Wikipedia would tell you differently but Wikipedia is badly sourced when it comes to this, I can send you the name of the text book that I use for this if you're interested.
For Romanian, the evolution of B/V is pretty interesting: - initial and post-consonantal B remains [b]: "bine, bun, barbă, bărbat, bea, bâlbâit, vorbă, alb, blând" - intervocalic B becomes [w] if the stress precedes: HABENT > "au" and [v] if the stress is after: HABEBANT > "aveau" - B becomes [w] before L and R non-initially: FABRUM -> faur (interestingly, it corresponds to Italian "bbr") - if the B is followed by a semivocalic Romance [j], the I and B switch places: RUBEUS > *rubius -> "roib"; OBVIUS > "uib"; HABEAT > *abiat > "aibă" - initial V becomes [v]: "veni, vânt, vâna", but there is one particular case where it seems to become [b]: VETERANUS > "bătrân" - intervocalic V remains [w]: OVUM > "ou", NOVEM > "nouă", BOVEM >> *bovus > "bou", NOVUS > "nou" - in diphtongs, V mostly remains [u], unlike in Western Romance, unless it was an early Latin shift: AURICULA > *oricla in all Continental Romance > "ureche"
Thank you for the overview. With an old interest in Romanian, I have sometimes been wondering about the intricacies of this rule. Now I can't help wondering: Why is it that "habēre" becomes "avea" with /v/, but "hīberna" becomes "iarnă" without /v/? Maybe it has to do with the preceding vowel? I realise that it can be difficult to formulate a rule with so few examples, of course. I was wondering if you know more? By the way, Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române seems to list "boace" as a (more native?) variant of "voce", so maybe this is a parallel of "bătrân".
@@troelspeterroland6998 Probably because the noun would have come from the deverbalized form, and in the infinitive verb the accent was a little bit further away: HIBERNÁRE > "iernáre" > "iarnă". There are a lot of cases where sound laws don't explain everything, you need to look into derivation and analogy. Here, we see a case of derivation within Romanian itself.
@@troelspeterroland6998 Voce is a borrowing from Italian. For "bocet" and "a boci", the etymology is probably not VOX, but might be a verbalized form of BUCCA: the -esco/ire (former -escere in Classical Latin) form relating to a change of mood "bocesc/a boci (bocire)": to begin shouting, crying, whereas the -o/are form is a transitive action "a îmbuca; bucată": to grab with the mouth; piece. You can't truly trust Romanian dictionaries, as the etymologies there seem to have been done to prove a political agenda (that Romanian comes from Latin) rather than to descriptively describe the language. There have been some efforts recently, though. Still, in this time period, Romania is pretty bad at Linguistics, as it is not taught too much in universities, and when Linguistics is rarely available, it is rather Generative Linguistics pioneered by Chomsky, instead of Historical Linguistics. For studying Historical Linguistics, I had to go study abroad.
@@tudormardare66 Thanks a lot! Yes, I know that morphophonology matters but I would not have thought of this explanation myself. I suppose that a verb derived from the noun and a noun in turn backformed from the verb would also account for the change in gender "hībernum" > "iarnă".
@@tudormardare66 I have indeed noticed that the different resources compiled in dexonline.ro do not always agree among themselves about etymolgies although they generally seem more sober than decades ago. I guess that "bucca" as an origin for "boace", "boci" etc. would mean assuming a rare case of u being lowered to o. I suppose this is more parsimonious than assuming b from v, since there are other examples of this. Is it possible to give a rule for u > o?
Hi Luke! I’m Swedish. I have studied Spanish, Serbian, Russian, Latin and German. And still, it is ENGLISH that comes across to me is having the weirdest pronounciation, spelling and vocabulary! It is like Germanic grammar but Latin and French vocabulary. The spelling seems to relate very little to the pronounciation. English is the first second language we learn in Sweden, but to someone who goes on to study other languages, it suddenly seems extremely strange! No offense guys, but your language is CRAZY from a linguistic point of view… and yet it conquered the world. Keep up your fascinating work, Luke.
Salve, Luke! I have a question: how was the V in classical Latin transcribed Ancient Greek? My Ancient Greek textbook says they used to use ”ου" to represent the sound. And in modern Greek, it's indeed still "ου" (e.g. Φεβρουάριος - Februarius). However the name "Virgilius" is spelled like "Βιργίλιος", with a beta. I don't know if they already spelled like this in the classical era, or changed the the spelling at some period.
At first, they would use Οὐ or Υ in diphthongs: Aurelius → Αὐρήλιος, Virgilius → Οὐιργίλιος, but, I guess (don't take this as granted!) that when both languages started to use the fricative /v/, Greek would use β for it, although retaining the diphthongs as an orthographical convention.
Very insightful content! I would be curious about understanding how the letter "C" developed into different pronunciations (eg the difference between the sound of "ci" in French, Italian and Spanish. Greetings from Munich
"Write a comment in the description." Okay, Luke, what's your password lol. But really, this was a very fun and informative video. I had seen some of the inscriptions with "IOBE" and the like, but I never thought it was because they were hearing "B between vowels" as closer to /w/! That shocked me!
I was thinking that Italian does have hints in certain words. Paura, from Latin pavor. For some reason the pronunciation of this word did not change to a v sound, even if related words like pavido did.
"Iobe" and "dibi" are enlightening. I've also always loved the Pompeiian graffito from the domus of M. Fabius Rufus, "VASIA quae rapui quaeris formosa puella (...)" which incidentally reminds us of the Neapolitan word for "bacio"
Note: That use for B instead of V in transitional late Latin is the same sort of historical spelling mash-up that happened in Spanish and is reflected in Spanish spelling errors but also in common usage today. Some Spanish words switched from V to B, at least before standardized spelling, and some were changed back to V to fit etymology. But even now, Spanish speakers will say be-longo or be de burro, or ve de use or ve-corto, and a few similar things, to distinguish if they mean B or V in spelling. In medieval blackletter forms, even outside of Spain, b and v were sometimes only differentiated by b having a tall ascender, while both had a squared, looped, or 3-like shape for the right side stroke. Also, W to /bh/ to V and B to /bh/ to V occurred in both Greek and Spanish, and that /bh/ bilabial fricative occurs as an allophone in other Indo-European languages, such as Hindi. It's how Continental Germanic languages went from W to V. In Greek, it seems like the voiced fricatives may have arisen as a blurring that mirrored the change from aspirated stops to fricatives for PH, TH, KH, so we got BH, DH, GH to match.
You can also see a transition of qu from kw to a k in English spelling (British more specifically). Quick is spelled this way because qu is kw in old Norman French where the later borrowing of check (cheque in British English) came from a more modern dialect of French.
Your basic logic is sound, but "question" would be a better example, because "quick" is actually a native Germanic word, not one that we get from Norman French.
How about a video about the intermediate vowel and the differing spelling of documentum/docimentum, optume/optime, etc? Not quite regular like u, nor i, nor Greek y.
I would love to see an explanation of how Middle French to Modern French changed from EI to OI to /wa/ and OIN /wẽ/. It seems so odd to me that in a short period, it could go all the way from [ei] to [ëi] (ë for schwa, e-muet) or [øi] to [oi] or [ui] and then to [wa] and that that would be sudden and become standard for so many cases. Middle English words borrowed from Middle French (and Norman French) kept the EI/EY. But I have never seen an explanation of this when I took French or since then.
Ottimo video. Sei stato meticoloso ed esaustivo. È sempre un piacere imparare le nozioni che porti. Grazie a questo video, inoltre, si spiega anche perché in italiano, in alcuni casi, la lettera U si comporta da semiconsonante e si pronuncia [w]. Il suono [w] compare nei dittonghi, quando la "u" è vicina ad altre vocali. Esempi: "uomo" ['wɔ.mo], "quando" ['kwando], "ruota" ['rwɔta].
I'm interested in one particular issue, if anyone can help me. In the 4th century, when Jerome wrote the Vulgate Bible, was Jacob, for example pronounced as today Jacob, or was it Jacov?
Great question! Final -b doesn’t have a direct analogue in Romance, but I think it would be /b/ at least in isolation. But looking at the Italian reflexes, Giacomo and Jacopo, we can see that it was likely not a fricative.
Quick question: I’ve heard that the sound of Latin “v” before a front vowel was changed to /ɥ/, but the same source that claimed that also proscribed Germanic lax vowels for certain short Latin vowels, so I’m not entirely sure how reliable it is. On the other hand, I can’t help but notice the poster on the back wall with «ΚΥΡΙΤΕΣ (pronounced “ky:rites”, I would assume)» transcribed in Latin as “QVIRITES”, which makes much more sense if pronounced roughly like “kɥirites”. I’m curious to hear your opinions on that. VALÉTE AM|C|
Sorry may be I miss something : if latin said U or W when they write V , wich letter they used for the sound V ? They do not use the this sound at all ? Tankyou .
