I have a written a new short story in Latin! with drammatically acted audiobook. Check it out: luke-ranieri.myshopify.com/collections/frontpage/products/fabula-anatina-a-duckish-tale-in-latin 🦆 It's a children's book about the odyssey of a duckling who wants to learn how to fly.
For what it's worth: I'm holding an English book, printed 1709, with an alphabetical index, in which all the "I" and "J" entries are grouped together under the heading "J." Alphabetically "Jamaica" and "Jersey" are placed before "Ifield," "Ilchester" and "Ilmore," with "Jordans" and then "Ipswich" coming later -- and yet what is considered a single letter of the alphabet is printed in different shapes depending on whether it's a vowel or a consonant. I guess this represents a transitional era. Of course this is somewhat peripheral to your video since it's not in Latin.
I believe I once saw an older English dictionary, glossary or similar where the separation between I and J was beginning to happen and J was sorted before I. Either the collator was a contrarian who believed J ought to go first, or they weren't aware of the consensus, or no consensus had been reached at that time as to which ought to be first. I can imagine that J=Jehovah coming first might have been the argument!
Fascinating stuff! I heard about this being an issue in Spanish dictionaries up until very recent times. All digraphs were grouped separately from single letters, so that words starting CH appeared in their own section, after all words starting C.
@@lagomoof I have the 1611 Covarrubias dictionary of Spanish and it's the same as you describe. However, both I and J (and Y) are spelled in capital letters as "I"! So Covarrubias first has a section for consonantal I (modern-day J) and then a section for vowel or semiconsonant I (modern-day I and Y). For example: IVSTICIA goes before IO, which goes before ITALIANO. Nowadays the order is: italiano, justicia, yo.
@@ceruchi2084 The uppercase form of the letter ch is Ch, and never CH. Well I guess I shouldn't be calling it a letter anymore but, that's how I've been taught as a child. The "extra" letters back in the day were Ch ch which goes after C, Ll ll which goes after L, rr which goes after R. For reference, Im 24 years old. It has been changed at the times of my parents but the change was accepted slowly.
Indiana Jones: Has been studying ancient languages for all his life, can read latin, is an archeologist and a professor at university… Indiana Jones: *_J_*
Well, the film Indy 3: The Last Crusade is set in the 2nd World War... in real world history, early 20th century linguist theories about Latin may not have been as well informed because 1) only professors, priests, and a subset of artistic enthusiasts would learn Latin; for most people that aren't historians or enthusiasts it's a dead language so that limits the ease of practice for those who studied it in the early 20th century 2) the scholars could only get information from books which can be outdated with present understanding or interpretation 3) The movie is made to appeal to all ages and especially kids in mind (directed by Speilberg, also known for E.T.) a 7-13 doesn't care about complete accuracy, they like a good immersive story. Latin professors and enthusiasts are a small minority niche of society and the only ones who care to know the language to exactness.
Paradoxically, the names for J in some European languages such as German (“Jot”), Portuguese and Spanish (“jota”) descend from the name of the Greek letter iota.
@@wazzup233 Russian doesnt have J it has Й, its not written in latin script mate, i thik you mean Check, Polish, Slovak, Slovenian or Kroatian. Also Baltic, Uralic and Scandinavian languages written with latin have J as /j/ similarly to German.
@@rodholseth6354 Interesting. Thats propably a coincidence, i guess, or was the element named after the greek letter, as many element names came from Greek or Latin language.
I remember watching that scene and thinking "Huh, it's debatable whether or not Jehovah begins with J in Latin" and here is the video! You read my mind.
That's so interesting, Luke! The words for "TO HELP" in modern Portuguese (AJUDAR) / Galician (AXUDAR) / Spanish (AYUDAR) may tell a good story on how the languages evolved from Latin. While some Spanish speakers would pronounce the Y similarly to what the ethimological latin root (AJUTARE) suggests, the Galician-Portuguese went to another direction and developed a novel J sound that is not even present in Spanish (well, Argentina might be an exception).
j in portugues is like in French, and J in Spanish is like a H. the Galician was equal to the Portuguese but they just unvoiced the phoneme some where after the separation with Portugal. and all this changes come from palliation of the Y phoneme on languages that dIdnt have this new consonant like a voiced "ich". The fr-pt-gl made this new consonant more up front, when Castilian made it more to the back.
@@TheZenytram Spanish use the letter Y for the latin consonant I, aka J. And the Letter J in spanish is the germanic CH (like Scottish Loch), not the soft H in English. CH in spanish is CH in English or TSCH in German. In portuguese depends, in old classic regions still is CH, but the most of speakers say SH... Galician has lost the voiced J by unvoiced X(SH) or perhaps never had it?
@@bilbohob7179 record 100 native spanish speaker saying "Jose" the J will have a range from H to german "ACH" or russian X, almost like Portuguese "the start R" and "RR". the op used an unfortunate example that use the y in the word, what i wrote was for words that still have the J. was Galician that lost the voiced J, cus G also become X.
I always thought it made perfect sense to distinguish the vowel “i” from the semiconsonant “j” by writing them differently. Very cool to learn how j came about in Latin. Thanks Luke!
Well, most of languages have J for what is written with Y in English, but for some reason, English decided mark "dž" sound with that. English spelling is mess, G is sometimes J and sometimes just G, like if they could not choose how to writte language.
@@Pidalin English isn't the only language to have this convention: it was borrowed from the Romance languages that used for the sound that it had evolved into over time, which in Old French was [dʒ] or the English J/"soft" G (the same sound spelled with before a soft vowel in French because of its origins). You can still see other ways of writing this sound in native English words like "bridge", which in Old English was spelled because the sound basically didn't come at the start of a word until Romance borrowings like "joy" (OF joie, LA gaudia). The Western European convention was also implemented around the world for romanizing languages like Mandarin, Hindi or Malay with a palatal affricate.
3:40 actually, modern Welsh uses the letter "w" in the exact same manner the Romans used the "v" - it doubles as a vowel and a consonant, and incidentally it's almost the same vowel and consonant as in Latin (if you employ classical pronunciation where the v is pronounced like "w" in English). And yes, if you don't know that "w" can be a vowel, then Welsh words can occasionally look a little consonant-laden.
"w" and "y" are not, in any case, fully-fledged consonants. They are more correctly defined as "semi-vowels" or even "semi-consonants." This is how the equivalent letters are regarded in Arabic, for instance.
Also in Welsh the letter i followed by a vowel has the consonant sound y as in the name Ianto 'Yanto'. In English Y more often represents a vowel sound than its consonant sound eg. In funny, sky, syzygy (3 different vowel sounds in one word, all represented by Y)
In some southern italian dialects j is still used, like in Neapolitan "jamme jà" we also differentiate the English J ("Jay") from the Italian J which is called "i lunga" litterally long i
I beg your pardon, but your observation only makes sense if you specify the context. If the idea is to simplify reading classical Latin poetry, I agree. If it is to pronounce Medieval/Catholic Latin, I daresay U/V is MUCH more important than "I/J". When we say "Latin" we should always bear in mind that it is not a monolithic bloc.
@@spaghettiking653 "Monolithic" means "extremely uniform, homogeneous". What I said is that his observation only makes sense if he specifies a context: Latin is not "monolithic", there are several different pronunciations, depending on the historical period, the country where it is taught and the purpose of studying it. So, saying that distinguishing "V/W" and "I/J" makes it easier to pronounce it only makes sense if we are speaking about a variety of Latin which does make these distinctions. And I even added that in some of them, V/W is much more important than I/J, in order to pronounce correctly.
@@nicolanobili2113 I see. Thanks for explaining. I do guess that's reasonable. Sorry for being so brash. At any rate, in the modern day, feel it's best practice to use both U and J, like Luke outlined in the video, as long as we're talking about classical Latin.
Nowadays I tend to write Latin with i/j and u/v distictions (Jovis, viginti, ejus...). I also use æ and œ when they're diphthongs (pœna, Cæsar, œconomiæ...).
@@nicolanobili2113 Sure, and number 8 is CLEARLY a double O. What I meant is, thanks to Luke, I finally understood the meaning of long I, which is due to the quantity of the sound in Latin.
Interesting fact: in modern Georgian language there is no sound 'v' and Georgian letter 'ვ' represents both sounds 'w' and 'u'. This may be confusing, but Georgians used to it and often treat 'u', 'v', 'w' in foreign words as the one same sound 'ვ'.
Me and my Georgian friend Giwi Mewzwrishwili: - Giwi, read this: 'two'. - Tuo! Ah, some more details: in Georgian, stress is always placed at the second syllable from the end. And the sound 'L' is always soft. And the counting system is vingedecimal (by 20's). It's an old language. Not Indo-European, too.
On the contrary, Modern Georgian doesn't have the sound w and it clearly distinguishes consonant v (ვ) from vowel u (უ) in both phonetics and writing. Old Georgian used to have a letter for w (ჳ) as well, even though the sound was not in Georgian's native inventory but was found in loanwords.
@@cemreomerayna463 there are 10 dialects in Georgian actually, and they may have differences in writing and pronunciation. I tell what I heard from my Georgian friend, he is Kakhetian and really used to mix 'u' and 'v'.
In Italian until the 19th century the letter J was sometimes written to signify the semi-consonant status of the letter "i" when it happened between two vowels (e.g. in the word "ajuola" o "ajola") or at the beginning of a word followed by another vowel (e.g. the word "jato" or the personal name "Jacopo").
It appears in Pirandello as well, so I guess the use of J disappeared in the last century or so, but I think it also varied from region to region or so
Not all languages which use the Latin alphabet use both upper and lowercase letters. SENĆOŦEN, part of the Northern Straits Salishan dialect continuum, uses all uppercase letters (with modifications and diacritics and one exception for the third person possessive suffix borrowed from English) because its orthography was developed for use with unicase typewriters. There's also the reconstructed pan-Tasmanian language palawi kani which uses only lowercase letters. The popular conlang toki pona is also usually written using only lowercase Latin letters.
5:00 well, from what I'm aware, we write 'love' as 'love' with the silent "e", because the "e" wasn't silent. It was pronounced as a separate vowel in Old English, reduced to schwa in and slowly disappeared through Middle English. From Wiktionary: PIE: *lewbʰ- Proto-Germanic: lubō /ˈlu.βɔː/ Old English: /ˈlu.fu/, [ˈlu.vu] Middle English: /ˈluv(ə)/ Your description probably _does_ apply to why we write "love" instead of "luve", but the final "e" isn't there for no reason.
