# The evolution of "y" in Latin



## Testing1234567

There are few words in Latin with "y", even fewer words in Latin with "y" that are passed on to Vulgar Latin and to the Romance Languages.

There are only two words I know of: "BŪTȲRUM" and "ABYSSUS".

"BŪTȲRUM" > beurre /bœʁ/

However, none of the rules that I know of can explain this transformation.

My question is, can someone please explain this transformation?


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## CapnPrep

Testing1234567 said:


> "BŪTȲRUM" > beurre /bœʁ/
> 
> However, none of the rules that I know of can explain this transformation.


The quantity of the antepenult of _butyrum_ was apparently variable: the French form goes back to _bútyrum_, while Italian _butirro_ is from _butýrum_. There's not much to say about the evolution of _y_ in this word in French, since it simply disappeared as expected: 
bútyrum_ >_ butro > bure​But, you are right, this does not give us _beurre_, which is a dialectal form: "La forme fr. _beurre _provient d'un dial. de l'Est ou de l'Ouest (Fouché, p. 135)" (TLF). 

I think _abyssus_ only has learned/religious counterparts in Romance, and in those forms (e.g. Italian _abisso_, French _abisme_ > _abîme_), the _y_ was simply treated like an _i_.


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## Villeggiatura

Obviously you accept Latin words of Greek origin, given the two examples you gave.
When transliterating Greek into Latin, the Latin letters for the Greek letter _upsilon_ are y , u, and v--
v only for triphthongal upsilon, e.g., evangelium, agava;
u mainly for diphthongal upsilon, e.g.,au, eu, (o)u;
y mainly for monophthongal upsilon, e.g., dys- syll- syn- sym- hyper- hypo- poly-, most of them are preserved in French


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## Testing1234567

Villeggiatura said:


> y mainly for monophthongal upsilon, e.g., dys- syll- syn- sym- hyper- hypo- poly-, most of them are preserved in French



I would say that they are all learned borrowings.


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## Villeggiatura

You have to come up with some incredible criteria to discount all the Latin and French words with y,
martyr  (Latin, French)
apocalypsis (L) apocalypse (F)
mysterium / mystère
tyrannus / tyran
the list is endless.

I'm actually quite interested in the letter _u_ as an alternative to _y_ for monophthongal _upsilon_ in Latin: e.g. Cuma=Cyma, murr(h)a=myrr(h)a


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## berndf

Villeggiatura said:


> the list is endless.


Because the list of learned terms is endless. _Martyr, apocalypse and mystère_ are borrowings from ecclesiastical Latin (this goes practically for all religious terms because Latin was and is official language of the Roman Catholic church and until the 1960s all services were held in Latin) and _tyran _is a modern re-Latinization, medieaval spellings were _tiranz, tiran and tirant_.


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## Testing1234567

Wiktionary gives "['tyran' is f]rom Middle French tyran, borrowed from Latin tyrannus, from Ancient Greek τύραννος ‎(túrannos). Replaced Old French tirant."

For tirant: "['tirant' is f]rom Latin tyrannus, which gave the nominated singular form tirans, from which the oblique singular tirant was constructed, under the assumption the -s suffix had replaced -ts."


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## Villeggiatura

berndf said:


> Because the list of learned terms is endless. _Martyr, apocalypse and mystère_ are borrowings from ecclesiastical Latin (this goes practically for all religious terms because Latin was and is official language of the Roman Catholic church and until the 1960s all services were held in Latin) and _tyran _is a modern re-Latinization, medieaval spellings were _tiranz, tiran and tirant_.


What's your claim then?
To prove all _y_'s or the overwhelming majority of y's in French are what you claim to be (which requires the examination of hundreds of etymologies at least) would further demonstrate the abundance of _y'_s in Latin (which has been my primary claim).


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## Testing1234567

My claim is that many "y"s did not get passed on to Vulgar Latin and the Dark ages.


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## CapnPrep

Villeggiatura said:


> Obviously you accept Latin words of Greek origin, given the two examples you gave.


If we're talking about _y_ in Latin, we're pretty much talking exclusively about Latin words of Greek origin.

L&S include about 2300 headwords containing _y_, and of those 40% are proper names. Many of the remaining words are of course very obscure, but looking quickly through the list I came across:

crypta > It _grotta_
dactylus > It _dattero_
gypsum > It _gesso_
myxa > Fr _mèche_
papyrus_ > _Ro _papură_, Fr _papier_
polypus > Fr _poulpe_
presbyter > Fr _prêtre_
pyxis > It _bossolo_/_bussolo_, Fr _boîte_
tympanum > Fr _timbre_
These obviously include religious terms and possibly other specialized vocabulary (names of plants and animals, etc.) but the Romance forms show popular or "semi-learned" form development. The _y_ is treated sometimes like _i_, sometimes like _u_.


Testing1234567 said:


> My claim is that many "y"s did not get passed on to Vulgar Latin and the Dark ages.


