# K in Latin script



## Villeggiatura

Thanks to _c_'s and _q_'s, not many _k_'s survive in Latin, and subsequently, most Romance languages.
However, the Germanic and Slavic peoples who adopted the Latin script revived_ k_ in their orthographies. What were the factors for the revival?


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## ahvalj

Apparently, _ce_ and _ci_.


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## Gavril

As far as I know, Old English orthography mainly used "c" rather than "k": _*c*yning_ "*k*ing", _þen*c*an_ "thin*k*", etc..

This may have to do with the fact that OE underwent a change of [k] > [tʃ] before _e_ and _i _-- _*c*in_ "*ch*in", _*c*eosan_ "*ch*oose", etc. -- just as later Latin had, so there wasn't as much potential for confusion (i.e., mismatch between Latin and OE pronunciation) as there would have been in languages like Gothic, where "k"/"c" remained a stop in all positions.

The "k>tʃ / _i/e" change seems to have happened before the merger of -_e_- with umlauted *-_o_-/-_a_- was complete: e.g. _*c*ene_ "bold" (the ancestor of modern-day _*k*een_) has hard "c" and comes from earlier *_kōnja_-.


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## ahvalj

The Old English orhography may have been influenced by the Celtic ones, which use _c_ (probably after the continental Gaulish examples: Gaulish started using _c_ with the acquisition of the Latin alphabet soon after the Roman conquest, i. e. centuries before the assibilation in Latin).


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## berndf

There only a handful of Gaulish inscriptions with Latin letters. I am not quite sure how this could influence anything. But anyway, not the OE adoption of _c_ needs explanation (that just reflects usage in Latin) but the revival of _k_ in OHG and ME.


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## Ben Jamin

It seems that you can't get a common answer for all the languages that adopted K, one should distinguish between English, other Germanic languages and Slavic languages.
The explanation of taking  K into the (West) Slavic languages was that they needed to distiguish between [k] and [t͡s ], so using only "C" was not a solution.


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## Hulalessar

One of the reasons English started to use <k> was the introduction of French words beginning in <ce-> and <ci-> pronounced with an initial /s/. Words like "king" began to be written with a <k>.


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## Gavril

Hulalessar said:


> One of the reasons English started to use <k> was the introduction of French words beginning in <ce-> and <ci-> pronounced with an initial /s/. Words like "king" began to be written with a <k>.



Wasn't there a more general replacement of Old English orthographic patterns when England was taken over by French-speakers?

This explains not just the use of _k_ before front vowels but also e.g. the use of _ch_ (rather than earlier _c_-), _qu-_ (rather than _cw_-), and _-v-_ (rather than -_f_-, as in OE _wafian_ "to wave").


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## Nino83

Hulalessar said:


> One of the reasons English started to use <k> was the introduction of French words beginning in <ce-> and <ci-> pronounced with an initial /s/. Words like "king" began to be written with a <k>.



Right!
Norman language didn't have neither /ka/ > /ʧa/ > /ʃa/, _castel_ [ka] vs. _château_ [ʃa] nor /ʧe/ > /ʦe/ > /se/, _cherise_ [ʧe] vs. _cerise_ [se], the isogloss is the Joret line (_ligne Joret_), so _ce_ [ke] and _che_ [ʧe] were sufficient but when new French words were introduced, then _ce_ (and _ci_) was ambiguous and _k_ was restored.
Still today, Norman language doesn't have these consonantal changes.


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## berndf

Nino83 said:


> Right!
> Norman language didn't have neither /ka/ > /ʧa/ > /ʃa/, _castel_ [ka] vs. _château_ [ʃa] nor /ʧe/ > /ʦe/ > /se/, _cherise_ [ʧe] vs. _cerise_ [se], the isogloss is the Joret line (_ligne Joret_), so _ce_ [ke] and _che_ [ʧe] were sufficient but when new French words were introduced, then _ce_ (and _ci_) was ambiguous and _k_ was restored.
> Still today, Norman language doesn't have these consonantal changes.


It has nothing to do with that. The Norman/Piccard _k_-palatalization is even closer in logic to OE than the French one: the Norman loan _catch_ is much closer to the OE logic then the French loan of the same word _chase._

The issue is that there was a [k] and [ʧ]  and [f] and [v] where predictable allophones in OE and didn't need to be distinguished in writing. With the mass import of French words this wasn't tenable any more and [k], [ʧ], [f] and [v] all became distinct phonemes.