@@polyMATHY_Luke from Chapter 15: More exceptions "But what about the other minims? Was there anything that could be done to help readers work out how to read sequences where a u was followed by a v, n or m? Several words fell into this category, such as cum (‘come’), sum (‘some’), huni (‘honey’), tung (‘tongue’) and luv (‘love’). These would all appear as a consonant followed by four or five minims. Munuc (‘monk’) would be a sequence of nine. *The problem remained even if these words were spelled with a final e. So, as the modern spellings immediately show, they hit on the idea of replacing the u with an o.* " The passage doesn't actually address the silent e, only that it directly states the spelling of would be just as confusing as in minims. How would compare with is not mentioned. The above examples are implied to be as confusing. Is it implying that scribes initially tried to disambiguate by spelling it , only to find it still confusing, and then spelling it because they already got used to spelling it with the final e? It's not really clear, and I would say it would be unlikely given its OE pronunciation had a final vowel. What's more likely is that the final e was disappearing, which is why it went from to in some texts. Why it didn't entirely disappear in writing, and instead was preserved as is another question. It then goes on to provide a counterexample for something else, why is spelled with rather than as with ; which is unrelated. It mentions "But anyone who began to spell tung as tong in the 14th century would soon encounter a different sort of clash: with tongs (the lifting implement). *Both words often appeared with a final e: tonge.* But a final -ge spelling, as we saw in Chapter 5, was being pronounced /dʒ/, as in refuge, visage and so on. So, tonge would look as if it was to be pronounced to rhyme with sponge" It again doesn't actually provide an explanation for the final e, only mentioning that it occurs. It does reference -ge spellings as being pronounced as /dʒ/ in Chapter 5, but the referenced time frame is Old English, at which point it's not relevant, as final e was not silent, and it didn't have the ME borrowed words from French (whence the spelling -ge for /dʒ/). The other source of final -e was to mark long vowels, but doesn't have a long vowel in OE or ME, so that can't have been the source for this particular word. I'm not looking to argue per se, English historical phonology isn't my forte, but the explanation you provide does not make sense with what I know.
The reason behind the incoherent use of “i” for both the consonant and the vowel while keeping “u” and “v” distinct, is the Ecclesiastical Pronunciation, which is largely based on the Vulgar Latin dialect that ultimately has evolved into Italian. /i/ and /j/ sound sufficiently similar to one another to an Italian ear so as to represent them -albeit ambiguously- with just one grapheme; while /u/ and /v/ sound completely different to us, and therefore, two different graphemes are regarded to be necessary. However, up until the end of the XIX c. AD, it wasn’t uncommon at all to see such spellings as “cujus” and “major” in Latin textbooks printed in Italy, probably because back then, “j” was used profusely in Italian as well. After all, we still write “Juventus”, don’t we?
> which is largely heard on the Vulgar Latin dialect that has ultimately has evolved into Italian Luke has made two videos that disprove this theory, located here: ruclips.net/video/XeqTuPZv9as/видео.html and ruclips.net/video/HgRxuPzdInI/видео.html. the ecclesiastical standard is not from a vulgar latin dialect since it was made well into the proto-romance days. vulgar latin is also not a thing, since that is way too much of a broad term
Soulcatcher, sure, I watched his video about Vulgar Latin, which indeed is not a thing. But if I understand that correctly, Luke meant that when Latin *proper* was spoken, there was not a cut glass distinction between the cultivated speech of the upper class and the language spoken by the commoners. Rather, it was a continuum. He is right. What I meant in my original comment by “vulgar” is that kind of transitional stage wherein the language spoken by the uneducated and in informal contexts by everyone was neither Latin (partial loss of declension and/or incorrect use of standard grammar) nor anything recognizable as Italian. I should have used a better term but frankly I do not know which one would work. Proto-Italian? Maybe. I hope that is clear now.
Or probably just “the vulgar”. A good example of what I am referring to is the Verona Riddle, where the word for “oxen” is BOVES, purely Latin, with the correct -es ending. But the word for “plough” is VERSORIO, which rather is Italian. And the imperfect tense termination -BA is just at mid way between Latin -BAT and Italian -VA. Cicero would have understood that with some effort, but would have not recognized the language as his own; we Italians understand the text with some effort (we study the Riddle as part of our curriculum in high school) but we do not recognize that as Italian, not even a very archaic form thereof. Generally we react to it as if it was a joke by someone who attempted to write in Latin with hardly any knowledge of the language. And that is the intermediate stage I was implying when I referred to Vulgar Latin.
Another reason why it makes sense to use J in poetry is that it makes clear to the reader that it is a consonant and so the rule of elision when the preceding word ends with wovel or M does not apply
Indeed; the letter ‘u’ written V in inscriptions in marble is written akin to ‘u’ in shape when done by hand. Yet the letter is always ‘u’, standing for /u/ or /w/
@@polyMATHY_Luke OK. I was wondering, because I’d only really seen inscriptions in marble (very few manuscripts), where it makes sense to use the more angular ”V”-shape, due to the properties of the medium.
Every sound in a language should have its own unique letter. Just makes reading so much easier. In Welsh every letter has 1 sound except: Y /ɨ/ or /ə/, W /u/ or /w/, and i /i/ or /j/. And even though it's not standard orthography, I usually mark the different sounds by either writing the letters in a stylistic way when representing the different sounds, or by putting a little dot above the letter. Just makes more sense
Allow me to correct you: Every PHONEME in a language should have its own unique letter". In linguistics, there is a difference between a phoneme (which is an abstract concept) and a sound (which is one of the numerous practical forms of a phoneme). For example, if you listen to many people pronouncing the same word, you may notice slight differences in the pronunciation of a letter (those are SOUNDS), whereas they all understand the word the are saying, because they recognize the phonemes. This is also why we can understand when someone with a speech defect speaks.
Sometimes that's not necessary. For example the /ɜ:/ sound ( the "i" sound in the word bird) in standard English appears only in front of the letter r. Also representing the schwa /ə/ (the "e" sound as in the word father) is also not necessary, but it can be done. Also sometimes there are sounds that are rare and don't appear often. And in that case it might be better to just use a diagraph instead of adding a whole letter for a sound that might appear only in 50 words in the whole language. I have actually developed a more phonetic writing system for English. Here are some examples: Ðe kwik braun foks džampt óver ðe fens en óver ðe leizí dåg. (The quick brown fox jumped over the fence and over the lazy dog.) Hau mäní šips dú jú ón? (How many ships do you own?) Hau fár ewei iz ðät bridž? (How far away is that bridge?) Dú jú laik cíz? (Do you like cheeze?) Wat iz ðät þing? (What is that thing?)
In a few handbooks, I have even encountered “i̯ , u̯” to mark /j, w/. Btw, an official request has been submitted to Unicode to add a few extra characters to the Latin set, including an extra tall I LONGA to mark /i:/.
This totally makes sense because in old fashioned italian J is called "I lunga". And I I am kinda sad it is not really in use in italian anymore except toponyms (Jesi or Ajaccio) and some surnames. I think in the first 1900s some authors like Pirandello still wrote some words like Aiuto as Ajuto (which is more correct phonetically) . I was enlightened reading a renaissance book that could distinguish between principi (princes) and princjpj (principles) which you cannot do in Italian anymore, where both are "principi" Fun fact the very old professor I had in middle school said Jungla (jungle) as Yungla! If we were to call that letter "Jay" in the "English fashion " and not " I lunga" She would get really mad.
@@pasqualesimonelli1513 Rimovendo la lettera j dalla lingua italiana è stato un gran errore. Perchè oggi dobbiamo sempre sostituirla con Gi. Per esempio: Giustizia
Sì Pirandello usava tantissimo la j, specie per le "i" tra due vocali. Bellissimo l'esempio "principi"-"princjpj", effettivamente l' "i lunga" è proprio una "i" un pelo più lunga di quelle normali, non ci avevo fatto caso 😁
Hugely interesting as usual. In Italian the "j" letter was often interchangeable with "i" in many words but was gradually abandoned throughout the XXth century. It survives, always in dual forms, in very few words ( like "fidejussione"/"fideiussione" in law) or names such as Jacopo/Iacopo. For this reason, it "feels" kinda unnecessary to me also in Latin writing, but it's really just a mere feeling (or an outright bias). Your example on Iulus vs Iulius was really interesting. However, considering the former is a Greek word, how common is such an ambiguous case in your experience? Especially from a pedagogical perspective, would it really be worth it - regardless of personal preferences - to learn Latin with Js for this reason (especially considering that most books do not use it, as you also mentioned)? You always make me/us think. Thanks!
Ciao Andrea! Grazie per il commento. Yes, for me the lack of J in recitation is a real pain; Ovid and Vergil have quite a few Greek names and words to make it aggravating, at least for me. I used to write just u and i for years during my study of FR and after, but then I realized how useful they were in poetry. I'm a convert to J and V.
It's not really interchangable. In the XIX century, when modern Italian was codified, it was used for the "y" sound as Luke says. If you pay attention, fidejussione DOES have a y sound in it instead of an I. Same as Jacopo. J was actually used in a few other words where that sound occourred (calamajo - calamaio, for example), but later dropped because Italian phonetics considers I and Y allophones (that is, variants of pronunciation of a sound that do not bare any grammatical value), so nothing is achieved by marking the difference, and to a native Italian speaker's ears it's hard to pay attention to it anyway.
@@captainufo4587 Although I occasionally use "J" in Italian, and although my mother's name was "Iolanda", which some people used to spell "Jolanda", I daresay that the "j" was also dropped for another reason: there was no consistency or logical rule. I mean, you could use "j", optionally, when it was between two vowels or at the beginning of a word if followed by a vowel (e.g. Jonio, fidejussione...), but you could not use it after a consonant (*bjanco, *occhjo...), which made its use hard to explain and, practically, did not provide any real advantage.
Talking about that, I was watching on "The Last Crusade" lately, and realized that I've always wondered why Indiana doesn't communicate with the Knight of the First Crusade in Latin? Or at least in 11th century Old French, but Latin would have been more evocative, and above all it would have put Indiana's skills in ancient language with a character from several centuries ago.
Latin has been the language for diplomacy for centuries, like french did in the years of "le grand Nation" and much later still, and english is today... To the time of this crusader, if educated enough, foreigners would have really communicated with each other in Latin, if it was in western Europe (since the lingua diplomatica for the rest was still greek, also for people coming from the region that mostly used the word Iehova, Judea was just lost some years ago for the eastern Roman empire back then, the 1st crusade should help the eastern Roman Empire regain Judea)...
It is strange that Italian doesn't use in any word. The and is in Latin the same letter and just a matter of individual style. This is a slightly different story with and , which was used in later periods in the Empire frequently distinguished.
Until the early XX century italian language used the letter "j" as the semi-vowel [j] (english "y", german "j") or as the long [i:] (ii=j). Even today there are personal names or geographical names with "j" in italian, like "Jacopo" or "Jesolo" (a city in northern Italy).
@@SchmulKrieger Because its pronunciation is different. It isn't [jo] (semivowel +vowel) but [i-o] with stress on "i" and a very little pause between the two vowels. In italian there are "diphthongs" (like in german "jo") when a semi-vowel is united with a vowel, and "hyatus" when two vowels are in contact and thery are pronounced separated. In the first person of personal pronoun ("io") there is a hyatus, in the word "iena" (english hyena) there is a diphthong (and in the ancient orthography it was written "jena"). The rule is: there is a diphthong ([j]- or [w]- plus vowel) when the stess is on the second element, there is a hyatus ([i]- or [u]- plus vowel) when the stress is on the first element. However as I said, in modern orthography the letter "j" is used only in personal names and geographical names as a relic.
