# Latin <u v> [w]



## Riverplatense

Hello!

How can the pronunciation of <v> before vowels as [w] be proved? The only things that come to my mind now are the absence of a graphic distinction between <v> and <u>, the parallel situation in [i j] and the absence of [v] in Classical Greek (and maybe Romance <qua cua> [kwa] *[kva]), but that's not a definite proof. I'm sure there must be loanwords, grammarians' hints, relative chronology or something else.

Thank you!


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## Zec

I've seen several loanwords cited as direct evidence, showing /w/ or it's descendants (/gw/ in Welsh, /v/ in German). Problem is, none of the languages the loanwords were loaned into have both /w/ and /v/, rather they all have only /w/. So we can't be absolutely certain, as there's a small possibility that /v/ was borrowed as /w/ since it was the closest equivalent. It's a small possibility because recently attested languages which have /w/ but no /v/ usually prefer to borrow /v/ as /b/ rather than as /w/, so even if it's not absolutely certain, these loanwords indicate that Latin probably had /w/ at one point.

A couple of examples I can remember or easily find: Welsh: gwyrdd < viridis, gwenwyn < venenum (c. f. how Germanic /w/ ends up the same way in Romance),  English: wine < vinum (preserved until today), Greek Oualerios < Valerius (this one is probably the best direct evidence we have).


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## Riverplatense

Thank you!



Zec said:


> Problem is, none of the languages the loanwords were loaned into have both /w/ and /v/, rather they all have only /w/.



Exactly, that's also the problem I struggled with when looking for examples.



Zec said:


> languages which have /w/ but no /v/ usually prefer to borrow /v/ as /b/ rather than as /w/



Interesting!



Zec said:


> Greek Oualerios < Valerius



There seem to be not few of such examples, I've also found _Ouárron_, _Oktáouios _and others in Leumann, Hofmann and Szantyr's grammar.


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## Hulalessar

The primary evidence is comments made by Classical Latin authors. Apart from that, Greek transcriptions of Latin names with a <v> do not use any Greek consonant for the <v> but a combination of vowels*. As you suggest and gIven the otherwise general one-to-one correspondence between sound and symbol it has to be unlikely that a vowel and fricative consonant were represented by the same symbol.

The Romans may not necessarily have considered [u ] and [w] to be distinct sounds. Phonetically they may be considered the same sound; they are only contrasted phonologically because [u ] can form a syllable nucleus whilst [w] occupies a syllable boundary typical of consonants.

*Written before seeing second post.


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## berndf

Riverplatense said:


> Exactly, that's also the problem I struggled with when looking for examples.


Loans into Germanic, like _wine_ and _vine_, which originate from the same Latin source but happened at different times are a good hint for the shift in Latin.



Zec said:


> Problem is, none of the languages the loanwords were loaned into have both /w/ and /v/, rather they all have only /w/.


Germanic didn't have /v/ but it had [v]. Latin /v/, if it had existed, would not have been imported as /w/.


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## Zec

@ Hulalessar: Do you know any of these comments made by Classical Latin authors? I'd really like to know what they say. Something incontrovertible would be awesome, but usually these comments are either hard to interpret or scarce (it seems the ancients just weren't interested in the same things we're interested in today).

Those Greek transcriptions with <ou> for <v> are probably the most concrete evidence we're going to get. There's also some language-internal evidence, sound changes throughout the history of Latin:

1. In medial open syllables, Latin vowels are reduced to _u_ instead of the usual _i_ if they're followed by <v>:

_lavō_ > _ab_-_luō

dē novō_ > _dē-nuō

amā_-_vī_, _amā_-_tum_ : *mone-vī > _monui_, *mone-tum > _monitum_.

It's curious that simply _u_ rather than _uv_ (or _uu_, rather) is written here. It's exactly like simply _i_ being written before other vowels instead of double _ii_, e.g. -_ia_, -_ius_ instead of -_iia_, -_iius_, even though a transitory consonantal [j] is more than likely to exist here. So <v> [w] behaves exactly like <i> [j]. Graphic <v> was different in this regard from other labials where _i_ is regular, but _u_ can also happen (_optimus_/_optumus_, _maximus_/_maxumus_). It's assumed <p> <b> and <m> simply rounded the _i_ to something like [ʉ] (this is something Latin grammarians explicitely say), but <v> obviously change it to a completely normal . It's the easiest to explain it if <v> was [w], i.e. if it was labiovelar like [ u] and not just labial.*

*The fact that reduced vowels also become _u_ instead of _i_ before _l_, but only if the _l_ isn't followed by _i_ or _e_ (e.g. _famulus_ - _familia_, _Siculus_ - _Sicilia_) is taken as evidence that it was also velarized (Latin grammarians call it "_l_ pinguis").