Hulalessar said:


> One of the reasons English started to use <k> was the introduction of French words beginning in <ce-> and <ci-> pronounced with an initial /s/. Words like "king" began to be written with a <k>.





Gavril said:


> This explains not just the use of _k_ before front vowels but also e.g. the use of _ch_ (rather than earlier _c_-), _qu-_ (rather than _cw_-), and _-v-_ (rather than -_f_-, as in OE _wafian_ "to wave").


Some of the phonological and spelling changes were consistent with developments in continental West-Germanic (High- and Low-German, Frisian and Dutch), e.g.:

Re-introduction of _uu_ (_w_) to express /w/ (replacing OE _ƿ_ that had replaced _uu_ before)
Phonemic split of /h/ into /h/ and /x/ (_liht > liȝt_ in English and _liht > licht _in German)
Introduction of Schwa ( infinitive endings _-an, -on > -en_ in all West Germanic languages)
The use of _qu_ to express /kw/ was consistent already in OHG (_queman = to come_; preserved in ModG _bequem_, cognate to _becoming_).
It seems some remnants of a West-Germanic _Sprachbund _must still have existed.


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## Villeggiatura

What inspired _ck_ in the orthographies of Germanic languages?
To estimate the corrupt _ce/ci/etc._ that entered German, like _centrum - zentrum, provincia - provinz_, and the classical ones like _caesar - kaiser_, what are the percentages?


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## Nino83

berndf said:


> It has nothing to do with that. The Norman/Piccard _k_-palatalization is even closer in logic to OE than the French one: the Norman loan _catch_ is much closer to the OE logic then the French loan of the same word _chase._



In fact I said that Old Norman didn't have those French palatalizations/assibilations. The problem arises not with the Norman conquest but later, when *new* French words were borrowed. Probably I haven't written it clearly.


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## ahvalj

berndf said:


> There only a handful of Gaulish inscriptions with Latin letters. I am not quite sure how this could influence anything. But anyway, not the OE adoption of _c_ needs explanation (that just reflects usage in Latin) but the revival of _k_ in OHG and ME.


(1) The published corpus of Gaulish inscriptions embraces so far five volumes (http://encyclopedie.arbre-celtique.com/recueil-des-inscriptions-gauloises-8803.htm).

(2) In any case, the amount of the Gaulish material preserved to our days has nothing to do with the degree of literacy among Gauls — for the simple reason that the vast majority of texts are lost forever: this wasn't the ancient Middle East with its clay tablets.

(3) The Old Irish orthography uses intervocalic _b, d _and _g_ for [ƀ], [đ] and [ǥ], and _p, t_ and _c_ for [ b], [d] and [g] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Irish#Orthography). In the case of the voiceless stops, this differs from the Goidelic lenition (_k>x, t>þ_) but fully corresponds to the Brittonic one (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brittonic_languages#Characteristics), which suggests that the Old Irish borrowed their orthography from the (unattested) Brittonic sources. St. Patrick was a Britton, by the way.

(4) When Anglo-Saxons came to Britain, they encountered two written traditions: the Latin one and the Celtic one.

(5) Neither Old English, nor Old Irish, nor Old Welsh use _c+e, i_ in their late Latin meaning. It is hard to believe that this wasn't influenced by the pre-existing Celtic usage.

P. S. Early Medieval Latin texts quite often use _ke, ki _instead of _que, qui. _Oaths of Strasbourg write _Karolus_ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oaths_of_Strasbourg#Text).


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## Gavril

berndf said:


> The issue is that there was a [k] and [ʧ]  and [f] and [v] where predictable allophones in OE and didn't need to be distinguished in writing. With the mass import of French words this wasn't tenable any more and [k], [ʧ], [f] and [v] all became distinct phonemes.



Old English orthography could represent [tʃ] before front vowels (_*c*e_-/_*c*i-_) and back vowels (_*ce*a_-/_*ce*o_-). If Old English orthography had remained the basis for spelling (rather than gradually losing this role to French) during Middle English times, it seems likely that imported French words with [tʃ] would simply have been assimilated into the existing spelling pattern. Similarly, French words containing soft "c" could simply have been written with "s".

An impetus for the increased use of "k" might have been the un-rounding of _y_ to _i _(already begun in late OE, I think), which created ambiguity in common words that had previously begun with_ cy- (king, kin, kith, kiss). _Another factor might have been the spread of originally North Germanic words where [k] was followed by a front vowel: _skin, keel, kettle,_ etc.