I have pretty much the same issues, when I read Russian text that doesn’t have the ”Ё”/”ё”. At least, it wouldn’t mess up any meter; but, I think, it does have grammatical signifincance; since I’ve seen and heard both: ”Знамёна” and: ”Знамена”; and, often times, ”Знамёна” is written, as: ”Знамена”, but still pronounced, as: ”Знамёна”; and both have stress, on the 2nd syllable; so, you can’t even use the stress pattern to infer, which sound you should make: /jo/ or: /je/. *EDIT:* In fact; there’s another such minimal pair, with that very distinction, in Russian: ”Все” (= ”Everyone” (referring to people)) vs. ”Всё” (= ”All” / ”Everything” (referring mostly to inanimate objects, or uncountable nouns)).
A few weks ago in Rome I was sitting I was sitting outseide the Palazzo Doria-Pamphilij on the Piazza Navona. As I sat there I pondered over Olimpia Maidalchini whose first name was Olimpia. She married into the Doria family and had such great influence ove the popeof the time that she was commemorated in a pasquinade which referred to her Olim Pia - a nice Latin joke. But to our theme, The Dorias still use the J to spell their hypenated second name.
At least my Latin linguistics professors have always been honest that it's an arbitrary choice to distinguish u/v but not i/j. I've grown up with textbooks and critical text editions that don't write J (u/v is pretty equally mixed), so I'm used to that look and I'm not sure if I'm likely to change it in my own Latin writing, but you make a good argument for writing J. I have just started my teaching degree for Latin and Ancient Greek, so this might be something to think about, though I will also be bound to the preference of the other Latin teachers in the school in the future. Interesting video! I didn't know the long i could have a tail in the classical period already.
Have often wondered about that scene, and now I need wonder no more! Always fascinating, thank you. One of these days I shall have to ask a question about the Korean language. I'm very much intrigued by it, and was wondering if you had any interest. Seems very unique.
One of my favorite weird v/u examples comes from Spanish - I was reading a 16th-century poem and stumbled over the word "vuo" for a little bit. The early modern spelling is based on the fact that Latin h had been silent for centuries and was often not written (as distinct from a later h which derived from initial Latin f, as in halcón, hablar, which is now also silent but wasn't at the time). The Spanish consonants v and b merged to become the same sound. Later, but after this poem was printed, the RAE would restore the silent Latin h in most written forms and the use of whichever is more etymologically suitable between b and v. The mystery word is modern "hubo," he had, a form of haber (or, I suppose, auer?) derived from Latin habēre.
Classical french texts can be as well difficult to read when they mix u/v and skip j. Auoir et iniuste seem seem coming from different language and you have to unlearn the way you read french.
Thanks for the information! I have also noticed the paradox of the "nonexistent" J being used in the trap! However, I never noticed exactly _what_ else is off about it! I'll subscribe now!
12:00 I sympathize, but i also wish i could show you what scanning poetry in Persian poetry looks like. (Arabic abjad, indo-euro language, arabic metrics). The poetry itself is a delight, but latin i/j orthography sounds trivial compared to this. Still, we have similar issues (آه… no writing system is perfect i guess), only each letter (in the semiconsonants, say, vav) can be read in context o/ō/ow[*aw]/u/ū/v[*w]/wa _(sic)_ and every ya is potentially i/ī/ej[aj]/ē/j. & Alef is yet another matter.
Luke is like a Roman tutor sternly scolding kids who are learning latin. That's how I imagined things would go if we're in ancient Rome. But since this is the contemporary age without a universal latin tutelage system, this would suffice.
Always so clear. Just out of curiosity: how did you manage to have so a pleasant voice? What do you suggest in order to improve one's own voice emission?
Same for all taxonomy based on Linnaeus’ work: the actual words are just used as symbols, so while some folks try to give names that make sense in Latin or Latinized-Greek, ultimately the category’s name is only there AS a name, so a lot of them are pretty arbitrary, or reflective of an older definition of the category that has since been discarded in favor of a different understanding. The individual names are often quite fun to figure out, but you really can’t make any systematic generalizations beyond that-Linnaeus explicitly stated when setting out his taxonomy that the categories could be called anything, but he simply preferred to use Latin and Latinzed-Greek names for the categories so they weren’t common vernacular names (since changes in living language really can’t be controlled to match the science) or bland, meaningless labels like numbers.
@@IONATVS Yep! Still like this today: most new names make some sort of sense in Latin or Greek, some just do not and must be treated as indeclinable if writing in Latin.
Thanks Luke that was great! I’m curious though why the inscription on Jesus’ cross is traditionally represented as “INRI”, which I presume you know stands for “Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum”. Why didn’t they write it with a J? (If they wrote it at all; let’s say for argument’s sake they did).
@@igorvoloshin3406 Isn't it true that ш and щ are really the same sound, but the Russian people play an elaborate practical joke on Russian-language learners by pretending that they are different?
@@robertjenkins6132 Jokes aside it's not. In ruſsian «ш» is [ʂ], and «щ» is [ɕˑ]; and in ukrainian and bulgarian the latter is pronounced [ʃtʃ] and [ʃt], respectively, juſt so you know that in advance.
5:19: lobe? Lobe den Herren? German for "Praise the Lord?" Yes, B and V are so closely related. Sitting next to each other, the question is: taverna or taberna? But that is also the shift in Germanic languages: Weib (High German), Wiev (Low German), wife (English). Haben (High German), hebben (Low German), to have (English). Yes, and in blackletter typeface, V and B look so similar. Just like F and Long S.
I use J & U in Latin, but count them as variants of I & V rather than separate letters. I also use the letter J in dates to distinguish J111 (January 111) from IJ11 (February 11) from IIJ1 (March 1).
Just out of curiosity, when were the interpunct & the "g" invented relative to the "j"? "G" I wonder because modern Latin texts make that distinction, & interpunct because I thought the Romans used at least that much pretty early on. Great video! Your channel's one of my favorites!
Riddle me this then, o Luci! If we are to use the letter J, shouldn't we also double it in words like maior (so majjor)? Since it's now not understood as a shift from a to i and then back to o (which naturally lengthens the syllable), but we take it to be a full consonant, writing major could be misleading from a metrical perspective. Yet all propugnatores of the letter J I see never write a double JJ.
Absolutely, my good sir! In fact you can find things I’ve written like the Pontanus transcriptions where I doubled the J. Cicero wrote maiius, aiio etc. However, since intervocalic J is *always* long, there is no need. Just as intervocalic gl and z and gn in Italian, it’s not necessary to write it geminated. But I think it’s fine if people do. It’s simply a matter of learning that intervocalic J always creates a long prior syllable
That tall s (ſ) was standard usage in (I suppose) all European languages that used the Latin alphabet. It even had a handwritten form (looking like a cursive f with its bottom loop formed in the opposite direction) which persisted into the 19th century. When followed by a final-style s or sometimes by a z, the result could be a ligature ß that lasted longer in German ("scharfes Es" or "Es-tset") but can also be found in older English books.
@@polyMATHY_Luke Some kind of explanation how it is now, how it came to that point, maybe about variety of it and of course some guide if it's not a problem :)
On the punctuation: If I'm not mistaken, later (at least starting with the classical) Latin used interpuncts in order to separate words. Though no commas and question marks were introduced so far
In modern transcriptions, the U is represented by the letter V when it has the [w] pronunciation. But not always. For why do we spell 'quoque' rather than 'qvoqve'? It seems the only logical thing to do. The Q comes via the Etruskans from the Greek letter qoppa, which was so much a [k] that the ancient Greeks dropped it in favour of the kappa. The Romans took the letter to represent the [kw] phonemes, but found it necessary to add a V. When you have a letter that represents the [k] phoneme (Q) and want to express the [kw] sound and to this objective add a V [w], then the U after a Q must really be and remain interpreted as the modern letter V and not a U. Or is there more to this?
I was intrigued by your assertion that 'y' didn't exist in classical Greek. Because that leads me to the question of why the French call 'y', _i Grek_ ? Could you please elucidate?
This is because the the letter Υυ wasn’t present in Latin except for Greek loan words. In Ancient Greek it was pronounced something like a German ü, which was a sound not present in Latin.
@@daltonsherrod1573 True, but the vowel in "documentum", "optimum" must have been close. Still, they didn't come up with the idea to write "docymentum" and "optymum".
He said the “«y» sound” (which is basically [j] in american) didn't exist in classical greek, not the letter; and yeah, it's called that way in many languages because it was used in greek loanwords in latin, but by the medieval times the sound /y/ had merged with /i/ in most of romance languages.
The Indiana Jones scene feels like the work of a bunch of screen writers getting high together, and one of them had a mild interest in slightly obscure trivia.
I also have started using j's, although I'm acquainted with u/v distinction-only i's through FM. Only u's and only i's is still too difficult for me, even while reading prose. But, I have a question: I thought that Julius was etymologically connected with Iulus, so that J there seems to me ἀναιτιολόγητον. I wanted to ask you, also, are these names like Iulus, and even words like these, many? Is there a complete list of them that I could read?
Hello my friend! As for a list, you can just skim through Ovid or Vergil and find more than a few. Plus native Latin words can have i or j in places not clear from context alone. As for Julius, evidently the connection to Ἰουλος was made in order to justify a grand history for the Julian family, but in actuality it is thought to come from Jove.
@@polyMATHY_Luke Thanks, I'll look it up, when I'll be more fluent in the language! As for the etymology, it seems then to be a difference between φαίνεσθαι and εἶναι.
In official Catholic Church documents there was no J until John Paul II was elected. The first time he signed his name he used a J. Some official (I forget his position) sent the new pope a note, "There is no J in Latin." JPII wrote back, "There is now." Don't know how true that story is, but it is a great one all the same.
I believe that official was the late Fr. Reginald Foster, longtime papal Latinist, who was a doctrinaire anti-J-ite. He didn’t allow the J on his watch, but I imagine if you looked far back enough in history you’d find plenty of J’s coming out of the Vatican.
What a shame! Fr. Foster was wonderful, but he was not right in his recommendation here, which doubtless came from the odd thinking of the Classics community of his day.
My Roman rite missal ( 1962 edition, Angelus Press ) has both i and j. Thank you for soothing my conscience ;). BTW, my brother had 3 years of Latin and his teacher went on a rant against the letter 'j'. The ecclesiastical pronunciation, in illo tempore, was also a subject of ridicule.
Interesting. Romanian doesn't have a distinct letter like "J" to represent the sound for "ya". Instead this sound is produced by digraphs from combining "i" with any other vowel; like "iu" or "ia". So Romanians say "Iuliu" and "Traian" instead of "Julius" and "Trajanus". And the only way to make a distinction between a long "i" and a short "i" is to simply add another "i". So if we were to write out the correct pronunciation of the character from the Aeneid, we would write "Iiulus".
Hi Luke, Greek words like "aion" were transcribed into latin as "aeon". Didn't the Greek diphthongs have the "y" sound in "ai", "ei", "oi"? Regarding "Iūlus", didn't Caesar claim to be a descendant of his? Did Romans slowly change the pronunciation from "i-u" to "ju" in their cognomen? Thank you.
Yes, but the only "ēi" diphthong was the eta iota subscript. Ancient Greek had regular and overlong diphthongs: αι, οι, the alpha iota subscript (ăi), the eta iota subscript (ēi) and omega iota subscript (ōi). This is not the case with ει, which was either pronounced ē or ī depending on the period. That's why it was transcribed into Latin as ē/ï. As for the praenomen Jülius, yes, it did come from the gens name Iūlus (pronounced with [i]). The spelling convention for [j] was an I until the Renaissance.