2. The sequence _avi_ can become _au_. For example _aviceps_ > _auceps_, and Vulgar Latin _avicellus_ > _aucellus_, as well as the perfect ending -_avit_ > -_aut_. This is not impossible with [v] but it's easier with [w], especially since Latin at the time was very picky in which consonants were allowed to get into contact with one another.


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## ahvalj

The Res Gestae of Augustus I:
Vinucio — Οὐινουκίωι vs. Fabio — Φαβίωι

The Res Gestae of Augustus II:
Valgio — Οὐαλγίωι
Quintilio — Κοιντιλίωι

The Res Gestae of Augustus III:
Calvisio — Καλουισίωι

The Res Gestae of Augustus IV:
Octaviam — Ὀκταουϊα (not αυ !)
Aventino — Ἀουεντίνωι (not Ἀυ !)
Velia — Οὐελίαι

"the Greek translation made in Antiquity" (LacusCurtius • Monumentum Ancyranum)


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## Zec

@ Ahvalj: Yeah, that's very, very concrete evidence for [w] rather than [v]. AFAIK Modern Greeks also write English [w] as <ου>.


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## Hulalessar

Cicero _De Divinatione_ Book Two chapter 84:

"Cum M. Crassus exercitum Brundisi imponeret, quidam in portu caricas Cauno aduectas uendens 'Cauneas' clamitabat.​Dicamus, si placet, monitum ab eo Crassum, caveret ne iret."​​Cicero equates "Cauneas" with "Cave ne eas" (= "caveret ne iret" in reported speech).​


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## Riverplatense

Hulalessar said:


> Cicero equates "Cauneas" with "Cave ne eas" (= "caveret ne iret" in reported speech).



Great, thank you!


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## Catagrapha

Can examples like Ἀργεῖος>Argivus, σκαιός>scaevus be considered evidence?


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## Delvo

Some versions of the Greek alphabet once had a letter for /w/ as a consonant, distinct from any vowel or vowel cluster like "ou", which is not in the modern standard version of the Greek alphabet. Those particular Greeks spelled words with /w/ in them using this letter instead of the modern standard sequence-of-vowels method. In some dialects using that letter, there was also a shift from /w/ to /v/, so their alphabet had a letter for /v/ in it by the time it arrived in Rome. (And part of how we know _that_ is because of what happens next in this story.)

But when the Romans got the alphabet, they didn't use that letter where this "/w/ or /v/" question could come up in either Latin or Greek. They used it for the closest thing to /v/ that their language did have: /f/, which had developed not from PIE *w but from PIE aspirated plosives at the beginnings of words (through Proto-Italic or Pre-Proto-Italic /h/). So even if you compare Latin spellings with Greek spellings which did still have that letter, you find that the two languages use it in completely etymologically unrelated places. And yes, as you might be thinking right now even if you haven't heard this story before, I am talking about the letter F, which started as a form of upsilon in which the top branches were bent to the right.

If its Greek sound (according to those Greeks who brought it to Rome in the first place) had still been /w/ as it had originally started in Greek, then the Romans would not have thought that sounded enough like their spoken /f/ to use it for that sound; it must have already sounded similar to /f/. So, it had already changed to /v/ in certain dialects of Greek before arriving in Rome. But, if the Romans had had /v/ in their spoken language at that time, they would have used this letter for it, as the Greeks they got it from already did, but they didn't; the places where that would have happened have U instead.

(Technically, the letter's transition from /w/ to /f/ is not impossible with /ɸ/ as the intermediate stage instead of /v/, but there are unrelated reasons to seriously doubt that that happened in this case...)


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## ahvalj

I think, the Latin _F_ in its meaning is a casual outcome of early Etruscan spelling rules. Etruscans borrowed the Greek _Ϝ_ for their [w], and _Φ_ for their [pʰ], but since they also had a proper [f], absent in Greek:

_Wallace RE · 2008 · “Zikh rasna: a manual of the Etruscan language and inscriptions”: _21:






These _vh_ and _hv_ are Latin transliterations: in the Etruscan alphabet they looked like mirrorred _ϜΗ_, and this approach is attested in the earliest Latin inscription. Later, Romans simplified _FH_ [f] into _F_ and used _V_ for both [ u ] and [w].


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## OBrasilo

Delvo said:
			
		

> (Technically, the letter's transition from /w/ to /f/ is not impossible with /ɸ/ as the intermediate stage instead of /v/, but there are unrelated reasons to seriously doubt that that happened in this case...)