That is a rather weak claim to make. Actually you can say "Many ____ did not get passed on to Vulgar Latin and the Dark ages" and no matter how you fill in the blank, you will likely be right.

I thought your question was what happened in the remaining cases where a Latin _y_ did survive into Romance.


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## Nino83

For popular words, it depends on when they were borrowed from Greek.
If the borrowing is very old, /y/ in Greek was still pronounced [ʉ] like in πυρρός, so it was understood like /u/, _burrus_.
If the borrowing was more recent, this letter, in Greek, was pronounced [y], and it was understood like /i/, for example γρύλλος, then written _grillus_.

Rohlfs, _Grammatica storica della lingua italiana e dei suoi dialetti_, Vol. I page 69, paragraph 45, lo _sviluppo di y_.


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## Villeggiatura

Nino83 said:


> For popular words, it depends on when they were borrowed from Greek.
> If the borrowing is very old, /y/ in Greek was still pronounced [ʉ] like in πυρρός, so it was understood like /u/, _burrus_.
> If the borrowing was more recent, this letter, in Greek, was pronounced [y], and it was understood like /i/, for example γρύλλος, then written _grillus_.
> 
> Rohlfs, _Grammatica storica della lingua italiana e dei suoi dialetti_, Vol. I page 69, paragraph 45, lo _sviluppo di y_.



I've been interested in this for a long time
_u/y_ for monophthongal upsilon, e.g., astu/asty, murr(h)a/myrr(h)a, Cuma/Cyma 
_u_ for monophthongal upsilon, e.g., columba, turris, Liburni


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## Ben Jamin

Any clue for how Romans actually pronounced the "y" while speaking Latin? Did they follow the Greek pronunciation of the time (they had Greek teachers and many Romans spoke fluent Greek), or did they assimilate the "y" to "i"?


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## berndf

Villeggiatura said:


> To prove all _y_'s or the overwhelming majority of y's in French are what you claim to be (which requires the examination of hundreds of etymologies at least) would further demonstrate the abundance of _y'_s in Latin (which has been my primary claim).


It shows the abundance of Greek learned and religious loans in modern European languages. Nothing more.


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## merquiades

berndf said:


> It shows the abundance of Greek learned and religious loans in modern European languages. Nothing more.


Which is why many languages still call "y" Greek i.  A good proof of etymology in the modern languages that display their language roots.


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## Testing1234567

From Wikipedia: In Latin, Y was named _I graeca_. This was pronounced as _E grecka_ (/iː grεka/), since the classical Greek sound /y/, similar to modern German _ü_ or French _u_, was not a native sound for Latin speakers, and the letter was initially only used to spell foreign words. In Romance languages, this history has led to the standard modern name of the letter — in Galician _i grego_, in Catalan _i grega_, in French and Romanian _i grec_ — all meaning "Greek I".


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## Villeggiatura

berndf said:


> It shows the abundance of Greek learned and religious loans in modern European languages. Nothing more.


I'm the first one in this thread (#3) invoked the magic word _Greek_
The roles of Greek and Latin here? Try to think God and the Apostles in terms of authorship of Scripture, Christ and Peter in terms of the foundation of the Church...


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## berndf

Villeggiatura said:


> I'm the first one in this thread (#3) invoked the magic word _Greek_


The relation to Greek is a matter of course, isn't it? After all, transcribing Greek words was the only use of the letter _y_ in classical Latin.


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## ahvalj

Villeggiatura said:


> I'm actually quite interested in the letter _u_ as an alternative to _y_ for monophthongal _upsilon_ in Latin: e.g. Cuma=Cyma, murr(h)a=myrr(h)a


Such examples are confined to pre-Classical Latin, when, in the absence of the _ü_-like sound in the language, Romans substituted the Greek _υ_ with their own _u_ (cp. e. g. the fate of French _u_ in loanwords to several other languages: _parfumerie_ becomes Polish_ perfumeria_ [ u]; an alternative variant is _i,_ cp. Latvian _parfimērija; _or, where available, _ʲu:_ Russian _парфюмерия/parfʲumʲerʲija_). For some words, the reason may  have been the pronunciation of _υ_ in the source Greek dialect (that remained [ u] e. g. in Doric, which was initially spoken in several colonies in Italy — https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipe..._Graecia_ancient_colonies_and_dialects-en.svg).

In the Classical period, this practice ended for two reasons: first, the much broader acquaintance with (and prestige of) Attic Greek, and second, the development of a kind of _ü_ in Latin itself (_optumus/"optümus"/optimus, lubet/"lübet"/libet; _there are even inscriptions where it is written with _y_: _lachrymis — _see _Тронский ИМ · 2001 · Историческая грамматика латинского языка. Общеиндоевропейское языковое состояние (вопросы реконструкции):_ 52–53 — https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B_7IkEzr9hyJWW9jS05nbE1vbXM).