My text for Ovid’s Metamorphoses didn’t have a written j, just i. So I share your frustration with having to make an extra mental effort when scanning the meter.
Hey Luke, I've been following your LLPSI readings and I've noticed that it sounds like you nasalize the final -m when reading from that, but in this video like at 11:18, it sounded like you said "Iūlum" with a hard -m sound. Is there a reason for this? Is the final m pronounced when you are saying the word by itself or am I just hearing things?
Right, so the most important aspect of final -m is that it doesn’t behave like a consonant in front of vowels. Nasalization is one way to achieve this. You could also turn off the vocal chords before meeting the lips together. I do either ad libitum
Thank you! I feel vindicated! I get to cut and paste Latin hymns and change all the consonantal 'i's into 'j's for consistency. My main reason is to make it easier to read.
I was wondering this after a recent watcing of that film. Why would there be a carved 'J' anyway, if it was an ancient temple (or at a least pre-medieval one) and the presumption the word would be read in Latin and 'J' was not yet in use? ' The name is also questionable. Jehovah' is a rendering of YHWH (from the Hebrew). Apparently 'Jehovah' was only used from the Reformation era, in Tyndale's English bible. St Jerome (whose name began with an H in Latin) did not attempt to transliterate the tetragrammaton 'YHWH', but rather replaced it with 'Dominus' (the Lord) in the Latin vulgate Bible. ('Jerusalem' was also a 'H' word in Latin, 'Hierusalem', for some reason.)
I am sorry Luke, but Indiana Jones' producers are right. The name Jehovan is the latin adaptation of the original Holy Scripts which were written in common greek. In the original text the name was written Ἰεχωβᾶ. Pay attention to the ' before the I, meaning emphasised vowel [i]. Similarly to the common name John deriving from Johannes (i.e. Johannes Calvin) which is the latin adaptation of the greek Ἰωάννης (again ' before the I). Johannes was also written Ioannes - see brief latin emperor Ioannes around 4-5th century, at the same period when the bible was translated from greek to latin. Now the Greek Ἰεχωβᾶ is an adapttion of the Tetragram, the Aramaic YHWH (Hebrew יְהֹוָה) which is without vowels therefore the Greeks suggested the pronociation YeHoWaH. The J, in Jehova, is not related to the german sound Ja, it is a prolonged i. In fact the sound of german Ja exist in ancient greek prononciation Γ and γ (i.e. ἔγωγε) but that is another minor mistake you made @11:35... and if the original aim was to pronouce it as "Ja", it would be naturally be written in greek as Γεχωβᾶ. But the specific name is starting with the vowel [i]. Therefore, in the original Biblia Vulgata the Jehova was, indeed, starting with I (Iehova) and in the medieval trap shown in the movie the J is represented correctly, because a 1000 years later IEHOVA was written Jehova. upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/11/S%C3%B8r-Fron_church%2C_IEHOVA.jpg
Except for the fact that most Latin names of Semitic origin have long since been re-Hebraicized and have the appearance of having skipped Greek entirely. This is why Italian names like “Giacomo” and “Giovanni” are derived from the initial /j/ pronunciation of the biblical names, pronunciations that were necessarily current in antiquity since these names developed naturally with the Italian language, and do not start with /i/ in Latin. One could of course choose to pronounce the biblical names in Latin in a Greeker way. That’s fine. But it’s far from standard even in the Late Roman Empire.
@@polyMATHY_Luke Latin names of Semitic origin have been re-Hebraicized ?... hmmm You seem to be convinced that יְהֹוָה is pronounced with "Ja", but I suggest you speak with a native speaker. Giacomo (Iacovus) in Hebrew is יעקב and Giovanni (Ioannes) is Hebrew יוחנן - both starting with "i"...(not Gimel if that's what you're thinking) Jehova in Greek and Hebrew start with the same sounding letter Yiota in Greek and Yod in Hebrew. Israel, which strats with Yod, is not pronounced Jesrael... Jehova was never pronounced with Ja, neither in its original aramaic, nor in Greek, nor in Latin nor in modern hebrew. Afterall, in the Latin Bible of the 4-5th century Jehova is written IEHOVA.- Now, Giovanni is a medieval version of latin Ioannes (I > G ), as much as Γιάννη is the medieval version of Ιωάννη in greek (I > Γ)... “Giacomo” and “Giovanni” obviously have not been "re-Hebraicized", on the contrary both medieval Greek and Italian have moved away from their original version "I" to a G / Γ (letter Gamma / Γάμμα, again latin names of semitc origin are linked to greek not hebrew). I am very happy you have spent the time reading and answering. I hope my comments are not too annoying. Please keep up the good work and positive attitude to your fastidious audience.
Jehovah in Latin is written 'IEOVA', but not pronounced 'Jeh-ho-vah' like in English, but more like 'Yeh-oh-wah', more similar to 'YHWH', 'Yah-weh' in Hebrew, correct? Indie and his pops were still incorrect in a way... Question: Why does the modern 'H' vary wildly in pronunciation and usage from the Eta in Greek where it descended from? Is it not similar in difference between an Omicron and Omega (just longer or shorter vowel sound) to Epsilon?
It's because of the vowel shift that happened with ει, which in Ancient Greek was pronounced as a long ε and was originally spelled as εε in the Attic dialect before the Ionian spelling system became the standard.
As a artist, I have studied the Book of Kells. I have even attempted to make my own illuminated manuscript of the Book of Mark but only got to chapture 6. There was no "j" in the first half of Mark.
Nah, he means the silly convention of not capitalization the first word in Greek or Latin sentences, because it wasn't a feature of ancient spelling. So silly.
@@polyMATHY_Luke lol I'll try! Personally I do enjoy writing in all caps and not using j but that's purely personal preference for aesthetics. I happen to find "vv" a lot more pleasant the "uv" or "vu" Then again I'm not a person people would call a "linguist" but I do intend to keep practicing latin indefinitely and it does make one look at the differences in preferences that people who predominantly speak vs write latin may have felt about it historically or not. Fun to speculate for me. Anyways thanks for the great content
Hey Polymathy, when I was reading Oedipus Rex in high school by was Jokaste spelled Iokaste? Is this because it was originally written in Ancient Greek? Or is it because of someone translating it to English and wanting to use an I?
In prints and manuscripts up until the 17th century (just my personal statistics), the distinction between u and v, in Latin as well as in German/Italian/..., simply was: "We write v at the beginning of words and u i between", even though there already were two distinguishable sounds intended by _both_ u and v.
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I have a written a new short story in Latin! with drammatically acted audiobook. Check it out: luke-ranieri.myshopify.com/collections/frontpage/products/fabula-anatina-a-duckish-tale-in-latin 🦆
It's a children's book about the odyssey of a duckling who wants to learn how to fly.
Lūcius: his name is not Jū-lus, it's I-ū-lus
Auto-generated captions: YOU LOSE!
For what it's worth: I'm holding an English book, printed 1709, with an alphabetical index, in which all the "I" and "J" entries are grouped together under the heading "J." Alphabetically "Jamaica" and "Jersey" are placed before "Ifield," "Ilchester" and "Ilmore," with "Jordans" and then "Ipswich" coming later -- and yet what is considered a single letter of the alphabet is printed in different shapes depending on whether it's a vowel or a consonant. I guess this represents a transitional era. Of course this is somewhat peripheral to your video since it's not in Latin.
The name of the island in Scotland is Iona.
I believe I once saw an older English dictionary, glossary or similar where the separation between I and J was beginning to happen and J was sorted before I. Either the collator was a contrarian who believed J ought to go first, or they weren't aware of the consensus, or no consensus had been reached at that time as to which ought to be first. I can imagine that J=Jehovah coming first might have been the argument!
Fascinating stuff! I heard about this being an issue in Spanish dictionaries up until very recent times. All digraphs were grouped separately from single letters, so that words starting CH appeared in their own section, after all words starting C.
@@lagomoof I have the 1611 Covarrubias dictionary of Spanish and it's the same as you describe. However, both I and J (and Y) are spelled in capital letters as "I"! So Covarrubias first has a section for consonantal I (modern-day J) and then a section for vowel or semiconsonant I (modern-day I and Y). For example: IVSTICIA goes before IO, which goes before ITALIANO. Nowadays the order is: italiano, justicia, yo.
@@ceruchi2084 The uppercase form of the letter ch is Ch, and never CH.
Well I guess I shouldn't be calling it a letter anymore but, that's how I've been taught as a child.
The "extra" letters back in the day were Ch ch which goes after C, Ll ll which goes after L, rr which goes after R.
For reference, Im 24 years old. It has been changed at the times of my parents but the change was accepted slowly.
Indiana Jones: Has been studying ancient languages for all his life, can read latin, is an archeologist and a professor at university…
Indiana Jones: *_J_*
Press J to pay respects to Indiana
J
The name of the island in Scotland is Iona.
Well, the film Indy 3: The Last Crusade is set in the 2nd World War... in real world history, early 20th century linguist theories about Latin may not have been as well informed because 1) only professors, priests, and a subset of artistic enthusiasts would learn Latin; for most people that aren't historians or enthusiasts it's a dead language so that limits the ease of practice for those who studied it in the early 20th century 2) the scholars could only get information from books which can be outdated with present understanding or interpretation 3) The movie is made to appeal to all ages and especially kids in mind (directed by Speilberg, also known for E.T.) a 7-13 doesn't care about complete accuracy, they like a good immersive story. Latin professors and enthusiasts are a small minority niche of society and the only ones who care to know the language to exactness.
Indiana Īones ✌🤠👍
Paradoxically, the names for J in some European languages such as German (“Jot”), Portuguese and Spanish (“jota”) descend from the name of the Greek letter iota.
Same with Jason
In German and Russian languages, the J sounds like the letter Y or Ya sound while the Spanish version of J is an H or Huh sound.
@@wazzup233 Russian doesnt have J it has Й, its not written in latin script mate, i thik you mean Check, Polish, Slovak, Slovenian or Kroatian. Also Baltic, Uralic and Scandinavian languages written with latin have J
as /j/ similarly to German.
"Joð" in Icelandic. In the language, the chemical element Iodine is also named "Joð".
@@rodholseth6354 Interesting. Thats propably a coincidence, i guess, or was the element named after the greek letter, as many element names came from Greek or Latin language.
I remember watching that scene and thinking "Huh, it's debatable whether or not Jehovah begins with J in Latin" and here is the video! You read my mind.
I mean, from Hebrew it's YHWH, so of course it's "ee-y", right?
Nice!
Life of Brian potential defence: But I said Jehovah, not Iehovah!
@@adarkerstormishere The Y in latin carries the sound of the German Ü or the French U.
The name is never to be written as Yehova.
You are the voice of Common Sense that classicist *need* to hear.
Happy to express my opinion
Your very well-informed opinion.
assentior!