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## francisgranada

ahvalj said:


> ... P. S. Early Medieval Latin texts quite often use _ke, ki _instead of _que, qui. _Oaths of Strasbourg write _Karolus_ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oaths_of_Strasbourg#Text).


 Not only Latin, but also texts written in Romance languages, however not exclusively before _e,i_. For example:

Sao ko kelle terre per kelle fini qui ki contene ...  (Carta Capuana, cca 960, Italy)
Ad Te solo, Altissimo, se konfano ... (Cantico delle creature, 1226, Italy)
Nodicia de kesos ... in ilo de Kastrelo ... (Documento de quesos, cca 974, Spain)
etc ...

It seems to me that this is a general phenomenon, concerning both the Romance and non Romance languages. E.g. in old Hungarian text we also find  both _c _and _k,_ often representing the same sound.


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## berndf

Villeggiatura said:


> What inspired _ck_ in the orthographies of Germanic languages?


I am not 100% sure but I think the origin is to represent the OHG geminate affricate [-k.kx-] as an alternative spelling to _-cch-_ (compare OHG_ lecchon_ > MHG _lecken_) that did succeeded only in some dialects and generally reverted to the original geminate _k_ [-k.k-] and then became the general way to spell [-k.k-].


Villeggiatura said:


> To estimate the corrupt _ce/ci/etc._ that entered German, like _centrum - zentrum, provincia - provinz_, and the classical ones like _caesar - kaiser_, what are the percentages?


It depends on when it entered Germanic. The forms that correspond to classical Latin are very few, like the one you mentioned, Kaiser, witch preserved both, the non-platalized _k_ and the diphthong _ae_. Then there is _Kichererbse/chickpea_, from Latin cicer, that underwent the Anglo-Frisian platalization (_chickpea_ rather than _*kickpea_) and the OHG consonant shift (_Kichererbse_ rather than _*Kickerbse_) which shows that must be a very old loan into common Germanic and the same in _wine/Wein/vin_ rather then _*feine/Vein/fin_ which suggests that it must be imported before the shift from <v>=/w/>/v/ in Latin.


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## berndf

ahvalj said:


> (1) The published corpus of Gaulish inscriptions embraces so far five volumes (http://encyclopedie.arbre-celtique.com/recueil-des-inscriptions-gauloises-8803.htm).


Only very few of them and only very short ones are with Latin letters. Most are with Greek or Etruscan letters.


ahvalj said:


> (3) The Old Irish orthography


Irish is not Gaulish.


ahvalj said:


> (4) When Anglo-Saxons came to Britain, they encountered two written traditions: the Latin one and the Celtic one.


Nor is British.


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## ahvalj

berndf said:


> Only very few of them and only very short ones are with Latin letters. Most are with Greek or Etruscan letters.
> 
> Irish is not Gaulish.
> 
> Nor is British.


Should I repeat my post?


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## berndf

ahvalj said:


> Should I repeat my post?


It wouldn't make it any truer.
Gaulish written with Latin letters is virtually non-existent except for a few scribblings. How should that have a significant impact on anything.
Irish and Brittonic is one thing, Gaulish a totally different one.

PS: Or did you mean Celtic in general and not Gaulish in particular?


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## ahvalj

Brittonic was an insular branch of Gaulish. The onomastic material doesn't show any differences between them. Some tribal names are found in both (e. g. Belgae). Non-goidelic Celts from both sides of the gulf had connections between them for a millennium: beginning with their penetration to Britain and till the end of the Roman rule. Ancestors of the Bretons even have moved back to the continent.

From the five volumes of the Gaulish inscriptions, one and a half (_Textes gallo-latins sur pierre_ and _Textes gallo-latins sur instrumentum_) explicitly mention the  Latin alphabet in their titles.

I wrote about those peculiarities of the Old Irish orthography to emphasize that some kind of Celtic literacy that used the Roman alphabet must have had existed in Brittonic as well.

I'd be glad to read which other ideas can explain why all the three languages of the British islands use _c_ before front vowels in its non-late Latin meaning, while nothing comparable seems to have ever occurred elsewhere.


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## berndf

ahvalj said:


> Brittonic was an insular branch of Gaulish.


No. Brittonic and Gaulish are different groups of Celtic languages. Gaulish is a term for the Celtic languages that were native to the group of Roman provinces collectively knows as "Gallia" on both sides of the alps.