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## Cossue

ahvalj said:


> and second, the development of a kind of _ü_ in Latin itself (_optumus/"optümus"/optimus, lubet/"lübet"/libet; _there are even inscriptions where it is written with _y_: _lachrymis — _see _Тронский ИМ · 2001 · Историческая грамматика латинского языка. Общеиндоевропейское языковое состояние (вопросы реконструкции):_ 52–53 — https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B_7IkEzr9hyJWW9jS05nbE1vbXM).



Curious. In Galicia we have several places (hamlets) called _Moimenta_/_Muimenta _< Monimenta, which I guess continue Latin neuter plural Monumenta, and contrast notably with learned word _Monumento... _In which circumstances did this ü develop? Thanks in advance.


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## ahvalj

Cossue said:


> Curious. In Galicia we have several places (hamlets) called _Moimenta_/_Muimenta _< Monimenta, which I guess continue Latin neuter plural Monumenta, and contrast notably with learned word _Monumento... _In which circumstances did this ü develop? Thanks in advance.


The direct Roman indication of the existence of this sound is found e. g. in Quintilian's "Īnstitūtiō ōrātōria" 1.4.8:


> there is also a sound intermediate between _u_ and _i_, for we do not pronounce _optimum_ as we do _opimum_, while in here the sound is neither exactly _e_ nor _i_


http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Quintilian/Institutio_Oratoria/1B*.html#4

In this connection many authors also mention Claudius' attempt to introduce three new letters (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claudian_letters) — in particular, see the comment _a _at the same link:


> The emperor Claudius, something of a littérateur, decreed the addition of three letters to the alphabet: one of them for the consonantal _u_ Quintilian would like to distinguish, and another that may well have represented the sound between _i_ and _u_ as in _maximus/maxumus_. They barely survived the emperor, and are very rarely met with even in official inscriptions (Quintil. I.7.26,Tac. _Ann._ 11.13, Suet. _Claud._ 41.3 and see my note there)



The origin of this sound is pretty transparent: during the last centuries before the classical period, Latin was experiencing the closing of word-internal unstressed short open vowels, which produced either _i_ (in most cases: _cadō — cecidī, regō — dīrigō_), or _u_ (before _u̯_ and the velar _l_: _lavō — illuviēs, Σικελία>Sicilia _vs. _σικελός>siculus_), or this _i/u_, which to the classical period may have stabilized in either _i_ or _u_, or, in some words, may have produced a kind of _ü_ (before _p, b, f _and _m_: _capiō — recuperō/reciperō, capiō — accipiō _and _capiō — occupō_). Before _r_ and vowels and in some other particular cases the development was somewhat different.


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## Testing1234567

From https://la.wikisource.org/wiki/Appendix_Probi

tristis non tristus
umbilicus non imbilicus
vir non vyr
virgo non vyrgo
virga non vyrga
pusillus non pisinnus
dys[entericus non disinte]ricus
coruscus non scoriscus
tymum non tumum
bitumen non butumen
myrta non murta
zizipu*[*s*]* non zizup*[*u*]*s
numquit non nimquit

But then, there are also u>o, o>u, i>u, u>a (1 occurence only), u>∅, ...


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## Sobakus

Testing1234567 said:


> But then, there are also u>o, o>u


This is the result of opening and lowering of short /i/ and /u/ and closing and raising of long /e/ and /o/ which is carried over to modern Romance languages.


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## wtrmute

Cossue said:


> Curious. In Galicia we have several places (hamlets) called _Moimenta_/_Muimenta _< Monimenta, which I guess continue Latin neuter plural Monumenta, and contrast notably with learned word _Monumento... _In which circumstances did this ü develop? Thanks in advance.



Besides all the other reasons posted above, we should also recall the general free variation between _ou_ and _oi_ in Galician and Northern Portuguese (_touro/toiro_, _outo/oito_, _ouro/oiro_, _doudo/doido_, _couto/coito_, etc.)  So an evolution like _Monumenta > Moumenta > Moimenta > Muimenta_ is possible.


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## Cossue

Thank you very much, ahvalj!



wtrmute said:


> Besides all the other reasons posted above, we should also recall the general free variation between _ou_ and _oi_ in Galician and Northern Portuguese (_touro/toiro_, _outo/oito_, _ouro/oiro_, _doudo/doido_, _couto/coito_, etc.)  So an evolution like _Monumenta > Moumenta > Moimenta > Muimenta_ is possible.



Yes, that's a possibility also -at least in south-western Galicia- but some of these places are documented as _Monimenta _in medieval charters, even well before the loss of intervocalic /n/:

Moimenta, Campo Lameiro, Pontevedra: '_in finibus comitatus Maranee subtus alpe Leone nominibus Monimenta et Parata_' 958 (Tumbo A Catedral de Santiago doc. 47)

On the other hand, the word is also purely appellative in other charters: 988 "_in agrum, usque fer in illo aquoducto quartas, usque monimento de mauro_" (mauro > mouro = wight, barrow dweller in traditional local folklore). Prehistoric moulds and dolmens are still used as landmarks locally, and they were traditionally associated with the "mouros" and the Underworld.


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