That's so interesting, Luke! The words for "TO HELP" in modern Portuguese (AJUDAR) / Galician (AXUDAR) / Spanish (AYUDAR) may tell a good story on how the languages evolved from Latin. While some Spanish speakers would pronounce the Y similarly to what the ethimological latin root (AJUTARE) suggests, the Galician-Portuguese went to another direction and developed a novel J sound that is not even present in Spanish (well, Argentina might be an exception).
j in portugues is like in French, and J in Spanish is like a H.
the Galician was equal to the Portuguese but they just unvoiced the phoneme some where after the separation with Portugal.
and all this changes come from palliation of the Y phoneme on languages that dIdnt have this new consonant like a voiced "ich".
The fr-pt-gl made this new consonant more up front, when Castilian made it more to the back.
Nitpick: the Latin root of "ayudar" is "adiūtāre"
Would it be related to the English adjutant? That word is pronounced with a hard j sound.
@@TheZenytram Spanish use the letter Y for the latin consonant I, aka J.
And the Letter J in spanish is the germanic CH (like Scottish Loch), not the soft H in English.
CH in spanish is CH in English or TSCH in German. In portuguese depends, in old classic regions still is CH, but the most of speakers say SH...
Galician has lost the voiced J by unvoiced X(SH) or perhaps never had it?
@@bilbohob7179 record 100 native spanish speaker saying "Jose" the J will have a range from H to german "ACH" or russian X, almost like Portuguese "the start R" and "RR".
the op used an unfortunate example that use the y in the word, what i wrote was for words that still have the J.
was Galician that lost the voiced J, cus G also become X.
I always thought it made perfect sense to distinguish the vowel “i” from the semiconsonant “j” by writing them differently. Very cool to learn how j came about in Latin. Thanks Luke!
For Italians, it doesn't matter.
Well, most of languages have J for what is written with Y in English, but for some reason, English decided mark "dž" sound with that. English spelling is mess, G is sometimes J and sometimes just G, like if they could not choose how to writte language.
@@Pidalin English isn't the only language to have this convention: it was borrowed from the Romance languages that used for the sound that it had evolved into over time, which in Old French was [dʒ] or the English J/"soft" G (the same sound spelled with before a soft vowel in French because of its origins). You can still see other ways of writing this sound in native English words like "bridge", which in Old English was spelled because the sound basically didn't come at the start of a word until Romance borrowings like "joy" (OF joie, LA gaudia). The Western European convention was also implemented around the world for romanizing languages like Mandarin, Hindi or Malay with a palatal affricate.
Allow me to be unbearably precise: "j" is not a "consonant" but a "semiconsonant".
@@nicolanobili2113 comment edited to fit your needs……
3:40 actually, modern Welsh uses the letter "w" in the exact same manner the Romans used the "v" - it doubles as a vowel and a consonant, and incidentally it's almost the same vowel and consonant as in Latin (if you employ classical pronunciation where the v is pronounced like "w" in English).
And yes, if you don't know that "w" can be a vowel, then Welsh words can occasionally look a little consonant-laden.
Like the town in Wales, Ebbw Vale
"w" and "y" are not, in any case, fully-fledged consonants. They are more correctly defined as "semi-vowels" or even "semi-consonants." This is how the equivalent letters are regarded in Arabic, for instance.
The word "cwm" looks and sounds funny.
Also in Welsh the letter i followed by a vowel has the consonant sound y as in the name Ianto 'Yanto'. In English Y more often represents a vowel sound than its consonant sound eg. In funny, sky, syzygy (3 different vowel sounds in one word, all represented by Y)
But in German or even the Dutch language, their w is sound as a v and the letter v is sound as an f.
In some southern italian dialects j is still used, like in Neapolitan "jamme jà"
we also differentiate the English J ("Jay") from the Italian J which is called "i lunga" litterally long i
Ma anche nell'italiano standard anche se è oramai desueta
@@alfredorotondo Italjano 😎
funiculi funiculaaaa
Honestly J and separating U/V are just way too good at improving legibility to not use
I beg your pardon, but your observation only makes sense if you specify the context. If the idea is to simplify reading classical Latin poetry, I agree. If it is to pronounce Medieval/Catholic Latin, I daresay U/V is MUCH more important than "I/J". When we say "Latin" we should always bear in mind that it is not a monolithic bloc.
@@nicolanobili2113 ??? Pretty sure he said both of them serve to improve legibility together, I don't see what's monolithic about that.
@@spaghettiking653 "Monolithic" means "extremely uniform, homogeneous". What I said is that his observation only makes sense if he specifies a context: Latin is not "monolithic", there are several different pronunciations, depending on the historical period, the country where it is taught and the purpose of studying it. So, saying that distinguishing "V/W" and "I/J" makes it easier to pronounce it only makes sense if we are speaking about a variety of Latin which does make these distinctions. And I even added that in some of them, V/W is much more important than I/J, in order to pronounce correctly.
@@nicolanobili2113 I see. Thanks for explaining. I do guess that's reasonable. Sorry for being so brash. At any rate, in the modern day, feel it's best practice to use both U and J, like Luke outlined in the video, as long as we're talking about classical Latin.
4:35 J was also used as a terminal for Roman numerals ending in ones: 𝔪𝔠𝔠𝔩𝔵𝔵𝔦𝔦𝔧 instead of 𝔪𝔠𝔠𝔩𝔵𝔵𝔦𝔦𝔦.
I could see you in that scene in Indiana Jones and saying, “oh, dear…do I choose the more accurate answer here, or should I just fall to my death?”
I know nothing of Latin, yet I love watching your videos, Luke. Someday I'll start learning it 😂
English writers: 👏🏻👏🏻 Hahaha!
Spanish writers: 👏🏻👏🏻 Jajaja!
I always enjoy your insights. Thank you for sharing your work with us! 👏🏻 Bravo!
Latin writers: Iaiaiaia (kidding of course)
@@brutusthebear9050 Fir those who wanna know, in Latin it is hahaha
Portuguese writers: rarara!
(At least Brazilians)
8:00 I think the ”J” is there, just as a beginners’ trap 😅.
Nowadays I tend to write Latin with i/j and u/v distictions (Jovis, viginti, ejus...). I also use æ and œ when they're diphthongs (pœna, Cæsar, œconomiæ...).
Make written Latin look more like the written forms of modern Romance Languages.
This is the video I needed to cheer up my day.
My elementary school teacher called it: "i lunga". And now I know why, thanks Luke!
Well, it is actually LONGER than the normal "i". Couldn't you figure it out even before you watched this video?
@@nicolanobili2113 how could I?
@@ZupTepi Well, the SHAPE is clearly longer than a normal "i"! Look: I vs J... Isn't "J" longer?
@@nicolanobili2113 Sure, and number 8 is CLEARLY a double O. What I meant is, thanks to Luke, I finally understood the meaning of long I, which is due to the quantity of the sound in Latin.
Interesting fact: in modern Georgian language there is no sound 'v' and Georgian letter 'ვ' represents both sounds 'w' and 'u'. This may be confusing, but Georgians used to it and often treat 'u', 'v', 'w' in foreign words as the one same sound 'ვ'.
Me and my Georgian friend Giwi Mewzwrishwili:
- Giwi, read this: 'two'.
- Tuo!
Ah, some more details: in Georgian, stress is always placed at the second syllable from the end. And the sound 'L' is always soft. And the counting system is vingedecimal (by 20's). It's an old language. Not Indo-European, too.
On the contrary, Modern Georgian doesn't have the sound w and it clearly distinguishes consonant v (ვ) from vowel u (უ) in both phonetics and writing.
Old Georgian used to have a letter for w (ჳ) as well, even though the sound was not in Georgian's native inventory but was found in loanwords.
@@cemreomerayna463 there are 10 dialects in Georgian actually, and they may have differences in writing and pronunciation. I tell what I heard from my Georgian friend, he is Kakhetian and really used to mix 'u' and 'v'.
@@igorvoloshin3406 to be fair, the English word 'two' is pronounced /tu:/ or something like that
@@theodiscusgaming3909 I know. "Tu:" But not "tuo" :)
In Italian until the 19th century the letter J was sometimes written to signify the semi-consonant status of the letter "i" when it happened between two vowels (e.g. in the word "ajuola" o "ajola") or at the beginning of a word followed by another vowel (e.g. the word "jato" or the personal name "Jacopo").
Indeed, I believe this fell out of use just a couple hundred years ago.
It appears in Pirandello as well, so I guess the use of J disappeared in the last century or so, but I think it also varied from region to region or so
Not all languages which use the Latin alphabet use both upper and lowercase letters. SENĆOŦEN, part of the Northern Straits Salishan dialect continuum, uses all uppercase letters (with modifications and diacritics and one exception for the third person possessive suffix borrowed from English) because its orthography was developed for use with unicase typewriters. There's also the reconstructed pan-Tasmanian language palawi kani which uses only lowercase letters. The popular conlang toki pona is also usually written using only lowercase Latin letters.
What a calm voice you had today!
(Well, you always have a calm voice...)
I do not speak or understand Latin, but I always find your videos very interesting.
I think it's better to distinguish the vocalic /i/ sound and the semivocalic /j/ sound.
5:00
well, from what I'm aware, we write 'love' as 'love' with the silent "e", because the "e" wasn't silent. It was pronounced as a separate vowel in Old English, reduced to schwa in and slowly disappeared through Middle English.
From Wiktionary:
PIE: *lewbʰ-
Proto-Germanic: lubō /ˈlu.βɔː/
Old English: /ˈlu.fu/, [ˈlu.vu]
Middle English: /ˈluv(ə)/
Your description probably _does_ apply to why we write "love" instead of "luve", but the final "e" isn't there for no reason.
See David Crystal's book
@@polyMATHY_Luke
from Chapter 15: More exceptions
"But what about the other minims? Was there anything that could be done to help readers work out how to read sequences where a u was followed by a v, n or m? Several words fell into this category, such as cum (‘come’), sum (‘some’), huni (‘honey’), tung (‘tongue’) and luv (‘love’). These would all appear as a consonant followed by four or five minims. Munuc (‘monk’) would be a sequence of nine. *The problem remained even if these words were spelled with a final e. So, as the modern spellings immediately show, they hit on the idea of replacing the u with an o.* "
The passage doesn't actually address the silent e, only that it directly states the spelling of would be just as confusing as in minims. How would compare with is not mentioned. The above examples are implied to be as confusing.
Is it implying that scribes initially tried to disambiguate by spelling it , only to find it still confusing, and then spelling it because they already got used to spelling it with the final e? It's not really clear, and I would say it would be unlikely given its OE pronunciation had a final vowel. What's more likely is that the final e was disappearing, which is why it went from to in some texts. Why it didn't entirely disappear in writing, and instead was preserved as is another question.
It then goes on to provide a counterexample for something else, why is spelled with rather than as with ; which is unrelated. It mentions "But anyone who began to spell tung as tong in the 14th century would soon encounter a different sort of clash: with tongs (the lifting implement). *Both words often appeared with a final e: tonge.* But a final -ge spelling, as we saw in Chapter 5, was being pronounced /dʒ/, as in refuge, visage and so on. So, tonge would look as if it was to be pronounced to rhyme with sponge"
It again doesn't actually provide an explanation for the final e, only mentioning that it occurs.