Actually, I think the Etruscan f was indeed a /ɸ/, but that was written with the ph letter, and Etruscan loanwords in Latin often have have /p/ where Etruscan has /ɸ/, eg. Latin _persona_ (_person_) from Etruscan _ɸersu_ (_mask_).
What the Etruscans wrote with their f letter that eventually became our F, was /w/.


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## berndf

OBrasilo said:


> Actually, I think the Etruscan f was indeed a /ɸ/, but that was written with the ph letter, and Etruscan loanwords in Latin often have have /p/ where Etruscan has /ɸ/, eg. Latin _persona_ (_person_) from Etruscan _ɸersu_ (_mask_).
> What the Etruscans wrote with their f letter that eventually became our F, was /w/.


I agree with @ahvalj. The Etruscan _ɸ_ was most likely /pʰ/ and not /ɸ/.


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## apmoy70

Delvo said:


> Some versions of the Greek alphabet once had a letter for /w/ as a consonant, distinct from any vowel or vowel cluster like "ou", which is not in the modern standard version of the Greek alphabet


It's the digamma Ϝ, ϝ (which resembles two gammas Γ hence the name). It disappeared before the Classical era.


Delvo said:


> In some dialects using that letter, there was also a shift from /w/ to /v/...


The Classical «ἀμνός» (masc.), _lamb_ comes from the Proto-Greek *ϝαμν- which had an initial digamma that was lost. However it's retained in the Tsakonian dialect as βάννε, so /w/ > /v/ in Tsakonian


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## Zec

Anyway, Romans deciding to write both /u/ and /w/ as <V> so that <F> could instead be used to write /f/ instead of the former digraph <FH> suggest that vocalic and consonantal <V> were perceived to be similar enough to be written with the same letter.

@ ahvalj:  the way <u> and <v> are used in contemporary Latin orthography makes /u/ and /w/ marginally phonemic, e.g. _voluī_ - _volvī_. If that was true in Antiquity it would mean that the orthography ignored a phonemic distinction, albeit a minor one. Do we have any indications that vocalic and consonantal <V> were distinguished as is usual today in both writing and pronouncing Latin?


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## ahvalj

Zec said:


> the way <u> and <v> are used in contemporary Latin orthography makes /u/ and /w/ marginally phonemic, e.g. _voluī_ - _volvī_. If that was true in Antiquity it would mean that the orthography ignored a phonemic distinction, albeit a minor one. Do we have any indications that vocalic and consonantal <V> were distinguished as is usual today in both writing and pronouncing Latin?


In the first half of the 1st century they were: Claudian letters, see _Ⅎ_ (Claudian inverse digamma).


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## OBrasilo

berndf said:
			
		

> I agree with @ahvalj. The Etruscan _ɸ_ was most likely /pʰ/ and not /ɸ/.


Actually, Wikipedia says Etruscan has both, so I was wrong. Yes, what the Etruscans wrote with the phi was indeed /pʰ/, like in Greek, but they also had a /ɸ/ sound, commonly transliterated as f, written with a symbol that looks like an 8.


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## eamp

apmoy70 said:


> The Classical «ἀμνός» (masc.), _lamb_ comes from the Proto-Greek *ϝαμν- which had an initial digamma that was lost. However it's retained in the Tsakonian dialect as βάννε, so /w/ > /v/ in Tsakonian


Aren't you rather thinking of Classical _ἀρήν_, _ἀρνός _> mod. _αρνί _which originally had an initial ϝ-?
I don't think it was ever present in _ἀμνός_, compare the cognates lat. _agnus_, slav. _agnę _which should preserve it.


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## apmoy70

^Yes, you're right, thanks, it's Proto-Hellenic *ϝαρήν > Myc. Gr. we-re-ne-ya (wrēneya), Tsakonian βάννε [ˈvane] (neut. nom. pl.), _sheep_, cognate with Old Armenian գառն [gɑrn], _ram_


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## Kevin Beach

The following evidence in English may help:

1. Many English place names contain the syllable *wick*, *wic*, *wyc* etc., meaning a settlement. It is said to come directly from the Latin VICVS, which would have been prevalent in Britain, with the same meaning, in the 1st to 5th centuries AD, thus suggesting a pronunciation of *wicus* for the Latin.

2. The Old English for "man" (= adult male human, not the species) was *wer*. The only apparent survival in modern English is in the word *werewolf*. *WER* has precisely the same meaning as the Latin *VIR*, and may be derived from it, again suggesting that the Latin was pronounced *WIR*.


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## Stoggler

Old English wer is not a loan from Latin, it’s a Germanic word with cognates in other Germanic languages.

Wer does come from the same PIE root that gave Latin vir though.


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