Will you also do an analysis on the evolution of /tj/ and /cj/ in Latin? 🤔 I could help you on the evolution it had in Sardinian (any dialect, camp log and nuor) if you'd like :D
By the way, e voi probably is pronounced /ebboi/ because e comes from latin et, it happens also in Sardinian. Probably it happens in Corsican with a too, since it could be from ab, ad and aut
Alsooo one more useful thing. We can see this phenomenon happening in Japanese right now: one can hear watashi wa pronounced sometimes as /watashi wa/, /βatashi βa/ or /vatashi va/ depending on the speaker! Probably was the same in Latin, and it's cool to see that they all exist at the same time
@@viperking6573 I've never heard of anything similar to [βatashi βa] or [vatashi va] in japanese, do you have any sources on that? from what I know the *opposite* happens in Japanese, where /w/ looses labialization and becomes [ɰ], while [β] is an allophone of /b/ not /w/, notice how Japanese people confuse English /b/ and /v/ never /w/ and /v/
I guess because I'm an English speaker, /w/ sounds more proper. It really feels like a consonant version of /u/, plus, its probably the original Indo-European sound. "Vir" and its Old English cognate "wer" sound nearly identical and mean the exact same thing, a male.
In informal speech in Quebecois French, the "v" in verbs like "voir" and "avoir" is pronounced like a "w", with the vowel becoming a diphtongue. "woèr" and "awoèr".
if you are looking for more connections I suggest looking at Late Biblical Hebrew and Aramaic where they had a sound change called begadkefat, basically intervocallic ungeminated /p b t d k g/ became fricatives ([ɸ~f β~v θ ð x~χ ɣ~ʁ]), we aren't sure when it happened, but it definitely was after the 7th century BC. Also notably some later Mishnaic forms of Hebrew from the 8th century CE (though likely recording much older pronunciations) merge /w/ and /v/ in most positions.
@@romaios1609 Except that it could very well be coincidental, lenition is one of the most common sound changes ever. So there might be a connection and there might not be, we can't be sure. It's always interesting seeing those patterns though.
How do you know that Latin "B" did not have a fricative (ie V) sound at the beginning and then changed to [English] B sound? After all you have the Garigliano bowl where what appears as "F" later changes to "B" (ie TRIFOS -> TRIBUS). This is in line also with Aeolic (etc) Greek digamma-to-beta shift (eg FΡΟΔΟΝ -> ΒΡΟΔΟΝ). So that effectively in "IOBE" and "DIBI" (11:26) the change would be from semi-vowel (ie W/digamma sound) to the otherwise consonantal [English] V sound (remember that Latin used V both as V and U, so that it would make sense for V to favour a consonantal sound when in between vowels, as otherwise it would simply be too many vowels stuck together). Likewise, as far as I have been told, moden Italian has V inbetween vowels, where there otherwise was a B in Latin (ie what was B in Latin remained as B in italian when it was next to some other consonant; this could be some short of gemination, similar to Spanish and/or Greek B when right after M/N)... Moreover, Latin V/U acts as a consonant when between vowels (eg Eu-ripides v. Ev-agoras; both these Ev/u come from the same Greek ΕΥ...) so that we see the same consonant-favouring principle. And given also that later Latin and Italian were influenced from the north, it could be that the initial fricative sound was retained in regions like Spain etc (or southern Italy; see here a list of southern Italian words [that start] with V for expected Italian/Latin B; www.dieli.net/SicilyPage/SicilianLanguage/SicVoStoZ.html) that did not have much influence from the northern Germanic tribes (or "trifes"(?) for old Latin?).
@@polyMATHY_Luke I maintain that I have posted a comment about Sydney Allen's analysis regarding the phonetics of the letter B... Is it perhaps under review by you, or have you deleted it?
I didn’t delete it. The point, though, is simply that your idea is incorrect and your research is insufficient. Read the sources I pointed you to. Then we can talk.
@@polyMATHY_Luke Well, I have addressed Allen's analysis in this comment of mine. I have also used this website/link (www.foundalis.com/lan/betapro.htm ) with a summary of Allen's comments and I addressed all of these points, while I also added reasons why Greek and Latin B would be fricative... So is my comment under review or you do not see any comment with the aforementioned link? Also, if you do not see any comment then how do you know whether my "reasearch is insufficient"?
I’ve read it. I compliment your organizational style and clarity. But there is not clear evidence for fricative for either language until 1cAD. Thus supposing a fricative or something similar in 1cBC is reasonable as a minor variant, but not a universal sound.
In my particular dialect of Romanian, the plural for eggs is written ouă but it's pronounced more like wowo in English. To my ears it sounds just like tje letter w, but it's spelled with a u. I can't really think of other examples of this sound in Romanian, it's just thst when you played that clip of an italian dialect saying eggs, it sounded exactly like Romanian.
Isn't the fact that U and V originally weren't separate letters in Latin a strong indication for V being pronounced more like the English W in classical Latin?
You gave the example VIDI- to look or to watch which in romanian evolved in 2 words that mean the same thing, a "vedea" and "a uita" one with V and one with W
Don't know if this topic was already covered, but if it's possible it would be nice to get a video about the difference between Ch and K when some words got translated from greek to latin, Ch and X or Kh or H, C and K, and C and G. Great video as always. Thanks
About veni, vidi vici vs..weeny, weedy weaky, I think the criticism of [w] is based on the false premise that people shout or grumble to sound tough in Romance languages, like they do in English and German. In reality, though, shouting like a little kid and getting all emotional is considered a weakness in Romance languages, where it's more threatening to talk calmly and mechnically about killing you, like it's no more than swatting a fly. "Oh, it was nothing to conquer the Gauls, I just came, took a look around and kicked their asses."
From the point of view of pronunciation , great part of vocabulary, grammar Romanian is the purest latin language apart from Italian from what i've personally studied. The way the people behave , especially in Transilvania, Banat and Oltenia(regions of Romania) , how they look like, the manners and so on ( maybe the way they speak )demonstrate a strong and , strangely visible link between us and the ancient romans. We have to take in consideration that during all our history we had no direct border to any latin country. My people ( Romanian people) is absolutely incredible.
Thanks for the video! You make me want to revive my high school Latin. What are you thought's on Duolingo's pronunciation for Latin? If you did not make a video for it I think that'd be interesting.
How was the letter V pronounced in Latin? Was it really /w/ like the W of English? This video explores that question in detail.
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Stefano Vittori's wonderful reconstruction of 1cAD pronunciation, from Petronius: ruclips.net/video/khiootdwfok/видео.html
⚔️ Jackson Crawford's video on the change of /w/ to /v/ in Norse:
ruclips.net/video/j4K-pGPT46o/видео.html
🇪🇸 Linguriosa's video about the sound of B and V in Spanish:
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🇮🇹 See the Podcast Italiano video on raddoppiamento fonosintattico:
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🔊 Hear the audio of the Montellese language/dialect of Italy (note that the IPA transcriptions are not all accurate)
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Many references to the research I cite can be found in the book Social Variation and the Latin Language by J.N. Adams, pp.183-190, available on Amazon here: amzn.to/3f2PlTv
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00:00 Intro
01:35 The Short Answer
03:13 Modern Spanish B & V
04:02 Do any modern Romance languages have /w/ ? Corsican
06:06 Montellese
10:00 Greek cognates with Latin: vīnum, ϝοἶνος
11:06 When Latin V starts to change
17:19 Stefano Vittori's rendition of 1cAD pronunciation of B & V
19:11 It's absolutely okay to use /v/ for V in your spoken Latin! 👍
21:43 See these videos about Old Norse and Spanish
22:23 Conclusion
We cannot wait for you to do a nice in-depth video on the Romanian language.
The evolution of the language compared to Latin and the other Romance languages.
We need you to do some high quality video on the topic.
Mulțumesc.
Can u make a video about the arch of Titus .located on the via sacra in Rome .