It does reference -ge spellings as being pronounced as /dʒ/ in Chapter 5, but the referenced time frame is Old English, at which point it's not relevant, as final e was not silent, and it didn't have the ME borrowed words from French (whence the spelling -ge for /dʒ/). The other source of final -e was to mark long vowels, but doesn't have a long vowel in OE or ME, so that can't have been the source for this particular word.
I'm not looking to argue per se, English historical phonology isn't my forte, but the explanation you provide does not make sense with what I know.
The reason behind the incoherent use of “i” for both the consonant and the vowel while keeping “u” and “v” distinct, is the Ecclesiastical Pronunciation, which is largely based on the Vulgar Latin dialect that ultimately has evolved into Italian. /i/ and /j/ sound sufficiently similar to one another to an Italian ear so as to represent them -albeit ambiguously- with just one grapheme; while /u/ and /v/ sound completely different to us, and therefore, two different graphemes are regarded to be necessary.
However, up until the end of the XIX c. AD, it wasn’t uncommon at all to see such spellings as “cujus” and “major” in Latin textbooks printed in Italy, probably because back then, “j” was used profusely in Italian as well. After all, we still write “Juventus”, don’t we?
Giuventus
> which is largely heard on the Vulgar Latin dialect that has ultimately has evolved into Italian
Luke has made two videos that disprove this theory, located here: ruclips.net/video/XeqTuPZv9as/видео.html and ruclips.net/video/HgRxuPzdInI/видео.html. the ecclesiastical standard is not from a vulgar latin dialect since it was made well into the proto-romance days. vulgar latin is also not a thing, since that is way too much of a broad term
Soulcatcher, sure, I watched his video about Vulgar Latin, which indeed is not a thing. But if I understand that correctly, Luke meant that when Latin *proper* was spoken, there was not a cut glass distinction between the cultivated speech of the upper class and the language spoken by the commoners. Rather, it was a continuum. He is right. What I meant in my original comment by “vulgar” is that kind of transitional stage wherein the language spoken by the uneducated and in informal contexts by everyone was neither Latin (partial loss of declension and/or incorrect use of standard grammar) nor anything recognizable as Italian. I should have used a better term but frankly I do not know which one would work. Proto-Italian? Maybe. I hope that is clear now.
Or probably just “the vulgar”. A good example of what I am referring to is the Verona Riddle, where the word for “oxen” is BOVES, purely Latin, with the correct -es ending. But the word for “plough” is VERSORIO, which rather is Italian. And the imperfect tense termination -BA is just at mid way between Latin -BAT and Italian -VA. Cicero would have understood that with some effort, but would have not recognized the language as his own; we Italians understand the text with some effort (we study the Riddle as part of our curriculum in high school) but we do not recognize that as Italian, not even a very archaic form thereof. Generally we react to it as if it was a joke by someone who attempted to write in Latin with hardly any knowledge of the language. And that is the intermediate stage I was implying when I referred to Vulgar Latin.
Another reason why it makes sense to use J in poetry is that it makes clear to the reader that it is a consonant and so the rule of elision when the preceding word ends with wovel or M does not apply
Exactly.
7:00 I think you confused U and V, there. Or did the shape ”U” really develop earlier, than ”V”? 🤔
Indeed; the letter ‘u’ written V in inscriptions in marble is written akin to ‘u’ in shape when done by hand. Yet the letter is always ‘u’, standing for /u/ or /w/
@@polyMATHY_Luke OK. I was wondering, because I’d only really seen inscriptions in marble (very few manuscripts), where it makes sense to use the more angular ”V”-shape, due to the properties of the medium.
Every sound in a language should have its own unique letter. Just makes reading so much easier.
In Welsh every letter has 1 sound except:
Y /ɨ/ or /ə/,
W /u/ or /w/,
and
i /i/ or /j/.
And even though it's not standard orthography, I usually mark the different sounds by either writing the letters in a stylistic way when representing the different sounds, or by putting a little dot above the letter. Just makes more sense
Allow me to correct you: Every PHONEME in a language should have its own unique letter". In linguistics, there is a difference between a phoneme (which is an abstract concept) and a sound (which is one of the numerous practical forms of a phoneme). For example, if you listen to many people pronouncing the same word, you may notice slight differences in the pronunciation of a letter (those are SOUNDS), whereas they all understand the word the are saying, because they recognize the phonemes. This is also why we can understand when someone with a speech defect speaks.
@@nicolanobili2113 Sorry, yeah, that's what I meant. Tha k you for clarifying for anyone who might read my comment!
Sometimes that's not necessary. For example the /ɜ:/ sound ( the "i" sound in the word bird) in standard English appears only in front of the letter r. Also representing the schwa /ə/ (the "e" sound as in the word father) is also not necessary, but it can be done. Also sometimes there are sounds that are rare and don't appear often. And in that case it might be better to just use a diagraph instead of adding a whole letter for a sound that might appear only in 50 words in the whole language.
I have actually developed a more phonetic writing system for English.
Here are some examples:
Ðe kwik braun foks džampt óver ðe fens en óver ðe leizí dåg. (The quick brown fox jumped over the fence and over the lazy dog.)
Hau mäní šips dú jú ón? (How many ships do you own?)
Hau fár ewei iz ðät bridž? (How far away is that bridge?)
Dú jú laik cíz? (Do you like cheeze?)
Wat iz ðät þing? (What is that thing?)
In a few handbooks, I have even encountered “i̯ , u̯” to mark /j, w/. Btw, an official request has been submitted to Unicode to add a few extra characters to the Latin set, including an extra tall I LONGA to mark /i:/.
Wiktionary recently changed its standard IPA transcription of latin works to have /i̯, u̯/ as well
Press J to pay respects to Indiana Iones
Requjéscat jn páce.
Normie
This totally makes sense because in old fashioned italian J is called "I lunga". And I I am kinda sad it is not really in use in italian anymore except toponyms (Jesi or Ajaccio) and some surnames. I think in the first 1900s some authors like Pirandello still wrote some words like Aiuto as Ajuto (which is more correct phonetically) . I was enlightened reading a renaissance book that could distinguish between principi (princes) and princjpj (principles) which you cannot do in Italian anymore, where both are "principi"
Fun fact the very old professor I had in middle school said Jungla (jungle) as Yungla! If we were to call that letter "Jay" in the "English fashion " and not " I lunga" She would get really mad.
Teoricamente si potrebbe scrivere "principii" o "principî" ma nessuno lo fa
@@pasqualesimonelli1513 Rimovendo la lettera j dalla lingua italiana è stato un gran errore. Perchè oggi dobbiamo sempre sostituirla con Gi. Per esempio: Giustizia
@@Michael_the_Drunkard si effettivamente la j aveva senso
Sì Pirandello usava tantissimo la j, specie per le "i" tra due vocali. Bellissimo l'esempio "principi"-"princjpj", effettivamente l' "i lunga" è proprio una "i" un pelo più lunga di quelle normali, non ci avevo fatto caso 😁
Hugely interesting as usual. In Italian the "j" letter was often interchangeable with "i" in many words but was gradually abandoned throughout the XXth century. It survives, always in dual forms, in very few words ( like "fidejussione"/"fideiussione" in law) or names such as Jacopo/Iacopo. For this reason, it "feels" kinda unnecessary to me also in Latin writing, but it's really just a mere feeling (or an outright bias).
Your example on Iulus vs Iulius was really interesting. However, considering the former is a Greek word, how common is such an ambiguous case in your experience?
Especially from a pedagogical perspective, would it really be worth it - regardless of personal preferences - to learn Latin with Js for this reason (especially considering that most books do not use it, as you also mentioned)?
You always make me/us think. Thanks!
Ciao Andrea! Grazie per il commento. Yes, for me the lack of J in recitation is a real pain; Ovid and Vergil have quite a few Greek names and words to make it aggravating, at least for me. I used to write just u and i for years during my study of FR and after, but then I realized how useful they were in poetry. I'm a convert to J and V.
J still used in some Italian dialects as well as Sicilian and Sardinian.
It's not really interchangable. In the XIX century, when modern Italian was codified, it was used for the "y" sound as Luke says. If you pay attention, fidejussione DOES have a y sound in it instead of an I. Same as Jacopo.
J was actually used in a few other words where that sound occourred (calamajo - calamaio, for example), but later dropped because Italian phonetics considers I and Y allophones (that is, variants of pronunciation of a sound that do not bare any grammatical value), so nothing is achieved by marking the difference, and to a native Italian speaker's ears it's hard to pay attention to it anyway.
@@captainufo4587 Although I occasionally use "J" in Italian, and although my mother's name was "Iolanda", which some people used to spell "Jolanda", I daresay that the "j" was also dropped for another reason: there was no consistency or logical rule. I mean, you could use "j", optionally, when it was between two vowels or at the beginning of a word if followed by a vowel (e.g. Jonio, fidejussione...), but you could not use it after a consonant (*bjanco, *occhjo...), which made its use hard to explain and, practically, did not provide any real advantage.
Talking about that, I was watching on "The Last Crusade" lately, and realized that I've always wondered why Indiana doesn't communicate with the Knight of the First Crusade in Latin?
Or at least in 11th century Old French, but Latin would have been more evocative, and above all it would have put Indiana's skills in ancient language with a character from several centuries ago.
Latin has been the language for diplomacy for centuries, like french did in the years of "le grand Nation" and much later still, and english is today... To the time of this crusader, if educated enough, foreigners would have really communicated with each other in Latin, if it was in western Europe (since the lingua diplomatica for the rest was still greek, also for people coming from the region that mostly used the word Iehova, Judea was just lost some years ago for the eastern Roman empire back then, the 1st crusade should help the eastern Roman Empire regain Judea)...
Another great explanation! I love these resources you put out.
Glad you like them!
It is strange that Italian doesn't use in any word.
The and is in Latin the same letter and just a matter of individual style. This is a slightly different story with and , which was used in later periods in the Empire frequently distinguished.
Until the early XX century italian language used the letter "j" as the semi-vowel [j] (english "y", german "j") or as the long [i:] (ii=j). Even today there are personal names or geographical names with "j" in italian, like "Jacopo" or "Jesolo" (a city in northern Italy).
@@malarobo and why is *io* written as this and not *jo* ?
@@SchmulKrieger Because its pronunciation is different. It isn't [jo] (semivowel +vowel) but [i-o] with stress on "i" and a very little pause between the two vowels.
In italian there are "diphthongs" (like in german "jo") when a semi-vowel is united with a vowel, and "hyatus" when two vowels are in contact and thery are pronounced separated. In the first person of personal pronoun ("io") there is a hyatus, in the word "iena" (english hyena) there is a diphthong (and in the ancient orthography it was written "jena").
The rule is: there is a diphthong ([j]- or [w]- plus vowel) when the stess is on the second element, there is a hyatus ([i]- or [u]- plus vowel) when the stress is on the first element.
However as I said, in modern orthography the letter "j" is used only in personal names and geographical names as a relic.
@@malarobo so in Italian you don't say yo (io), but ee-o?
@@SchmulKrieger yes. In spanish instead they say and write "yo"
I have pretty much the same issues, when I read Russian text that doesn’t have the ”Ё”/”ё”. At least, it wouldn’t mess up any meter; but, I think, it does have grammatical signifincance; since I’ve seen and heard both: ”Знамёна” and: ”Знамена”; and, often times, ”Знамёна” is written, as: ”Знамена”, but still pronounced, as: ”Знамёна”; and both have stress, on the 2nd syllable; so, you can’t even use the stress pattern to infer, which sound you should make: /jo/ or: /je/.