The literary tradition of Insular Celtic languages is completely independent of Gaulish and developed at a different time. This alone is a good reason not to confuse Celtic and Gaulish.


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## Delvo

Villeggiatura said:


> Thanks to _c_'s and _q_'s, not many _k_'s survive in Latin, and subsequently, most Romance languages.
> However, the Germanic and Slavic peoples who adopted the Latin script revived_ k_ in their orthographies. What were the factors for the revival?


I notice that the responses so far have been about Germanic (and Celtic) languages, but not Slavic. I doubt that the inclusion of "k" in Slavic alphabets (that use any version of the Latin alphabet at all) is a matter of revival. It seems more likely that "k" just hadn't ever been neglected in that region in the first place.

The Greek alphabet, which never dropped kappa, was always highly influential there along with the Latin one, as illustrated by the fact that some Slavic languages use the (Greek-derived) Cyrillic alphabet instead of any version of the Latin one. So anybody choosing to write in one was probably also familiar with the other and could use aspects of one to make the other work better for his/her own language. I think I can see a trace of that in the modern Latin-based Slavic alphabets. They not only include "k" but also usually have two forms of "c" distinguished by diacritical marks, which tells me that they had more sounds in that group to distinguish between than westerners had, so they had more reason to keep another letter to dump one of those sounds on, so they would not have agreed with the Roman idea of dropping the most obvious choice.

Another sign making me think that familiarity with the Greek alphabet influenced the way they used the Latin one is the tendency for the Slavic languages' Latin-based alphabets to lack "w", which Greek never had, and "q", whose Greek counterpart "qoppa" was dropped in Greece before the Romans spread east.


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## yezik

When it started, to read C as sound K before a ,o, u? 
 What about that:  over the head of S-te Maria is written - C-TA MARIA? It means C was like S even before A,O,U, !? Russians write С-ТА МАРИЯ, why it is written in the same way in Europe, in *Cologne Cathedral* ? 
Must be written - S-TA,   santa, saint... ????
http://www.chronologia.org/xpon6/im/6n03-003.jpg


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## M Mira

yezik said:


> When it started, to read C as sound K before a ,o, u?
> What about that:  over the head of S-te Maria is written - C-TA MARIA? It means C was like S even before A,O,U, !? Russians write С-ТА МАРИЯ, why it is written in the same way in Europe, in *Cologne Cathedral* ?
> Must be written - S-TA,   santa, saint... ????
> http://www.chronologia.org/xpon6/im/6n03-003.jpg


It says "SANCTA MARIA", not "CTA MARIA".


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## yezik

M Mira said:


> It says "SANCTA MARIA", not "CTA MARIA".


___________
O-o-o.. Thanks so much! I was really blind. First time I saw  the picture was  cut off on the left side.


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## wtrmute

yezik said:


> When it started, to read C as sound K before a ,o, u?



It started around the 9th Century BC, when the Etruscans borrowed a Western Greek alphabet to write their own tongue.  Since Etruscan lacked a voiced/voiceless distinction, the gamma and the kappa (not to mention the qoppa) had the same sound, [k].  Then they started using K before A, C before E and I, and Q before U.

The Romans did make a distinction between [k] and [g], but used C indistinctly for both sounds until (I think) the 5th Century BC, when they added a vertical stroke to C and invented G.  C remained fossilised as an abbreviation of the names Gaius (C) and Gnaeus (CN), though.

Around the first centuries AD, C before frontal suffered the mutation k > kʲ > tʲ > tʃ and, in Western Romance, further to ͡ts > s.


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## Ben Jamin

Delvo said:


> I notice that the responses so far have been about Germanic (and Celtic) languages, but not Slavic. I doubt that the inclusion of "k" in Slavic alphabets (that use any version of the Latin alphabet at all) is a matter of revival. It seems more likely that "k" just hadn't ever been neglected in that region in the first place.
> 
> The Greek alphabet, which never dropped kappa, was always highly influential there along with the Latin one, as illustrated by the fact that some Slavic languages use the (Greek-derived) Cyrillic alphabet instead of any version of the Latin one. So anybody choosing to write in one was probably also familiar with the other and could use aspects of one to make the other work better for his/her own language. I think I can see a trace of that in the modern Latin-based Slavic alphabets. They not only include "k" but also usually have two forms of "c" distinguished by diacritical marks, which tells me that they had more sounds in that group to distinguish between than westerners had, so they had more reason to keep another letter to dump one of those sounds on, so they would not have agreed with the Roman idea of dropping the most obvious choice.
> 
> Another sign making me think that familiarity with the Greek alphabet influenced the way they used the Latin one is the tendency for the Slavic languages' Latin-based alphabets to lack "w", which Greek never had, and "q", whose Greek counterpart "qoppa" was dropped in Greece before the Romans spread east.