It was constructed in c. 81 AD by the Emperor Domitian shortly after the death of his older brother Titus to commemorate Titus's official deification or consecratio and the victory of Titus together with their father, Vespasian, over the Jewish rebellion in Judaea
The inscription SENATVS
POPVLVSQVE·ROMANVS
DIVO·TITO·DIVI·VESPASIANI·F(ILIO)
VESPASIANO·AVGVSTO
Meaning
Senatus Populusque Romanus divo Tito divi Vespasiani filio Vespasiano Augusto
The Senate and the Roman people (dedicate this) to the deified Titus Vespasian Augustus, son of the deified Vespasian
Why did the Romans spell that way? AVGVSTO
Thanks
in western (I think) gascon occitan V is pronounced as /w/ between vowels, though this may be a later development since that's also how - v - from latin - b - is pronounced as in imperfect -avi, -avas, -ava. similarly, J and soft g are both /j/. and that causes alternations like blau/blava and roi/roja (m/f), but this is also seen in dialects where v,j are obstruents.
@@Paralyzer V and u used to be the capital and lowercase (with some more variation)
Already following Dr Jackson Crawford, Linguriosa and Podcast Italiano since a time ago, they are wonderful channels.
I'm going for the rest of your suggestions now! Thanks a lot!
Hello from Romania, thank you for not forgeting about us.
♥️ 🇷🇴 !
I love the others, but Romanian is my favourite modern romance language
We won’t forget our cousins who live beyond the forest (Transylvania)
Fyi, in romanian egg is "ou", which is pronounced like "ow", an example where the old "v" from "ovum" is pronounced close to "w".
I can also think at "rain" which is "ploaie" in romanian. The "uv" from "pluvia"/"pluvium" was replaced by "oa", pronounced close to "wha" from "what".
The same goes for "sheep", which is "oaie". The "ov" from the latin "ovis"/"ovium" was replaced by "oa" pronounced close to "wha" from "what".
@@UltimaGaina nice clue
Actually in Spanish we do have the /w/ sound, in words like “hueso”, “huevo”, “huele”, and many more, because in most Spanish words, stressed “o” became “ue”, and since in the Middle Ages the alphabet only had “u” for small letter “v”, they wrote it with an “h” at the beginning of a word so that they would know to pronounce it as a “u” and not as a “b”
As he said, it comes from a Latin long "o" diphtongization. In Spanish, "ue" or "hue" corresponds to a long "o" in Latin. It doesn't come from a Latin "v". That was the point. In Spanish that Latin sound shifted to a +/- "b" sound. He never said that sound doesn't exist at all in the language, he said it doesn't match the Latin one.
@Mr. Rich B.O.B Exactly, that's right, they wrote "Nahuatl" because if they had written it "Nauatl" everybody would have just read it as "Nabatl", the H served to distinguish the u in these diphthongs sometimes. Of course if the H was removed today we would not have any trouble reading it.
We as Spanish natives of course don't really hear the /w/ sound, we just hear it as a "ue". Even when we learn English at school we're taught that the W is a Spanish U.
Cheers!
That's right! just as in Italian uovo, etc. I meant to say that most Romance languages don't use /w/ for Latin V.
@@Matfer345 Eso es casi palabra por palabra lo que dijo el OP...
Pero gracias por añadir lo de la "hi" = "j"! Eso quiere decir que nuestra ortografía de "Hielo" viene de la necesidad de escribir una palabra pronunciada "jelo"? En español moderno la pronunciación de ambas sería bastante distinta...
@Mr. Rich B.O.B in modern Nahuatl they actually spell nauatl or nawatl, though.
When I first heard someone say “weni widi wici” I thought it was the funniest thing! 😆
Even funnier is 'veni, veni, veni'.
weni, widi, wiKi
@@Miggy19779 "Weni Wedi Weni"
Elmer Fudd:" When I wead a wiki...."
Yeah, it's flippin' hilarious, isn't it? 😛
Hello Luke,
This is very similar to Arabic and the language Arabs and Muslims made contact with. Arabic has no /v/ sound. It has the letter "و", which is both the /u/ and the /w/ sound. However, languages like Persian/Farsi, Turkish and Urdu have no /w/ sound, and use only the /v/ sound. For example, the Arabic name "مروة" or "Marwah" becomes "Mervet" in Turkish. The region with sizeable Arabic population is written as "اهواز" in both Arabic and Persian, but it's pronounced "Ahwaz" in Arabic and "Ahvaz" in Persian. Same with Urdu for name like "جاويد", which would be pronounced as "Jawed" in Arabic but "Javed" in Urdu.
Interesting topic Luke, thanks again.
And thanks for the comment! Very interesting.
this is reminding me of old timey loans Arabs had, like how we loaned /ʃaːwirma/ "Shawarma" from Turkish /t͡ʃevirme/ "to turn over", and /wabbuːr/ "steamship" from French /vapœʁ/ "steam"
That's fascinating. Since Proto-Indo-European favored the /w/ sound so much, it's really cool that the Indo-European languages of Farsi and Urdu are the ones that today use the /v/.
interesting in persian due to arabic influence they have a lot of "redundant" letters which represent same sound, but are there because many loadwords from arabic, which are pronounced slightly different in arabic, but the same in persian
Egypt and Iraq are separated by a common language
È davvero incredibile come tu spazii nell'immenso universo delle lingue, citando dialetti che neanche so che esistono... Lezione bellissima. Grazie
Sei molto gentile! Grazie
I’ve grown to embrace both classical and ecclesiastical latin. I see them as two different manifestations of history.
I think that's the best way of thinking
Ditto
One for secular and one for religious contexts
My grandparents' Italian dialect preserved a "w" sound for the "v." (They were from the hill country outside of Avellino.) So, the word for "cow" was pronounced "wacc" with the terminal "a" swallowed. (E la wacc'.) And my last name (the ordinary word for "grape") could be pronounced as U-wa.
Only before an A, or everywhere?
@@XxParasite Hmm. Pretty much before everything. The king was Wittor’
OMG i’m a spanish speaker and didn’t even noticed i made the weird “v” sound while saying “a veinte”, thanks Luke
Corsican is sure a revelation! A romance language that still preserves Classical Latin V=W!!!
Well, also in Italian, in some cases, the letter U acts as a semiconsonant and is pronounced /w/. The sound /w/ appears in diphthongs, when the "u" is close to other vowels.
Examples: "uomo" /'wɔ.mo/; "quando" /' kwando/; "ruota" /'rwɔta/
However, in Corsican, the /w/ sound is best represented.
~ greetings for Corsica ~
About corsican it's not just B and V. The language does it for every consonant, each has a strong and weak pronounciation (depending on when the letter is between 2 vowels or not), T is either pronounced T or D, D is D or W, V and B are B or W like said, C before A or U is either Ka or Ga, C before e or i is either Tsh or Dj, M and N have stronger or softer pronounciations, S is either S or Z, Z is either Ts or Dz and so on.
It's important to note that in the southern part of the island they have harder pronounciations overall, so the W sound usually becomes V (you can even hear L pronounced as D when in strong position, like Bellu (beautiful) can be heard "Beddu").
Also there is a small error with the example "e voi" at 5:30, it should be written "è voi". the word e means "the" (in plural feminine form), whereas è means "and", and there is a rule that says that every consonant that follows a word that ended with à, è, ì, ò or ù is pronounced in hard form (because it virtually doubles the next consonant like it's said just after in the video), so "è voi" is heard "è boi" because of it, "e voi" would be heard "e woi" (but no one would say that, it has no real meaning, people would say "e vostre", which is pronouced "e wostre").
Being an absolute fan of ecclesiastical Latin, I love when you say that everything sounds cool in ecclesiastical Latin!
It's true! And it does in Classical too, I think. It's like wearing a jacket or a sweater: they're both good. They have a slightly different feel but probably get the job done just as well.
The ecclesiastical is like Italian latin
Eloquent and insightful, as always. Ave, Magister!
Thanks very much!
Another reason to think that letter "v" represented a /u/ sound is the fact that they used the same grapheme for both the vowel [u] and the (semi)consonant [w]: VNVS ['u:.nus] vs VENIT ['we:.nit]
Thanks for the mention, Luchino!
Ma figurati!
Growing up in Germany, I learned “Schullatein” (school latin), which is an ahistorical Frankenstein that mixes aspects of the German traditional pronunciation and the reconstructed classical. So we say v and ae like Italian, but c and ti(vowel) like classical, and then oe like the German ö and qu like kv. It’s a strange mix, and many Germans are now striving for a more proper classical pronunciation. That said, I do respect why it was chosen, to make acquisition of the language easier for native German speakers. It also has the advantage of allowing you to appreciate both classical and Medieval or Neo-Latin literature because your pronunciation has features of both. As someone who mostly reads late Medieval / early modern Latin, there are common alternative spellings (penitentia for poenitentia, celo for caelo or coelo, ecclesie as a genitive, and the infamous “eciam”) that pop up so frequently that insisting on classical pronunciation actually makes things more confusing. So, I admire your approach, Luke, in staying flexible and being willing to adjust pronunciation to context. At the end of the day the Schullatein I learned in 5th grade will always be the sound Latin makes in my head. And I guess that’s okay!