*EDIT:* In fact; there’s another such minimal pair, with that very distinction, in Russian: ”Все” (= ”Everyone” (referring to people)) vs. ”Всё” (= ”All” / ”Everything” (referring mostly to inanimate objects, or uncountable nouns)).
A few weks ago in Rome I was sitting I was sitting outseide the Palazzo Doria-Pamphilij on the Piazza Navona. As I sat there I pondered over Olimpia Maidalchini whose first name was Olimpia. She married into the Doria family and had such great influence ove the popeof the time that she was commemorated in a pasquinade which referred to her Olim Pia - a nice Latin joke. But to our theme, The Dorias still use the J to spell their hypenated second name.
If Polymathy says it I believe it
Are you david payne
@@ajthebestguy9th, In the flesh. (Comments)
"In Polymathy we trust" 😎
Luke locutus est...
At least my Latin linguistics professors have always been honest that it's an arbitrary choice to distinguish u/v but not i/j. I've grown up with textbooks and critical text editions that don't write J (u/v is pretty equally mixed), so I'm used to that look and I'm not sure if I'm likely to change it in my own Latin writing, but you make a good argument for writing J. I have just started my teaching degree for Latin and Ancient Greek, so this might be something to think about, though I will also be bound to the preference of the other Latin teachers in the school in the future. Interesting video! I didn't know the long i could have a tail in the classical period already.
Sounds better at 1.5x playback. Beautiful video. Thank you so much.
0:46 No, but that is because I have never seem this. I would like to understand it and I think it should be shown much more often.
@3:58 i caudaāta. I with a tail? Most succinct description ever of j.
Oh okay, I suspected that it was the old long I but never knew for certain!
That point where it changes the meter is what wins me over!
Have often wondered about that scene, and now I need wonder no more! Always fascinating, thank you. One of these days I shall have to ask a question about the Korean language. I'm very much intrigued by it, and was wondering if you had any interest. Seems very unique.
The movie “The Last Duel” has some spoken Latin in it. Could you possibly do a review on that one when you have the chance.
One of the biggest reasons I’m interested in Latin is the history and etymology- great information!
Why did the sound /j/ end up as the soft g in languages like English, French or Italian? I have wondered this for years
It was probably due to the influence french had on english
@@vojta4413 pretty sensible hypothesis, though now we still have to figure out why was that in Italian or French
Seems to be just a phonetic evolution. /j/ › /ʝ/ › /ʒ/ › /ʤ/ or something like that. But it might be more complicated than that, i'm no expert.
@@dimeswrth4021 that seems like a natural progression, though I'm not sure about the last two, I should research the matter better
Great as always and the sound improved a lot!
Good to hear!
One of my favorite weird v/u examples comes from Spanish - I was reading a 16th-century poem and stumbled over the word "vuo" for a little bit.
The early modern spelling is based on the fact that Latin h had been silent for centuries and was often not written (as distinct from a later h which derived from initial Latin f, as in halcón, hablar, which is now also silent but wasn't at the time). The Spanish consonants v and b merged to become the same sound. Later, but after this poem was printed, the RAE would restore the silent Latin h in most written forms and the use of whichever is more etymologically suitable between b and v.
The mystery word is modern "hubo," he had, a form of haber (or, I suppose, auer?) derived from Latin habēre.
Classical french texts can be as well difficult to read when they mix u/v and skip j. Auoir et iniuste seem seem coming from different language and you have to unlearn the way you read french.
Thanks for the information! I have also noticed the paradox of the "nonexistent" J being used in the trap! However, I never noticed exactly _what_ else is off about it! I'll subscribe now!
12:00
I sympathize, but i also wish i could show you what scanning poetry in Persian poetry looks like.
(Arabic abjad, indo-euro language, arabic metrics).
The poetry itself is a delight, but latin i/j orthography sounds trivial compared to this.
Still, we have similar issues (آه… no writing system is perfect i guess), only each letter (in the semiconsonants, say, vav) can be read in context o/ō/ow[*aw]/u/ū/v[*w]/wa _(sic)_
and every ya is potentially i/ī/ej[aj]/ē/j. & Alef is yet another matter.
Luke is like a Roman tutor sternly scolding kids who are learning latin.
That's how I imagined things would go if we're in ancient Rome. But since this is the contemporary age without a universal latin tutelage system, this would suffice.
Always so clear. Just out of curiosity: how did you manage to have so a pleasant voice? What do you suggest in order to improve one's own voice emission?
Siempre Luke Ranieri siendo un total basado.
Could you do a video on plant taxonomy. What do the words mean?
Same for all taxonomy based on Linnaeus’ work: the actual words are just used as symbols, so while some folks try to give names that make sense in Latin or Latinized-Greek, ultimately the category’s name is only there AS a name, so a lot of them are pretty arbitrary, or reflective of an older definition of the category that has since been discarded in favor of a different understanding.
The individual names are often quite fun to figure out, but you really can’t make any systematic generalizations beyond that-Linnaeus explicitly stated when setting out his taxonomy that the categories could be called anything, but he simply preferred to use Latin and Latinzed-Greek names for the categories so they weren’t common vernacular names (since changes in living language really can’t be controlled to match the science) or bland, meaningless labels like numbers.
@@IONATVS Yep! Still like this today: most new names make some sort of sense in Latin or Greek, some just do not and must be treated as indeclinable if writing in Latin.
Thanks Luke that was great! I’m curious though why the inscription on Jesus’ cross is traditionally represented as “INRI”, which I presume you know stands for “Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum”. Why didn’t they write it with a J? (If they wrote it at all; let’s say for argument’s sake they did).
Well like I mention in the video, the J letter as a consonant to represent [j] didn’t become standard until the Renaissance
@@polyMATHY_Luke ah thanks! Got it!
In Esperanto there is a difference between, for exemple, the word "ia" (some kind of) and the word "ja" (indeed) 😃
anyway, you have no letter 'щ' (shch) :D
@@igorvoloshin3406 That's true, but we write it just as "ŝĉ" and not like the Polish "szcz' or the German "schtsch" :-)
@@igorvoloshin3406 Isn't it true that ш and щ are really the same sound, but the Russian people play an elaborate practical joke on Russian-language learners by pretending that they are different?
@@robertjenkins6132 Jokes aside it's not. In ruſsian «ш» is [ʂ], and «щ» is [ɕˑ]; and in ukrainian and bulgarian the latter is pronounced [ʃtʃ] and [ʃt], respectively, juſt so you know that in advance.
@@robertjenkins6132 no. These two are really different sounds. ш = sh, щ = shch
For instance: чаша [chasha] = bowl, чаща [chashcha] = thicket
I hate to be wrong, but you convinced me I am. Thank you, I'm totally on board with your explanation ;)
5:19: lobe? Lobe den Herren? German for "Praise the Lord?" Yes, B and V are so closely related. Sitting next to each other, the question is: taverna or taberna?
But that is also the shift in Germanic languages: Weib (High German), Wiev (Low German), wife (English). Haben (High German), hebben (Low German), to have (English).
Yes, and in blackletter typeface, V and B look so similar. Just like F and Long S.
Didn't Romans write spaces as interpuncts though? Until like the 3rd century AD?
I love this video! You've said exactly what I've always thought!
I use J & U in Latin, but count them as variants of I & V rather than separate letters. I also use the letter J in dates to distinguish J111 (January 111) from IJ11 (February 11) from IIJ1 (March 1).
Toda vez que eu vejo os vídeos dele minha vontade de aprender latim aumenta
Just out of curiosity, when were the interpunct & the "g" invented relative to the "j"? "G" I wonder because modern Latin texts make that distinction, & interpunct because I thought the Romans used at least that much pretty early on. Great video! Your channel's one of my favorites!
Riddle me this then, o Luci! If we are to use the letter J, shouldn't we also double it in words like maior (so majjor)? Since it's now not understood as a shift from a to i and then back to o (which naturally lengthens the syllable), but we take it to be a full consonant, writing major could be misleading from a metrical perspective.
Yet all propugnatores of the letter J I see never write a double JJ.
Absolutely, my good sir! In fact you can find things I’ve written like the Pontanus transcriptions where I doubled the J. Cicero wrote maiius, aiio etc. However, since intervocalic J is *always* long, there is no need. Just as intervocalic gl and z and gn in Italian, it’s not necessary to write it geminated. But I think it’s fine if people do. It’s simply a matter of learning that intervocalic J always creates a long prior syllable
Can you do a video on that weird s that appears in the Shakespeare sonnet text, that looks like an f?
That tall s (ſ) was standard usage in (I suppose) all European languages that used the Latin alphabet. It even had a handwritten form (looking like a cursive f with its bottom loop formed in the opposite direction) which persisted into the 19th century. When followed by a final-style s or sometimes by a z, the result could be a ligature ß that lasted longer in German ("scharfes Es" or "Es-tset") but can also be found in older English books.
Greek had two lower-case sigmas - ς, σ - for essentially the same reason.
In some English parish records, a has an acute over it. Is that the long a sound or for another reason? These are in names, not words
I think that’s just the dot on the J
Please make series about English pronunciation! :D
Sure, but what do you mean?
@@polyMATHY_Luke Some kind of explanation how it is now, how it came to that point, maybe about variety of it and of course some guide if it's not a problem :)
On the punctuation: If I'm not mistaken, later (at least starting with the classical) Latin used interpuncts in order to separate words. Though no commas and question marks were introduced so far
Right. Interpuncts are hardly akin to the sophistication of modern punctuation.
In modern transcriptions, the U is represented by the letter V when it has the [w] pronunciation. But not always. For why do we spell 'quoque' rather than 'qvoqve'? It seems the only logical thing to do. The Q comes via the Etruskans from the Greek letter qoppa, which was so much a [k] that the ancient Greeks dropped it in favour of the kappa. The Romans took the letter to represent the [kw] phonemes, but found it necessary to add a V. When you have a letter that represents the [k] phoneme (Q) and want to express the [kw] sound and to this objective add a V [w], then the U after a Q must really be and remain interpreted as the modern letter V and not a U.
Or is there more to this?
I was intrigued by your assertion that 'y' didn't exist in classical Greek. Because that leads me to the question of why the French call 'y', _i Grek_ ?
Could you please elucidate?
This is because the the letter Υυ wasn’t present in Latin except for Greek loan words. In Ancient Greek it was pronounced something like a German ü, which was a sound not present in Latin.
@@daltonsherrod1573 True, but the vowel in "documentum", "optimum" must have been close. Still, they didn't come up with the idea to write "docymentum" and "optymum".
Same in Spanish. Y = I griega.
He said the “«y» sound” (which is basically [j] in american) didn't exist in classical greek, not the letter; and yeah, it's called that way in many languages because it was used in greek loanwords in latin, but by the medieval times the sound /y/ had merged with /i/ in most of romance languages.
Evidently the sonus medius was *not* very much like the /y/, otherwise it would have been used for this purpose.
The Indiana Jones scene feels like the work of a bunch of screen writers getting high together, and one of them had a mild interest in slightly obscure trivia.