You have obviously ignored the post #6 which is about West Slavic languages. These languages have not been in direct contact with the Greek language when they began to write in their own languages, but had been using Latin in 400 years. The earlier attempts at recording their language show a very immature and improvised transcription using the Latin alphabet.


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## Scholiast

Greetings all


yezik said:


> C-TA MARIA? It means C was like S even before A,O,U, !? Russians write С-ТА МАРИЯ, why it is written in the same way in Europe, in *Cologne Cathedral* ?


This is simple. "C" is here a Greek sigma. Even in my parish Church in a village in England we have decorative inscriptions  or stained glass windows bearing legends such as IHC (acronymic for ΙΗΣ[ΟΥΣ]) and of course XPC - (= ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ).

Σ


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## yezik

wtrmute said:


> It started around the 9th Century BC, when the Etruscans borrowed a Western Greek alphabet to write their own tongue.  Since Etruscan lacked a voiced/voiceless distinction, the gamma and the kappa (not to mention the qoppa) had the same sound, [k].  Then they started using K before A, C before E and I, and Q before U.
> 
> The Romans did make a distinction between [k] and [g], but used C indistinctly for both sounds until (I think) the 5th Century BC, when they added a vertical stroke to C and invented G.  C remained fossilised as an abbreviation of the names Gaius (C) and Gnaeus (CN), though.
> 
> Around the first centuries AD, C before frontal suffered the mutation k > kʲ > tʲ > tʃ and, in Western Romance, further to ͡ts > s.



@@@@@@ It started around the 9th Century BC, when the Etruscans borrowed a Western Greek alphabet to write their own tongue.@@@@
Thanks, but it sounds funny. As far as I know Etruscan scripts are still "mute". How can anybody know something about etruskan phonetic if there no script really decoded?? 
K-C-G-H,  K mixed with Russian Ч or Ц ...
Exemple: СЕРДЦЕ (серёдце, серёд!). And what we have in Europe? Heart< hertz, coeure,  kardo, corason...
Same for ВЕЧЕР (ВЧЕРА)   Въ-ЧЕР (literally - in black), the russian word explain itself! And.... What is in Evrope?  vestrum, yester(day), ieri, hier ext....
Same story with СОЛНЦЕ - СО_ЛУНЦЕ -  with-Lune)). And?      sun, soleil...  No meanigs, just sounds well..
Does anybody want to say The Russians changed words espesialy to get the real meaning?

@@@@@they added a vertical stroke to C and invented G.@@@@@
_
Now I understand, neCras (некрасивый, некрашеный) - neGras.  DiCITum Galculator (десять галек) =  diGitum-Calculator .
    ХОЛИТЬ - ecole - school
    XВОСТ   - cauda (queu) - Schwanz
    ХВАЛИТЬ - Quality.....
     ХВАТить - Quote,
But Q and G are late additions in Latin alphavit (alphabet?). I see two logic directions IN Europe!

Tell me I'm wrong.


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## Delvo

wtrmute said:


> Then they started using K before A, C before E and I, and Q before U.


Not quite. They used "c" everywhere and dropped "k" as redundant. That was the state the alphabet was in when the Romans adopted it as standard. That's why the Romans didn't have two separate letters even though that would have been better in their language, and why, when they decided to have two separate letters, they didn't have the option of using "k" as one of them, because there was no such letter.



yezik said:


> As far as I know Etruscan scripts are still "mute". How can anybody know something about etruskan phonetic if there no script really decoded?


Their use of letters for sounds can be inferred from their spellings of words that they had in common with other languages whose pronunciations are known.



yezik said:


> K-C-G-H,  K mixed with Russian Ч or Ц ...
> Exemple: СЕРДЦЕ (серёдце, серёд!). And what we have in Europe? Heart< hertz, coeure,  kardo, corason...