Yes, that's quite common in Germany. I think that's fine. It's not a big deal. 😊
And ironically both Latin and German are part of the Indo-European language and they're quite common when it comes to pronunciation, grammar, diphthongs, etc.
Like in the German student song ”Oh, alten Burschenschaften”, where the Latin refrain ”o, quae mutatio rerum” sounds like ”oh, kvä mutazio rerum” with German R? I study German too and heard the song, and after a while I thought; hey, that’s actually Latin, but the pronounciation is weird…
In my native language, Catalan, Latin syllable-final ⟨v⟩ (also intervocalically due to the loss of word-final vowels) evolved into /w/ (written ⟨u⟩). For example "nou" (new, nine, nut), which in Spanish is "nueve, nuevo, nuez". Also, that u-z alteration in "nuez" is due to Old Occitan final /t͡s~d͡z/ becoming /w/ in Catalan.
Holy mary! I'll never regret having added Latin up to pick it up, such a beauteous, classical laguage! You didn't mistake when you chose to pick it up! You're a pride!
Very kind of you!
Ciao Luke, nella variante romanza (considerata dialetto, ma a tutti gli effetti una variante linguistica) della zona in cui vivo (nell'alto-milanese, a nord-ovest di Milano, anche se ci sono differenze con il "Milanese" un tempo parlato a Milano) la "V" non è mai pronunciata con il suono "W" ma a volte è molto debolmente pronunciata e a volte omessa. Ad esempio: nella frase "T' é 'istu?" sarebbe "T'é vistu?" ossia in italiano "Hai visto?" la "V" in "vistu" (participio passato del verbo "vedere", ossia "to see") viene debolmente pronunciata e in pratica non si sente. In un'altra espressione, "Al va bén" (in italiano "Va bene"), la "V" si pronuncia. Dipende quindi dalle parole e dall'espressione nel complesso: se la parola precedente ad una parola che inizia con "V" termina con una consonante, la "V" di solito viene pronunciata, ma se la parola precedente termina in una vocale, la "V" della parola seguente non viene pronunciata, o viene pronunciata molto debolmente. Credo che un fenomeno analogo fosse presente anche nel Latino (o meglio, nelle possibili tante varianti parlate di Latino nel territorio italiano, se pensi che in Italia fino a poco tempo fa, era sufficiente spostarsi di pochi chilometri di distanza per trovare variazioni nella lingua parlata)
Come la K in toscano
Being severely dyslexic, I totally feel with the author who spelled words wrong, because certain letters kind of sounded similarly to others. Glad our kind is of use. 😄
there wasnt really such a thing as a "wrong" spelling back then. the way i feel is that even today there shouldnt be a "wrong" spelling. only good and bad spellings. "rait" is a perfectly good way to spell "right", but "shdbeidcjdne" is a bad way to spell "right". As someone who has been obsessed over spelling reform my whole life, i see dyslexia not as a disorder but as a perfectly normal side affect of people being made to spell words as if they were pronounced thousands of years ago with different spelling conventions from many different influencers all smashed together.
Ƿi ſ̌ud jwz ledŗz lajk pejnc an y kenƀıs, nat æz kympyƿnınc yƀ fıkſt lyƿgyƿgremz.
We should use letters like paints on a canvas, not as components of fixed logograms.
@@AndrewTheFrank rate is reit. rait is a perfectly fine way to spell right. spelling reforms are not "slang" or "incorrect".
@@servantofaeie1569 but spelling it as rait in way way shape or form has me thinking right. I'd rather stick with right than reform to rait because it only invokes rate in my mind. But then again i don't make an /a/ sound when saying right.
@@AndrewTheFrank but we do. right is pronounced /ɹait/.
In the classic British history satire “1066 and all that”, they interpret “veni vide vici” as the Roman assessment of the ancient Britons, “weeny, weedy, weaky”.
not just the ancient ones!
Hello from Germany,
in some Schools in Germany you have to chose betwen Latin and French in 6th grade. I chose Latin and I do not repent it, but they only teach us to translate not speak and pronounce. I am so glad I discovered your channel.
Still better than Greek teaching of Latin which is just grammar and syntax, you don't even translate so what's the point
I would love to see a video about the transition of the Greek letter Θ from the sound of T+H to the sound of the letter thorn or the transition of Ф from P+H to F
That is going to be a future video!
I think it's also worth pointing out that 'o' and 'u' are sometimes pronounced as 'w' in Romanian. For example: "oală" (pot) and "ouă" (eggs).
Another interesting thing is that in the sicilian dialect of Palermo, people pronounce "o" and "e" as semivowels in some context, like in romanian ("eggs" is pronounced "oava")
Great point!
@@esti-od1mz Figo!
That's common in a lot of languages. For example the "ua" here in the English word "language" is pronounced with a "w" sound.
@@polyMATHY_Luke sono contento che tu mi abbia risposto, sei un grande divulgatore. Continua cosi!
I love your videos. Please carry on!
Kind regards from Austria
Thanks for being a Member! Very kind and generous of you.
16:32 this sprachbund idea of yours is interesting.
Aramaic and Hebrew went through the same change as well around the same time (begadkefat) (maybe because koine Greek was widespread through the middle east?)
In Portuguese sometimes b and v are interchangeable, so people say both brabo /brabu/ and bravo /bravu/, travesseiro /traviseru/ and trabesseiro /trabiseru/, assoviar /asuvia:/ and assobiar /asubia:/ etc...
Also, notice how Portuguese pronunciation is so different from Portuguese orthography? Portuguese phonology seems so distant from Latin phonology.
I'd love if you made video about the most divergent romance languages from Latin, in terms of orthography and phonology.
Great suggestion! Thanks for your comment. I love Portuguese so much.
@@polyMATHY_Luke e nós te amamos 👍
On a side note in some regions of Brazil "bravo" and "brabo" differentiated in their use.
"Bravo" usually means "brave", "corageous", "valiant", whereas "brabo" means "angry", "annoyed", "aggressive" or even "prone to violence"
Portuguese orthography is mainly designed to fit European dialects of Portuguese, which is kind of weird, considering there’s a lot more people in Brazil and other Portuguese speaking countries. Nonetheless, if you look at the phonology of European dialects compared to the orthography, it will be closer. So, for example, taking “assobiar” (by the way, in European dialects you won’t generally see assoviar with a v), you would pronounce it more or less like ãsubiar, at least in the Lisbon dialect. Besides that, the weird orthography that doesn’t seem to translate well into pronunciation is, for the most part, just a way of distinguishing between different realizations of the same phoneme that are context dependent. Using the word above, the double s there is used to indicate that the sound there is actually an s, whereas you would normally pronounce it as a z (because it’s intervocalic).
@@polyMATHY_Luke We love you, too.
I just ordered Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata, and I'm so excited to get that in the mail next week!😁
People in Castille used to pronounce V and B differently until recently. in Valladolid and Salamanca the V was more of a fricative and B explosive bilabial. However, as far back as in roman times, the spanish had a tendency to not differentiate v and b. This is reflected in the latin pun "beatii hispanii quibus vivere bibere est"
Loved for a video about Trajan and Hadrian Hispanic Latin they were famous for.
You know its a Polymathy vid when a a simple question is a 24:51 min vid
That thing about the uvular trill spreading from French into Portuguese is very interesting. It makes a lot of sense, and it also explains why, in Portugal, the closer you are to Lisbon, the more likely you are to pronounce your hard r's as uvular trills. It was the French court influencing the Portuguese one.
Dear Luke, thank you again for your video!
(Looking forward for the complete ±50 video-long playlist for each letter, ha ha ! :O )
I especially appreciate your comments in 22:54 and 23:10 (different _veni vidi vici_ pronunciations).
Having spent some time learning a language many people think ‘harsh’ (Arabic),
I find that kind of stereotypes often depend on the association of the language in question with a limited type of voice and tone.
All the Latinists you point to and your own voice acting are excellent demonstrations of the expressive power of Latin. We're lucky to have you.
Thanks so much! Yeah, like German has become thought of us "harsh" due to associations with WWII soldiers; but in the 19th century Mark Twain made fun of German as sounding too soft and sweet.
in english, we have:
1. wine, from latin vinum;
2. wall , from latin vallum;
3. worm, from latin vermis.