I'd love a video about the series about El Cid campeador in amazon prime!
What sound can you here at the end of Julius Caesar name at 1:50?🤨
I was just wondering, do you know the guy who runs the latintutorial channel? Do you have any thoughts about him and his content?
I also have started using j's, although I'm acquainted with u/v distinction-only i's through FM. Only u's and only i's is still too difficult for me, even while reading prose.
But, I have a question: I thought that Julius was etymologically connected with Iulus, so that J there seems to me ἀναιτιολόγητον.
I wanted to ask you, also, are these names like Iulus, and even words like these, many? Is there a complete list of them that I could read?
Hello my friend! As for a list, you can just skim through Ovid or Vergil and find more than a few. Plus native Latin words can have i or j in places not clear from context alone. As for Julius, evidently the connection to Ἰουλος was made in order to justify a grand history for the Julian family, but in actuality it is thought to come from Jove.
@@polyMATHY_Luke Thanks, I'll look it up, when I'll be more fluent in the language!
As for the etymology, it seems then to be a difference between φαίνεσθαι and εἶναι.
In official Catholic Church documents there was no J until John Paul II was elected. The first time he signed his name he used a J. Some official (I forget his position) sent the new pope a note, "There is no J in Latin." JPII wrote back, "There is now."
Don't know how true that story is, but it is a great one all the same.
I believe that official was the late Fr. Reginald Foster, longtime papal Latinist, who was a doctrinaire anti-J-ite. He didn’t allow the J on his watch, but I imagine if you looked far back enough in history you’d find plenty of J’s coming out of the Vatican.
@@Fool3SufferingFools I found J's in Latin textbooks printed in the 30's (I think).
What a shame! Fr. Foster was wonderful, but he was not right in his recommendation here, which doubtless came from the odd thinking of the Classics community of his day.
An amazing man. A great teacher.
my god man i love your videos so much, thank you
My dad’s town in Abruzzo has a mountain called la Majella. Local legend attributes the Name Majella (Maiella in Italian) to Magna Mater, Maior->Major
My Roman rite missal ( 1962 edition, Angelus Press ) has both i and j. Thank you for soothing my conscience ;). BTW, my brother had 3 years of Latin and his teacher went on a rant against the letter 'j'. The ecclesiastical pronunciation, in illo tempore, was also a subject of ridicule.
Very interesting! You may like this video of mine about Ecclesiastical vs Classical: ruclips.net/video/RMKImmXLb3c/видео.htmlsi=o0oTinYHfEKhi9zs
Interesting. Romanian doesn't have a distinct letter like "J" to represent the sound for "ya". Instead this sound is produced by digraphs from combining "i" with any other vowel; like "iu" or "ia". So Romanians say "Iuliu" and "Traian" instead of "Julius" and "Trajanus". And the only way to make a distinction between a long "i" and a short "i" is to simply add another "i". So if we were to write out the correct pronunciation of the character from the Aeneid, we would write "Iiulus".
Hi Luke,
Greek words like "aion" were transcribed into latin as "aeon".
Didn't the Greek diphthongs have the "y" sound in
"ai", "ei", "oi"?
Regarding "Iūlus", didn't Caesar claim to be a descendant of his?
Did Romans slowly change the pronunciation from "i-u" to "ju" in their cognomen?
Thank you.
Yes, but the only "ēi" diphthong was the eta iota subscript. Ancient Greek had regular and overlong diphthongs:
αι, οι, the alpha iota subscript (ăi), the eta iota subscript (ēi) and omega iota subscript (ōi). This is not the case with ει, which was either pronounced ē or ī depending on the period. That's why it was transcribed into Latin as ē/ï. As for the praenomen Jülius, yes, it did come from the gens name Iūlus (pronounced with [i]). The spelling convention for [j] was an I until the Renaissance.
My text for Ovid’s Metamorphoses didn’t have a written j, just i. So I share your frustration with having to make an extra mental effort when scanning the meter.
Yeah it's a pain
Hey Luke, I've been following your LLPSI readings and I've noticed that it sounds like you nasalize the final -m when reading from that, but in this video like at 11:18, it sounded like you said "Iūlum" with a hard -m sound. Is there a reason for this? Is the final m pronounced when you are saying the word by itself or am I just hearing things?
Right, so the most important aspect of final -m is that it doesn’t behave like a consonant in front of vowels. Nasalization is one way to achieve this. You could also turn off the vocal chords before meeting the lips together. I do either ad libitum
謝謝！
Thank you!
Thank you! I feel vindicated! I get to cut and paste Latin hymns and change all the consonantal 'i's into 'j's for consistency. My main reason is to make it easier to read.
I was wondering this after a recent watcing of that film. Why would there be a carved 'J' anyway, if it was an ancient temple (or at a least pre-medieval one) and the presumption the word would be read in Latin and 'J' was not yet in use? ' The name is also questionable. Jehovah' is a rendering of YHWH (from the Hebrew). Apparently 'Jehovah' was only used from the Reformation era, in Tyndale's English bible. St Jerome (whose name began with an H in Latin) did not attempt to transliterate the tetragrammaton 'YHWH', but rather replaced it with 'Dominus' (the Lord) in the Latin vulgate Bible. ('Jerusalem' was also a 'H' word in Latin, 'Hierusalem', for some reason.)
Hey Luke, can you please explain the spelling of "POMPEII" - Why two "I"s?
That’s how it’s spelled in English, which is the original Latin spelling.
I am sorry Luke, but Indiana Jones' producers are right.
The name Jehovan is the latin adaptation of the original Holy Scripts which were written in common greek. In the original text the name was written Ἰεχωβᾶ. Pay attention to the ' before the I, meaning emphasised vowel [i]. Similarly to the common name John deriving from Johannes (i.e. Johannes Calvin) which is the latin adaptation of the greek Ἰωάννης (again ' before the I). Johannes was also written Ioannes - see brief latin emperor Ioannes around 4-5th century, at the same period when the bible was translated from greek to latin.
Now the Greek Ἰεχωβᾶ is an adapttion of the Tetragram, the Aramaic YHWH (Hebrew יְהֹוָה) which is without vowels therefore the Greeks suggested the pronociation YeHoWaH.
The J, in Jehova, is not related to the german sound Ja, it is a prolonged i. In fact the sound of german Ja exist in ancient greek prononciation Γ and γ (i.e. ἔγωγε) but that is another minor mistake you made @11:35... and if the original aim was to pronouce it as "Ja", it would be naturally be written in greek as Γεχωβᾶ. But the specific name is starting with the vowel [i].
Therefore, in the original Biblia Vulgata the Jehova was, indeed, starting with I (Iehova) and in the medieval trap shown in the movie the J is represented correctly, because a 1000 years later IEHOVA was written Jehova.
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/11/S%C3%B8r-Fron_church%2C_IEHOVA.jpg
Except for the fact that most Latin names of Semitic origin have long since been re-Hebraicized and have the appearance of having skipped Greek entirely. This is why Italian names like “Giacomo” and “Giovanni” are derived from the initial /j/ pronunciation of the biblical names, pronunciations that were necessarily current in antiquity since these names developed naturally with the Italian language, and do not start with /i/ in Latin. One could of course choose to pronounce the biblical names in Latin in a Greeker way. That’s fine. But it’s far from standard even in the Late Roman Empire.
George Groppas Pedantic! You gave me a headache.
@@polyMATHY_Luke Latin names of Semitic origin have been re-Hebraicized ?... hmmm
You seem to be convinced that יְהֹוָה is pronounced with "Ja", but I suggest you speak with a native speaker.
Giacomo (Iacovus) in Hebrew is יעקב and Giovanni (Ioannes) is Hebrew יוחנן - both starting with "i"...(not Gimel if that's what you're thinking)
Jehova in Greek and Hebrew start with the same sounding letter Yiota in Greek and Yod in Hebrew.
Israel, which strats with Yod, is not pronounced Jesrael...
Jehova was never pronounced with Ja, neither in its original aramaic, nor in Greek, nor in Latin nor in modern hebrew.
Afterall, in the Latin Bible of the 4-5th century Jehova is written IEHOVA.-
Now, Giovanni is a medieval version of latin Ioannes (I > G ), as much as Γιάννη is the medieval version of Ιωάννη in greek (I > Γ)... “Giacomo” and “Giovanni” obviously have not been "re-Hebraicized", on the contrary both medieval Greek and Italian have moved away from their original version "I" to a G / Γ (letter Gamma / Γάμμα, again latin names of semitc origin are linked to greek not hebrew).
I am very happy you have spent the time reading and answering. I hope my comments are not too annoying. Please keep up the good work and positive attitude to your fastidious audience.
@@huskydogable thank you!
Jehovah in Latin is written 'IEOVA', but not pronounced 'Jeh-ho-vah' like in English, but more like 'Yeh-oh-wah', more similar to 'YHWH', 'Yah-weh' in Hebrew, correct?
Indie and his pops were still incorrect in a way...
Question: Why does the modern 'H' vary wildly in pronunciation and usage from the Eta in Greek where it descended from? Is it not similar in difference between an Omicron and Omega (just longer or shorter vowel sound) to Epsilon?
It's because of the vowel shift that happened with ει, which in Ancient Greek was pronounced as a long ε and was originally spelled as εε in the Attic dialect before the Ionian spelling system became the standard.
As a artist, I have studied the Book of Kells. I have even attempted to make my own illuminated manuscript of the Book of Mark but only got to chapture 6. There was no "j" in the first half of Mark.
What do you think about using or not using a capital letter at he beginning of a sentence or paragraph in Latin?
You mean what do you think about writing latin not in all caps?
It's utterly ridiculous. Let's just use the conventions of modern languages, please, is what I say. Remind me to make a video about this.
Nah, he means the silly convention of not capitalization the first word in Greek or Latin sentences, because it wasn't a feature of ancient spelling. So silly.
@@polyMATHY_Luke lol I'll try! Personally I do enjoy writing in all caps and not using j but that's purely personal preference for aesthetics. I happen to find "vv" a lot more pleasant the "uv" or "vu"
Then again I'm not a person people would call a "linguist" but I do intend to keep practicing latin indefinitely and it does make one look at the differences in preferences that people who predominantly speak vs write latin may have felt about it historically or not. Fun to speculate for me.
Anyways thanks for the great content
So in the Latin word maior, is the i a consonant like in the English word major, and ergo be written in Latin as major too?
No, the "j" in the english word major is a consonant, the "i" (or "j") in the latin word maior (or major) is a semi-vowel like the english "y".
Yes, it's pronounced /maj.jor/. The J is always pronounced as geminated between vowels in Latin.
Hey Polymathy, when I was reading Oedipus Rex in high school by was Jokaste spelled Iokaste? Is this because it was originally written in Ancient Greek? Or is it because of someone translating it to English and wanting to use an I?
In prints and manuscripts up until the 17th century (just my personal statistics), the distinction between u and v, in Latin as well as in German/Italian/..., simply was: "We write v at the beginning of words and u i between", even though there already were two distinguishable sounds intended by _both_ u and v.
Whoa.... I haven't watched Last Crusade in decades. I thought this scene, Indy and Jones Sr. were talking about Greek.
Não ficou claro se o filme está errado ou se o J poderia ser usado …