These difference between the Germanic words and Italic or Hellenic words result from a sound shift that happened in Proto-Germanic: k→x→h(→silence). The same thing also explains the "h" instead of "k" in English & German "hundred/Hundert" (Latin "cent"), "hunt/hound/Hund" (Latin "canis"), "have/haben" (Latin "capio"), and several question-words starting with "wh-/w-" (Latin "qu-"). The original Proto-Indo-European sound was "k". If the Russian word is related, then it implies that it experienced a sound shift from "k" to "s" at some time in history. (The Syrillic letter that looks like our "c" is not related to it; it's derived from Greek sigma and represented the sound "s" all along. The similar appearance is a coincidence, just like with "и" and "я".)



yezik said:


> Same for ВЕЧЕР (ВЧЕРА)   Въ-ЧЕР (literally - in black), the russian word explain itself! And.... What is in Evrope?  vestrum, yester(day), ieri, hier ext....


I do not see any connections between these words.



yezik said:


> Same story with СОЛНЦЕ - СО_ЛУНЦЕ -  with-Lune)). And?      sun, soleil...  No meanigs, just sounds well..
> Does anybody want to say The Russians changed words espesialy to get the real meaning?


Coincidence. "L" and "n" are both common sounds in Indo-European words for the sun or other words descended from Proto-Indo-European for "sun". PIE and later IE words for the moon always start with "m" and usually have an "n" after it, as did Latin "mensis" which also meant "moon". I don't know how Latin came up with "luna", but it has no counterpart meaning "moon" in other languages except those that imported it straight from Latin, and it has no sound like "ц" in it anyway... and Latin for "with" doesn't have the "s"-sound like the Russian one does, so you're also mixing words from two different languages into one, to try to explain a sound sequence in an unrelated third word that doesn't need explaining.



yezik said:


> But Q and G are late additions in Latin alphavit (alphabet?). I see two logic directions IN Europe!
> 
> Tell me I'm wrong.


"G" is. "Q" was always there.


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## yezik

@@@@
"""they didn't have the option of using "k" as one of them, because there was no such letter.""
------  No matter what letters they had, they mixed different sounds, Latin  C sounded like Russian Ц (close to). QU (before was QV) = russ. XB.  ХВалить=QVality.

СЕРЁД- center - and ("boomerang" sent it back) - ЦЕНТР,
ЧЕРЁД (череда) - serial,  (cirtaki, chardash), dances in line.
Russian don't have a mess with С, К, Ц, Ч, Щ...Щена-щенок = cano.. but... chien (fr.).
Latin CAPIO = rus ХАПАТЬ, ЦАПАТЬ.  CURARE -  ЗЫРИТЬ (ЗРЕТЬ)
__________
""ВЕЧЕР (ВЧЕРА) Въ-ЧЕР (literally - in black),""
I do not see any connections between these words. 
?????
Do you see  connections between "morning" and to-"morrow"?  Sera soir... СЕРЫЙ...
It's very easy to say : I don't see any connections. "Завтра" means "за утро", and "утро" =  уторый = вторый = next day, and..  a-vtor (antic greek?!) means = не вторящий = первый (original))... по-втор = repeat.
Do you really know Russian?
_________________
""Coincidence. "L" and "n" are both common sounds in Indo-European words for the sun or other words descended from Proto-Indo-European for "sun".-----
-
Nobody's never seen a text or a tape in IEL... But everybody knows that "L" and "N" BOTH exist in Russian word Солнце (an old Russian name for SUN - Ярило - aura, ярить-жарить, ) year..hour, heur,  (day or year cycle)!_
-----------
"G" is. "Q" was always there.""
--
No, wasn't. I sаw this letter in Etruscan scripts (Duenos inscriptions) but not in early latin scripts..
I "don't" know why Q was placed in Latin alphabet at the same place where Russian X(Her) is placed in Russian alphabet !
And Latin G was placed at... yes, where Russian Ж is. ЖЕНа - GENetic ...
And.. strange stuff, hebrew letter Vav is placed at the place... where Russian Ж is in Russian alphabet:
Жена - GENUS - VENUS...
  Живо - VIVE.. Житие - Vita.   живость - vite (vitesse (fr.) - speed). - 
By the way, Check "ружьё" in hebrew! But this is later word! Where is the root in Hebrew?
Рука - о-ружье! Stuff you hold in hand..
It seems to me I know who came in Europe and became Greeks and Romans......


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## Gavril

ahvalj said:


> I'd be glad to read which other ideas can explain why all the three languages of the British islands use _c_ before front vowels in its non-late Latin meaning, while nothing comparable seems to have ever occurred elsewhere.