Robert Ainsworth pointed this out in 1735 (viz, latin u-consonans, "V" is uttered as english "W")
incidentally, RA also wrote that the latin i-consonans ("J") is uttered as english "Y", and should be called "ye"!
he also said that both latin "c" and latin "g" should be uttered "hard"; truly, there is nothing new under the sun.
I love your discussion of collocation effects (and other things I don't have the terms of art at hand to properly describe). Your discussion of the B sound changing to (what I view as) the very unique Spanish bilabial fricative sound when between vowels was especially illuminating.
I’m glad you liked it!
Having investigated the phenomenon of the spread of the uvular or guttural R throughout Northern Europe it seems overwhelmingly likely that it spread from France outwards when the traditional alveolar trill shifted to a uvular trill in the 18th century (in certain areas, most notably the Ile de France and more broadly the North); we also know that French was the lingua franca of the educated and noble classes at that time and German for example, as an alternative original source, did not enjoy the same prestige whatsoever. Also given that in Southern German speaking areas, the alveolar trill is still preferred, I think this suggests that uvular R did not originate in Germany. Generally speaking the sociological motivation for a shift in pronunciation can be attributed to things like prestige accents and as French was la langue par excellence at the time imitating certain features of it would have been something sought after.
This is very interesting indeed! Many thanks :) I study Scottish Gaelic and similar things happen with "B" mutating into "V" and "W" sounds.
I have no more words for this, always so interesting and very well explained.
Thank you, Daniela! That's nice of you to say.
13:55 very good point! In fact, even today, many Greek speakers learning English (or even people that have been taught English but don't practice it much) can't pronounce the letter w, and approximate it either with β or γ
No se nada de latin, pero estos videos me hacen sonreír. 🤩🥰
¡Gracias!
Hablas español, ya conoces un poquito de latín!!!
I just discovered your channel and I can't stop devouring your videos. Top quality, congratulations and thank you very much.
Very kind! Thanks
"Wine" in Hebrew is "yain." Normally an initial Y in Hebrew exchanges with W (Vav).
So, it seems there must have been a very ancient Canaanite word *wain.
Could the Greek word have come from Canaanite?
Canaanite is the language of ancient Palestinians right?Is Palestine suitable for wine production? I believe that the plant came from the Caucasus
@@TeutonicEmperor1198 Perhaps Canaanite merchants introduced some upgraded version of the product, and their jargon became the accepted name for it among Greeks. The Bible says that Noah made wine first thing after the Flood. So wine is among the oldest produce.
You are correct.
Wiktionary:wéyh₁ō
Etymology[edit]
Disputed;[1][2] possibly from *weh₁y- (“to twist; to wrap”) + *-ō,[3][4][5] compare Ancient Greek ὑιήν (huiḗn, “grapevine”), from *wihy-ḗn[5], and Latin vītis (“vine”), from *wéh₁itis, or perhaps borrowed from either Proto-West Semitic *wayn- or Proto-Kartvelian *ɣwino-, if those terms are not instead borrowings of this one.[2][6][7][8] Possibly all ultimately borrowed from an unattested Mediterranean substrate language.[9][10]
@@benavraham4397 wine was actually around during the time of Mesopotamia so wine actually predates the writing of the flood story.
@@TeutonicEmperor1198 grapes come from the Mediterranean. They need heat to grow naturally. They couldn't come from the Caucasus. The ancients of what is now Israel, Palestine, Syria and Lebanon were the Canaanites.
I would like to see a video of Old Latin, how it evolved into Classical Latin. And how some modern-day romance languages (especially Spanish) have elements of both of the aforementioned.
Hi Luke, very interesting and enlightening explanation about the letter v. The v is Spanish is a topic of endless and passionate discussions. Linguriosa has a very interesting video on the difference(s) between v and b in Spanish.
You have a very calm and informative voice. I find myself learning a lot from you in every topic you cover! Keep on making great videos!
Salve, Luca! You make an excellent case here. I am a linguist at heart, but sadly not by any extensive training or education. I was a German major/Spanish minor in college 40 years ago. I have since studied Koine Greek in seminary (Eastern Orthodox) and taught myself a bit of Church Slavonic and Latin (ecclesiastical pronunciation since I was studying liturgical texts).
When I first encountered the idea that "v" was pronounced "w" in Classical Latin, I was a bit surprised. Again, you've made your case well, and I don't disbelieve you, but I had really thought I was on to something:
If you take the name Παβλος in Greek and go two disparate directions, you'll find the "v" pronunciation of the β. In Church Slavonic and in modern Slavic languages, you have "Pavl" Inflected in the accusative/genitive it becomes "Pavla" and in dative "Pavlu," etc. On the other hand, if you go to Spanish, you get Pablo. In other Romance languages, it seemed to me that the "v" sound had mostly dropped out, in Italian: "Paolo", and completely in Portuguese: "Palo." It really seemed to me that Spanish was retaining what might be called a weak "v" (bilabial approximate) that could easily just fall away.
So then I thought about two words in Latin. First the 1st person plural present indicative of laudo: laudamus. If that were pronounced "lavdamus" it would make perfect sense as coming from the αυ diphthong in Greek, reflected in the name of the letter "tav" (which would be similar in pronunciation to the Hebrew equivalent, I believe), and in αυτο which became "авто in Russian. Similarly, it seemed to me that a word like "vniversvs" would likely have the letter "v" pronounced like a "u" between consonants or at the beginning of a word before a consonant, but as "v" between vowels.
So, as I said, you make a very compelling case. My curiosity and inability to totally let go of my pet hypothesis YET begs me to ask: Is it at all possible that there is anything to it? Could what I describe have happened at some point in history with some regional dialect. Of course, the pronunciation of Greek to which I refer is the more modern and that is no doubt significant. Likewise, it is probably significant that the "b/v" in Spanish when not at the beginning is generally a bilabial approximate. In fact, I learned to never use the fricative like English "v." That is, as I said, a sort of "weak" sound.
Ultimately the question in my mind is: is there anything to connect "Pavl" in Slavic to "Pablo" in Spanish through the au diphthong? Or is it, as I fear now, only the illusion of a connection?
Very respectfully yours,
Mark Harrison
P.S. I purchased and downloaded your materials for learning Latin. They follow the same method that I used in 8th grade to get Spanish down. I walked around the house with 501 Spanish Verbs, conjugating verbs and using them in sentences. That created a foundation for advancing quickly because I could apply the different tenses and persons to express ideas we hadn't learned in class yet. It was at the same time that I picked up my grandmother's Latin missal and started getting the idea down of noun declension. Dominus, Domini, Domino, Dominum, Domine - I saw each form in a different context and figured out subject, possessive object, indirect object, direct object, and calling upon. Sadly, I don't have the leisure time now to practice Latin as much, but I'm working on it.
In Portuguese it's Paulo not Palo
very interesting... this also explains the transition from Etruscan "avle" to Latin "aulus", it must have been a sound similar to /w/ in Etruscan as well
Salve mestre da língua Latina!
Salvē et tū!
@@polyMATHY_Luke Confesso que quando escutei-te a pronunciar a letra "V" como um "U" achei estranho, todavia acostumei-me e hoje acho que soa bem.
The same video but on the letter C would be nice too!!! Same thing for the letter J/I. Maybe a video on the consonant changes in the radicals of certain verbs (like the french verb avoir (to have) witch has av-, eu-, aur- and ay- as radicals and doesn't look like avere in italian) would be interesting too. Amazing video! Bravo!!!
Great suggestions!
At long last I get a proper explanation on this issue! I really enjoyed your video. Cheers from Patagonia! (By the way, I bet you would have a field day analyzing the Argentinian variation of Spanish. You probably already have, though)
I’m glad you liked it! Yes, I like Argentinian a lot
Welsh used to use W V U and something that resembled a 6 for /w/ and /u/😳
And fun fact, words borrowed from Latin to Welsh (Via Latin) that start with vi are rendered, Gw+vowel, like Gwin (Wine). But then we have words like Ficer and finegr, which were borrowed from Latin via English, which don't look as cool😗
I noticed that ambulance is spelled ambwlans in modern welsh. Written backwards on the front of the vehicle!
So "Gwyn" doesn't mean "white/lucent" in Welsh? But WINE?
My Dark Souls myths are falling.
@@andryuu_2000 Gwyn means white (pure, blessed) and gwin means wine. Y and I represent different sounds.
It was definitely hard to accept when I learned in Latin class that the original pronunciation had a /w/ sound; specially being a speaker of Portuguese. It sounded foreign and .... well, wrong.
Thanks to hearing the way you speak Latin though, without putting emphasis on the sound at all, as if it were there before and having never made the change to /v/ in many romance languages, it just started sounding normal.
Also, it was specially interesting hearing the Montellese dialect where, though clearly pronounced as a /w/ sound it really sounds like almost a short /w/, at least to my ears. I could really picture that being the standard pronunciation by the time of Kikero. :-)
Thanks a lot Luke, always super fun watching your videos.
The Belarusian is the the only Slavic language that represent /w/ in spelling (AFAIK in Ukrainian in some variants /w/ is also possible, but it continues to write etymologically), and the story of unique Cyrillic letter ў has Latin connection (however not direct, but as meta-idea (as it is very often about writing system). The Old-Belarusian (a.k.a. Old-Ukrainian, West-Ruthenian and many other names) was widely used in Grand Duchy of Lithuania as official and bureaucratic language, however, as it was common in Middle-ages, written language was distinct enough from oral languages and we use spelling errors to reconstruct feature of oral language, fortunately we have unique sources Old-Belarusian oral language made in Arabic alphabet (there were invited settlement of Tatars, who are created many interesting sources in specially adapted Arabic script). So we can restore with high accuracy that /w/ was already a distinctive feature of theretime Belarusian language. However, in the end XVII century after some cruel political events leaded to weakening of powers, Old-Belarusian was replaced by Polish in official use, and nobility almost lost Old-Belarusian language, that was followed in the end of next century by division of The Commonwealth and increasing russification process. The Belarusian survived between rural population only. So when Belarusian (or we can say New-Belarusian) began to be revitalized the Old-Belarusian written Cyrillic tradition was almost entirely lost, and up to begin of XX century revitalization attempt was done mostly on Latin graphic (firstly with essential Polish influence on it but progressively diminishing). And exactly in the second half of XIX one of the revitalisers Francišak Bahuševič hit a problem, that almost all folk phonologies have distinct /w/, what was not presented in theretime Polish graphic (the transition of ł in Polish happens latter), and he didn't know how to represent this sound in spelling. Then he came to the classical Latin education for inspiration and borrowed ŭ (u-breve) for this function. (Decades latter Zamenhof who was born in Biełastok (modern Polish Białystok) used the same idea (or even directly inspired) in Esperanto). When Cyrillic influence in New-Belarusian began to increase, the ŭ letter was adopted in Cyrillic as ў, (it also has good already existed parallel in й /j/). This way was unique ў invented, between Slavic languages with Cyrillic graphic, Belarusian is the only language who uses it (there are some non-Slavic languages in former-USSR who use it, when in early Soviet era Cyrillic alphabets were (created)/(substituted Arabic) for them, but htis is different story).
Other interesting story about Latin V related to GDL, Belarus and Lithuania is exactly word Lithuania in English. (Disclaimer: I don't want to provoke political/hot discussion, so I just state neutral enough position that both Belarus and Lithuania are true heirs of GDL, have this in mind before comment). So from my POV spelling Lithuania isn't correct, because in the time when this word was coined in Latin, there was not difference between V and U, so it definitely was LITHVANIA, where NIA frequent ending for lands in medieval Latin (I'm curious why they used TH here probably for aesthetic reason) so the root was LITHVA what is very consistent with all Сyrillic sources Літва (hope I'm correct about usage of 8th and 10th i). But I assume when XIX-XX centuries restored noun Lithuania from mediaeval sources the knowledge that here is exception for reading rules in Latin was not available.
I just feel free to be happy now thanks to you, Luke. It's been perfectly okay and pleasant to me listening to the restored pronunciation since long ago but at the same time I just enjoy my labiodental v's. Success 🙌 !
Good! Yeah, it's just a convention.
I just realized that my name will be pronounced Wictor in Classical Latin. I don’t like it. Haha 😆. Great video Luke. I have learned lots from you.
And my last name would be Alwarez...
That's true! Add a bit of compression to it like Stefano Vittori and it'll sound nice.
I am a bohairic Coptic speaker which is the northern dialect of old Egyptian in its last stage. And surprisingly the bilabial fricative started to exist Coptic after a while. Like for example the word ⲧⲟⲩⲃⲟ (which means “to holy”) is pronounced as “Touvo”.
And eventually, after the Arab conquest to Egypt, the language was subjected to some degrees of Arabization that actually made some Coptic speakers pronounce it as “Touwo”.
Imo it had this phonological change because of Arabic replacing Coptic over the centuries so sounds from Coptic were hard to pronounce for Arabic-speaking Egyptians. For instance the ⲡ sound became a b, because P being harder to pronounce for Arabic speakers.
As for the w sound itself, it was written as ⲟⲩ. Like for example the word ⲟⲩⲱⲛϣ. It means wolf and it sounds like “wōnsh” or the word ⲟⲩⲁϩⲙⲓ which means apartment and it sounds like “wahmi”.
There are like 3 pronunciations to bohairic coptic nowadays. There is the ecclesiastical pronunciation which was made back in the 19th century during the time of the Egyptian pope Kyrillos the fourth. Which has some issues since they used the phonology of modern greek as a datum of making this pronunciation. So it produced sounds we Egyptians are not familiar with such as the th sound or the modern delta sound.
And there is the late Coptic pronunciation, which is the coptic pronunciation used in churches in Egypt before pope Kyrillos pronunciation reforms. And those reforms took place because late coptic was heavily influenced by Arabic, so it killed of sounds that were originally in coptic and added sounds that didn’t exist.
And the third pronunciation is the reconstructed classical pronunciation, which is also called the 2nd century pronunciation which is the most accurate since researchers use the phonology of an older stage of Greek that existed back in the 2nd century.
I am sorry for the long comment, but your passion for languages and how you talk about them made me do the same and talk about them as much as you do 😂
ⲛⲟϥⲣⲓ ⲉⲃⲟⲗ ϧⲉⲛ ⲭⲏⲙⲓ (Greetings from Egypt) ❤️
Interesting. So is it true that our ethnonym have sounded Wulgarum in Latin? In the written sources from 4th and 5th century, it is recorded in genitive plural as Vulgarum. So when did happen the transition from W to B in the ethnonym of the Bulgarians?
People have been regressed and ended up speaking other languages including Latin as part of their previous lives in the study of reincarnation. However, keeping away from arguments on reincarnation itself, it seems like an interesting exercise to study any recordings of speaking during sessions.
In Gascon, too, the /w/ sound is present often intervocalically instead of [β] (in other dialects). Example; in some parts you'll hear "aver" [a'βe], in other parts you'll hear "auer" [a'we] meaning "to have", etc. I think the same is also true of Catalan.
Como siempre, fabuloso tu vídeo.
Saludos desde Cali, Colombia.
Idk if i’ve already said it, but in western gascon, -v- between vowels is /w/, and word initally it’s /b/. Of course -v- includes words that used to have b, such as the imperfect cantava.
Besides you’ve got tons of alternations like blau/blava (blue, they can both have w), and roi/roja (red, they can both have /j/)
When teaching my students the pronunciation of "v" I start by reminding them that v=u, and then have them pronounce the initial "v" in vinum as a "u." It adds a syllable, of course. so I have them say it slowly, then I have them speed up the pronunciation until the natural result is the "w."
You can do this with the initial o in the Greek equivalent. Turns out, certain vowels just morph that way, given the shapes our mouths make as we speak quickly. The trick is sticking to the pronunciations that lead to those mouth shapes in the first place.
I think you somewhat understress that the might have been pronounced without velarization instead of full blown fricative
Ancient Hebrew had a w sound which became v in modern pronunciation too. It is a common sound change. Although I think in their case, it might have been the Germanic language speakers pronouncing it that changed it.
Actually there are a few Mishnaic traditions that did have vav instead of waw
@@ryuko4478 I don't understand. Traditions of what? Pronunciation? I wonder how they would document that. Did they write out descriptions of how they pronounced things like the Romans did?
@@stevenv6463 Jews have many many traditions of how to pronounce Hebrew, famously stuff like Babylonian Hebrew, Tiberian Hebrew, Palestinian Hebrew, etc. and yes they wrote about how they pronounced things as well as write down the hebrew in different scripts giving us extra hints, many traditions survive to this day, Modern Hebrew vowels are based on the Modern Sephardic tradition for example.
For an example of a text talking about how to pronounce Hebrew check out Hidayat al-Qari (Horayat ha-Qore in Hebrew) for example.
@@ryuko4478 I have heard of these pronunciation types in passing. Although I have never heard of any of these having Vav. Do you know which one did?
@@stevenv6463 to be specific Tiberian Hebrew, when written in Arabic they used to confused /w/ and write it with the letter for /b/, there are even texts discussing how Iraqi Jews pronounce it differently (as [w]) and that fricated /b/ sounds exactly like /w/, [w] still exists in Tiberian Hebrew but it's only specific situations like after a long pretonic /u/ or in the conjugation [wu] "and".