As far as Welsh is concerned, the modern practice of using "c" to represent a velar stop in all positions (_cenedl _"nation", _ci _"dog", etc.) is not that old. In older Welsh texts (Medieval-era), "k" was frequently used before front vowels (_*k*enedl_, _*k*i_, etc.) and "c" before back vowels. (On the other hand, this use of "k" might have been due to English influence, since Welsh never palatalized the [k]-sound before front vowels, and therefore didn't have the same allophony associated with "c" as English did.)

One of the reasons for the loss of "k" in modern Welsh orthography is the influence of a Bible translation (1567) which used only "c" and never "k". Apparently, this was done because the printers who typeset this translation did not have enough "k"s in stock.


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## berndf

Delvo said:


> they didn't have the option of using "k" as one of them, because there was no such letter


The _k_ was never lost completely. I was just extremely rare.


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## berndf

yezik said:


> No, wasn't. I sаw this letter in Etruscan scripts (Duenos inscriptions) but not in early latin scripts..


The Q was always there and always at the same position already in the Phonetician, the ultimate ancestor of all European alphabets (the last letters of which were Qop-Resh-Shin-Taw). It was lost in Eastern Greek. But that's another story.


yezik said:


> I "don't" know why Q was placed in Latin alphabet at the same place where Russian X(Her) is placed in Russian alphabet


The Cyrillic alphabet is derived from Eastern Greek, long after the loss of Q there. And as a scholarly constructed script, Glagolitic, the first alphabet to write Old Church Slavonic, and later Cyrillic took loans from other alphabets as well. What exactly inspired the creators of these two alphabets cannot always be reconstructed (we had some discussions about this here, too; e.g. here).

Cyrillic and Latin had a completely different history and they really only share the Old Greek alphabet, before it split into Eastern and Western Greek. Comparisons with Cyrillic aren't really helpful for the topic of this thread.

What remains, give the Etruscan phonetic /g/-/k/ and the lack of phonemic differentiation between the "normal" and the "dark" _k_-sound (_k_ and _q_, respectively; two sounds that were well distinguished in the original Phoenician script and language), early Latin had three letters at its disposition to express the _k_-sound, _c, k_ and _q_. The letter _q_ eventually got a special meaning in being used only in <qu> = /kʷ/ and_ k _became redundant and survived only in very few words, like _kalendae_.


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## yezik

berndf said:


> The Q was always there and always at the same position already in the Phonetician, the ultimate ancestor of all European alphabets (the last letters of which were Qop-Resh-Shin-Taw). It was lost in Eastern Greek. But that's another story.
> 
> The Cyrillic alphabet is derived from Eastern Greek, long after the loss of Q there. And as a scholarly constructed script, Glagolitic, the first alphabet to write Old Church Slavonic, and later Cyrillic took loans from other alphabets as well. What exactly inspired the creators of these two alphabets cannot always be reconstructed (we had some discussions about this here, too; e.g. here).
> 
> Cyrillic and Latin had a completely different history and they really only share the Old Greek alphabet, before it split into Eastern and Western Greek. Comparisons with Cyrillic aren't really helpful for the topic of this thread.
> 
> What remains, give the Etruscan phonetic /g/-/k/ and the lack of phonemic differentiation between the "normal" and the "dark" _k_-sound (_k_ and _q_, respectively; two sounds that were well distinguished in the original Phoenician script and language), early Latin had three letters at its disposition to express the _k_-sound, _c, k_ and _q_. The letter _q_ eventually got a special meaning in being used only in <qu> = /kʷ/ and_ k _became redundant and survived only in very few words, like _kalendae_.




@@@What exactly inspired the creators of these two alphabets cannot always be reconstructed (we had some discussions about this here, too; @@@
------
It is easy to find and read this phrase on ,, Duenos inscriptions,,, : vosqo i med metati.. Phrase is written practically with latin letters, no need to ,,invent meanings of letters,, : 
 воск и мёд мять,   meat (lat) or (метать)? Etruscan is unknown?

So? The same people (one language) lived in ,,Indo-Evrope,, with regional alphabets before some others came from ,,South,, and changed local phonetics? Who lived in Etruria before the Romans? 
Theory says one story, Practice says another,,


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## francisgranada

yezik said:


> It is easy to find and read this phrase on ,, Duenos inscriptions,,, : vosqo i med metati.. Phrase is written practically with latin letters, no need to ,,invent meanings of letters,, : воск и мёд мять,   meat (lat) or (метать)? Etruscan is unknown? ...