Wikipedia would tell you differently but Wikipedia is badly sourced when it comes to this, I can send you the name of the text book that I use for this if you're interested.
For Romanian, the evolution of B/V is pretty interesting:
- initial and post-consonantal B remains [b]: "bine, bun, barbă, bărbat, bea, bâlbâit, vorbă, alb, blând"
- intervocalic B becomes [w] if the stress precedes: HABENT > "au" and [v] if the stress is after: HABEBANT > "aveau"
- B becomes [w] before L and R non-initially: FABRUM -> faur (interestingly, it corresponds to Italian "bbr")
- if the B is followed by a semivocalic Romance [j], the I and B switch places: RUBEUS > *rubius -> "roib"; OBVIUS > "uib"; HABEAT > *abiat > "aibă"
- initial V becomes [v]: "veni, vânt, vâna", but there is one particular case where it seems to become [b]: VETERANUS > "bătrân"
- intervocalic V remains [w]: OVUM > "ou", NOVEM > "nouă", BOVEM >> *bovus > "bou", NOVUS > "nou"
- in diphtongs, V mostly remains [u], unlike in Western Romance, unless it was an early Latin shift: AURICULA > *oricla in all Continental Romance > "ureche"
Thank you for the overview. With an old interest in Romanian, I have sometimes been wondering about the intricacies of this rule. Now I can't help wondering: Why is it that "habēre" becomes "avea" with /v/, but "hīberna" becomes "iarnă" without /v/?
Maybe it has to do with the preceding vowel? I realise that it can be difficult to formulate a rule with so few examples, of course. I was wondering if you know more?
By the way, Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române seems to list "boace" as a (more native?) variant of "voce", so maybe this is a parallel of "bătrân".
@@troelspeterroland6998 Probably because the noun would have come from the deverbalized form, and in the infinitive verb the accent was a little bit further away: HIBERNÁRE > "iernáre" > "iarnă".
There are a lot of cases where sound laws don't explain everything, you need to look into derivation and analogy.
Here, we see a case of derivation within Romanian itself.
@@troelspeterroland6998 Voce is a borrowing from Italian.
For "bocet" and "a boci", the etymology is probably not VOX, but might be a verbalized form of BUCCA: the -esco/ire (former -escere in Classical Latin) form relating to a change of mood "bocesc/a boci (bocire)": to begin shouting, crying, whereas the -o/are form is a transitive action "a îmbuca; bucată": to grab with the mouth; piece.
You can't truly trust Romanian dictionaries, as the etymologies there seem to have been done to prove a political agenda (that Romanian comes from Latin) rather than to descriptively describe the language. There have been some efforts recently, though.
Still, in this time period, Romania is pretty bad at Linguistics, as it is not taught too much in universities, and when Linguistics is rarely available, it is rather Generative Linguistics pioneered by Chomsky, instead of Historical Linguistics.
For studying Historical Linguistics, I had to go study abroad.
@@tudormardare66 Thanks a lot! Yes, I know that morphophonology matters but I would not have thought of this explanation myself. I suppose that a verb derived from the noun and a noun in turn backformed from the verb would also account for the change in gender "hībernum" > "iarnă".
@@tudormardare66 I have indeed noticed that the different resources compiled in dexonline.ro do not always agree among themselves about etymolgies although they generally seem more sober than decades ago. I guess that "bucca" as an origin for "boace", "boci" etc. would mean assuming a rare case of u being lowered to o. I suppose this is more parsimonious than assuming b from v, since there are other examples of this. Is it possible to give a rule for u > o?
Hi Luke! I’m Swedish. I have studied Spanish, Serbian, Russian, Latin and German. And still, it is ENGLISH that comes across to me is having the weirdest pronounciation, spelling and vocabulary! It is like Germanic grammar but Latin and French vocabulary. The spelling seems to relate very little to the pronounciation. English is the first second language we learn in Sweden, but to someone who goes on to study other languages, it suddenly seems extremely strange! No offense guys, but your language is CRAZY from a linguistic point of view… and yet it conquered the world. Keep up your fascinating work, Luke.
Salve, Luke! I have a question: how was the V in classical Latin transcribed Ancient Greek? My Ancient Greek textbook says they used to use ”ου" to represent the sound. And in modern Greek, it's indeed still "ου" (e.g. Φεβρουάριος - Februarius). However the name "Virgilius" is spelled like "Βιργίλιος", with a beta. I don't know if they already spelled like this in the classical era, or changed the the spelling at some period.
At first, they would use Οὐ or Υ in diphthongs: Aurelius → Αὐρήλιος, Virgilius → Οὐιργίλιος, but, I guess (don't take this as granted!) that when both languages started to use the fricative /v/, Greek would use β for it, although retaining the diphthongs as an orthographical convention.
@@Michail_Chatziasemidis Ευχαριστώ!
Very insightful content!
I would be curious about understanding how the letter "C" developed into different pronunciations (eg the difference between the sound of "ci" in French, Italian and Spanish.
Greetings from Munich
Danke! Great suggestion!
"Write a comment in the description." Okay, Luke, what's your password lol. But really, this was a very fun and informative video. I had seen some of the inscriptions with "IOBE" and the like, but I never thought it was because they were hearing "B between vowels" as closer to /w/! That shocked me!
Even in Piedmontese there's the w sound for v when it's at the end of a word, in before a consonant and in ov (ov is pronounced all u)
I have enjoyed several of your videos and you are a total expert 😊
Very kind
I was thinking that Italian does have hints in certain words. Paura, from Latin pavor. For some reason the pronunciation of this word did not change to a v sound, even if related words like pavido did.
Pavido effettivamente è una parola latina
This is such a fascinating channel! I absolutely love it. You've just got yourself a new subscriber!
Could you please do the Greek letters/diphthongs ζ, η, υ, αι, οι next?
Absolutely!
"Iobe" and "dibi" are enlightening. I've also always loved the Pompeiian graffito from the domus of M. Fabius Rufus, "VASIA quae rapui quaeris formosa puella (...)" which incidentally reminds us of the Neapolitan word for "bacio"
Note: That use for B instead of V in transitional late Latin is the same sort of historical spelling mash-up that happened in Spanish and is reflected in Spanish spelling errors but also in common usage today. Some Spanish words switched from V to B, at least before standardized spelling, and some were changed back to V to fit etymology. But even now, Spanish speakers will say be-longo or be de burro, or ve de use or ve-corto, and a few similar things, to distinguish if they mean B or V in spelling. In medieval blackletter forms, even outside of Spain, b and v were sometimes only differentiated by b having a tall ascender, while both had a squared, looped, or 3-like shape for the right side stroke. Also, W to /bh/ to V and B to /bh/ to V occurred in both Greek and Spanish, and that /bh/ bilabial fricative occurs as an allophone in other Indo-European languages, such as Hindi. It's how Continental Germanic languages went from W to V. In Greek, it seems like the voiced fricatives may have arisen as a blurring that mirrored the change from aspirated stops to fricatives for PH, TH, KH, so we got BH, DH, GH to match.
You can also see a transition of qu from kw to a k in English spelling (British more specifically). Quick is spelled this way because qu is kw in old Norman French where the later borrowing of check (cheque in British English) came from a more modern dialect of French.
Your basic logic is sound, but "question" would be a better example, because "quick" is actually a native Germanic word, not one that we get from Norman French.
Another good video. I can't wait to see which one in the series is next! 😀😀
w => ∅ is also happened in Japanese too
Almost, it stayed before /a/
Right! Like わたし>あたし
@@polyMATHY_Luke it's rather about ゐ(wi), ゑ(we) and を turning into い, え and お (thought object marker still uses the old spelling).
Except in loanwords.
How about a video about the intermediate vowel and the differing spelling of documentum/docimentum, optume/optime, etc? Not quite regular like u, nor i, nor Greek y.
Another fabulous topic
Amazing, Luke! And you're shirt just touched my heart. ❤️😂
I saw you wearing a Jurassic Park shirt as well recently! ¡Somos amigos dinosaurianos! 🦕 🙌 🦖
I would love to see an explanation of how Middle French to Modern French changed from EI to OI to /wa/ and OIN /wẽ/. It seems so odd to me that in a short period, it could go all the way from [ei] to [ëi] (ë for schwa, e-muet) or [øi] to [oi] or [ui] and then to [wa] and that that would be sudden and become standard for so many cases. Middle English words borrowed from Middle French (and Norman French) kept the EI/EY. But I have never seen an explanation of this when I took French or since then.
I don’t think he would know. Actually three pronunciations simultaneously existed.
Ottimo video.
Sei stato meticoloso ed esaustivo. È sempre un piacere imparare le nozioni che porti.
Grazie a questo video, inoltre, si spiega anche perché in italiano, in alcuni casi, la lettera U si comporta da semiconsonante e si pronuncia [w]. Il suono [w] compare nei dittonghi, quando la "u" è vicina ad altre vocali.
Esempi: "uomo" ['wɔ.mo], "quando" ['kwando], "ruota" ['rwɔta].
I'm interested in one particular issue, if anyone can help me. In the 4th century, when Jerome wrote the Vulgate Bible, was Jacob, for example pronounced as today Jacob, or was it Jacov?
Great question! Final -b doesn’t have a direct analogue in Romance, but I think it would be /b/ at least in isolation. But looking at the Italian reflexes, Giacomo and Jacopo, we can see that it was likely not a fricative.
@@polyMATHY_Luke Thank you! 🙏 And once more, thanks for not forgetting us Romanias 🇷🇴
I'd hear his soft and deep voice all day 🍃
Quick question: I’ve heard that the sound of Latin “v” before a front vowel was changed to /ɥ/, but the same source that claimed that also proscribed Germanic lax vowels for certain short Latin vowels, so I’m not entirely sure how reliable it is. On the other hand, I can’t help but notice the poster on the back wall with «ΚΥΡΙΤΕΣ (pronounced “ky:rites”, I would assume)» transcribed in Latin as “QVIRITES”, which makes much more sense if pronounced roughly like “kɥirites”. I’m curious to hear your opinions on that. VALÉTE AM|C|
Sorry may be I miss something : if latin said U or W when they write V , wich letter they used for the sound V ? They do not use the this sound at all ?
Tankyou .
Correct. The sound /v/ develops after Classical Latin.
Will you also do an analysis on the evolution of /tj/ and /cj/ in Latin? 🤔 I could help you on the evolution it had in Sardinian (any dialect, camp log and nuor) if you'd like :D
By the way, e voi probably is pronounced /ebboi/ because e comes from latin et, it happens also in Sardinian. Probably it happens in Corsican with a too, since it could be from ab, ad and aut
Alsooo one more useful thing. We can see this phenomenon happening in Japanese right now: one can hear watashi wa pronounced sometimes as /watashi wa/, /βatashi βa/ or /vatashi va/ depending on the speaker! Probably was the same in Latin, and it's cool to see that they all exist at the same time
Yes I will! The Sardinian evolution is particularly interesting. Yup! ebboi Just like Sardinian.
@@polyMATHY_Luke Ahah cool!
@@viperking6573 I've never heard of anything similar to [βatashi βa] or [vatashi va] in japanese, do you have any sources on that?
from what I know the *opposite* happens in Japanese, where /w/ looses labialization and becomes [ɰ], while [β] is an allophone of /b/ not /w/, notice how Japanese people confuse English /b/ and /v/ never /w/ and /v/
I guess because I'm an English speaker, /w/ sounds more proper. It really feels like a consonant version of /u/, plus, its probably the original Indo-European sound. "Vir" and its Old English cognate "wer" sound nearly identical and mean the exact same thing, a male.
So war was called like that because of men going to war?
@@andryuu_2000 no, those words are completely unrelated
Podrías hacer una capítulo sobre "tú" y "vos"?
Creo que sería muy interesante.
Saludos desde Uruguay #teamvos
In informal speech in Quebecois French, the "v" in verbs like "voir" and "avoir" is pronounced like a "w", with the vowel becoming a diphtongue. "woèr" and "awoèr".
if you are looking for more connections I suggest looking at Late Biblical Hebrew and Aramaic where they had a sound change called begadkefat, basically intervocallic ungeminated /p b t d k g/ became fricatives ([ɸ~f β~v θ ð x~χ ɣ~ʁ]), we aren't sure when it happened, but it definitely was after the 7th century BC.
Also notably some later Mishnaic forms of Hebrew from the 8th century CE (though likely recording much older pronunciations) merge /w/ and /v/ in most positions.
@@romaios1609 Except that it could very well be coincidental, lenition is one of the most common sound changes ever. So there might be a connection and there might not be, we can't be sure. It's always interesting seeing those patterns though.
How do you know that Latin "B" did not have a fricative (ie V) sound at the beginning and then changed to [English] B sound? After all you have the Garigliano bowl where what appears as "F" later changes to "B" (ie TRIFOS -> TRIBUS). This is in line also with Aeolic (etc) Greek digamma-to-beta shift (eg FΡΟΔΟΝ -> ΒΡΟΔΟΝ). So that effectively in "IOBE" and "DIBI" (11:26) the change would be from semi-vowel (ie W/digamma sound) to the otherwise consonantal [English] V sound (remember that Latin used V both as V and U, so that it would make sense for V to favour a consonantal sound when in between vowels, as otherwise it would simply be too many vowels stuck together). Likewise, as far as I have been told, moden Italian has V inbetween vowels, where there otherwise was a B in Latin (ie what was B in Latin remained as B in italian when it was next to some other consonant; this could be some short of gemination, similar to Spanish and/or Greek B when right after M/N)... Moreover, Latin V/U acts as a consonant when between vowels (eg Eu-ripides v. Ev-agoras; both these Ev/u come from the same Greek ΕΥ...) so that we see the same consonant-favouring principle. And given also that later Latin and Italian were influenced from the north, it could be that the initial fricative sound was retained in regions like Spain etc (or southern Italy; see here a list of southern Italian words [that start] with V for expected Italian/Latin B; www.dieli.net/SicilyPage/SicilianLanguage/SicVoStoZ.html) that did not have much influence from the northern Germanic tribes (or "trifes"(?) for old Latin?).
See JN Adams and Syndey Allen.
@@polyMATHY_Luke I maintain that I have posted a comment about Sydney Allen's analysis regarding the phonetics of the letter B... Is it perhaps under review by you, or have you deleted it?
I didn’t delete it. The point, though, is simply that your idea is incorrect and your research is insufficient. Read the sources I pointed you to. Then we can talk.
@@polyMATHY_Luke Well, I have addressed Allen's analysis in this comment of mine. I have also used this website/link (www.foundalis.com/lan/betapro.htm ) with a summary of Allen's comments and I addressed all of these points, while I also added reasons why Greek and Latin B would be fricative... So is my comment under review or you do not see any comment with the aforementioned link? Also, if you do not see any comment then how do you know whether my "reasearch is insufficient"?
I’ve read it. I compliment your organizational style and clarity. But there is not clear evidence for fricative for either language until 1cAD. Thus supposing a fricative or something similar in 1cBC is reasonable as a minor variant, but not a universal sound.
In my particular dialect of Romanian, the plural for eggs is written ouă but it's pronounced more like wowo in English. To my ears it sounds just like tje letter w, but it's spelled with a u. I can't really think of other examples of this sound in Romanian, it's just thst when you played that clip of an italian dialect saying eggs, it sounded exactly like Romanian.
Isn't the fact that U and V originally weren't separate letters in Latin a strong indication for V being pronounced more like the English W in classical Latin?
Yes
Wonderful job! Thank you.
You gave the example VIDI- to look or to watch which in romanian evolved in 2 words that mean the same thing, a "vedea" and "a uita" one with V and one with W
Don't know if this topic was already covered, but if it's possible it would be nice to get a video about the difference between Ch and K when some words got translated from greek to latin, Ch and X or Kh or H, C and K, and C and G. Great video as always. Thanks
About veni, vidi vici vs..weeny, weedy weaky, I think the criticism of [w] is based on the false premise that people shout or grumble to sound tough in Romance languages, like they do in English and German. In reality, though, shouting like a little kid and getting all emotional is considered a weakness in Romance languages, where it's more threatening to talk calmly and mechnically about killing you, like it's no more than swatting a fly. "Oh, it was nothing to conquer the Gauls, I just came, took a look around and kicked their asses."
From the point of view of pronunciation , great part of vocabulary, grammar Romanian is the purest latin language apart from Italian from what i've personally studied. The way the people behave , especially in Transilvania, Banat and Oltenia(regions of Romania) , how they look like, the manners and so on ( maybe the way they speak )demonstrate a strong and , strangely visible link between us and the ancient romans. We have to take in consideration that during all our history we had no direct border to any latin country. My people ( Romanian people) is absolutely incredible.
Thanks for the video! You make me want to revive my high school Latin. What are you thought's on Duolingo's pronunciation for Latin? If you did not make a video for it I think that'd be interesting.