Maybe I haven't understood something from what you are saying, but as far as I know the _Duenos inscription_ is written in Latin, not Etruscan. The part you are citing is from IOVESAT DEIVOS QOI MED MITAT ... (the classical Latin literal traslation could be IURAT DEOS QUI ME MITTIT ... )


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## berndf

yezik said:


> @@@What exactly inspired the creators of these two alphabets cannot always be reconstructed (we had some discussions about this here, too; @@@
> ------
> It is easy to find and read this phrase on ,, Duenos inscriptions,,, : vosqo i med metati.. Phrase is written practically with latin letters, no need to ,,invent meanings of letters,, :
> воск и мёд мять, meat (lat) or (метать)? Etruscan is unknown?
> 
> So? The same people (one language) lived in ,,Indo-Evrope,, with regional alphabets before some others came from ,,South,, and changed local phonetics? Who lived in Etruria before the Romans?
> Theory says one story, Practice says another,,


I have no idea what you are trying to say. My comment you quoted is about Glagolitic and Cyrillic, two constructed alphabets the are more then 1500 years younger than the Etrustcian and Latin alphabets and have a different history.


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## francisgranada

Why can we find both the letters _*c*_ and *k* in medieval Romance  texts representing (also) the same sound, often in the same text, when the letter _k_ was already (almost) not used in Latin?

(See examples in my post #15; the letter _k_ was evidently not used only asin case of _qui/que_ or the modern Italian _chi/che_)

The existence of the letter _*k*_ in medieval Romance (and Latin) texts could explain (at least partially) why the Slavic languages (using the Latin alphabet), Hungarian, Lithuanian etc ... chose the letter _*k*_ to represent the sound [k], while the letter _*c*_ (later also with diacritical signs) to represent sounds like [ts, č, ć ...]: the pronunciation of _*k*_ was always [k], but the letter *c* could represent also different consonants already in Romance languages (and  Medieval Latin).


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## ahvalj

francisgranada said:


> Why can we find both the letters _*c*_ and *k* in medieval Romance  texts representing (also) the same sound, often in the same text, when the letter _k_ was already (almost) not used in Latin?
> 
> (See examples in my post #15; the letter _k_ was evidently not used only asin case of _qui/que_ or the modern Italian _chi/che_)
> 
> The existence of the letter _*k*_ in medieval Romance (and Latin) texts could explain (at least partially) why the Slavic languages (using the Latin alphabet), Hungarian, Lithuanian etc ... chose the letter _*k*_ to represent the sound [k], while the letter _*c*_ (later also with diacritical signs) to represent sounds like [ts, č, ć ...]: the pronunciation of _*k*_ was always [k], but the letter *c* could represent also different consonants already in Romance languages (and  Medieval Latin).


A visit to the Wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Polish_orthography reveals such examples as _Cochan, Curassek, taco, peckle. _I am sure, the older the West Slavic text, the more _c_'s it contains. It seems that the strict preference of _k_ in the modern Germanic (other than English) and Slavic languages is a result of a late normalization. Old High German used _k_ and _c_ interchangeably (except before _e_ and _i_). _C_ in the place of the later _k_ can be also found in Norse (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Norse_orthography), e. g. see here http://lexicon.ff.cuni.cz/tmp/oi_gordon_taylor_corpus.html: _comnir, callaðr, cost, cvað, com, callat, cvældit, carls, Cūrland, Cristindōm, cristnadhe, cuna, cunungr, cornband _(again, no instances before _e _and _i_).


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## ahvalj

So, back to the original question of this thread. Except for Greek, which was almost forgotten in Western Europe in the post-Roman period (and the Gothic alphabet, which was even less widespread), there was no other source of the letter _k_ in the medieval texts than Latin itself (_kalendae_ etc.). As it has been shown in several posts, the medieval use of _k_ in Latin and Romance went much farther than just to denote the sound _k_ before the front vowels. Yet, this letter seems to have remained a secondary variant in these languages.

I suppose there are studies of the medieval palaeography, where the actual reasons for the spread of _k_ have been identified, and some user may finally cite them. Meanwhile, as a guesswork, I would suggest that _k_ originally arose as a replacement of _qu_ in _que_ and _qui_, and then spread more widely due to its better visibility in the handwritten lines in vicinity of _m, n, u, uu, i _etc. (as it was also with the letter _y_). In the barbarian languages on the continent, this _k_ for some reasons became more popular (as a sign of differentiation from Latin, perhaps?), and finally has replaced _c_ in most contexts (except in _ch_ and partly in _ck_).


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