# The letter ë



## Lievo

How was the letter _ë_ used in Latin? It's used in some Roman names, examples being Flavius Aëtius and Sicamus Aëtius. Was is really a letter used by the Romans, or are these "Aëtiuses" just later spellings?


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## Outsider

They are later spellings, used by modern writers in order to distinguish an _ae_ pronounced as "e" (e.g. _Caesar_) from an _ae_ pronounced as "ae".


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## brian

Outsider, I'd say the diphthong _ae_ was pronounced more like /ai/ and not /e/, at least until some later point in Latin (so it would've held true for Caesar, for example). I'm not sure what you mean by _ae_ pronounced as "ae" <-- do you mean two separate vowels here (/a/ + /e/)?

I haven't really seen this in Latin--or maybe I have but I never took much note of it--but I'd assume it'd be like in Ancient Greek (and also French, etc.) regarding the trema diacritic, i.e. a note to the reader to pronounce the vowels separately and not as a diphthong:

_ae _(diphthong) --> /ai/ kind of like English "eye" minus the final glide
_a__ë_ (two separate vowels) --> /ae/*

*on second thought that's probably what you meant, so I think we agree on the function of the diacritic, but maybe not on the pronunciation of the diphthong.


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## Starfrown

brian8733 said:


> I haven't really seen this in Latin--or maybe I have but I never took much note of it--but I'd assume it'd be like in Ancient Greek (and also French, etc.) regarding the *trema* diacritic, i.e. a note to the reader to pronounce the vowels separately and not as a diphthong:


 
It may also be called the *diaeresis*.


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## Outsider

*Brian*, I was referring to the modern pronunciation. I doubt that words like _Aëtius_ even existed in classical Latin (though there might have been a few Greek loans with hiatuses where Latin would have already had monophthongs).


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## cajzl

More often you can see ë after o. The group oë is pronounced as two separate syllables rather than as a diphthong. E.g. poëta, coërceo, etc. (poëta can be written with macron as well). Sometimes you can see even i with diaeresis, e.g. co¨itus (pronounced co-i-tus, three separate syllables; common mistake: coi-tus, only two syllables).


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## Erutuon

Outsider said:


> I doubt that words like _Aëtius_ even existed in classical Latin (though there might have been a few Greek loans with hiatuses where Latin would have already had monophthongs).



I think there's at least one originally Latin word with aë: _aēn(e)us_, of bronze, bronze-colored. Going by my small Liddell & Scott, it wasn't taken from Greek.


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## Fred_C

Erutuon said:


> I think there's at least one originally Latin word with aë: _aēn(e)us_, of bronze, bronze-colored. Going by my small Liddell & Scott, it wasn't taken from Greek.


I am surprised to read that this word needs a diæresis : I thought it was pronounced like the word "æs, æris", (bronze), which has the same genitive case as "aeër, aëris", (air) except that air needs a diæresis, and bronze does not.


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## cajzl

*aēn(e)us* needs diaeresis, an alternative spelling is *ahēn(e)us*. Similarly *aēnum/ahēnum, aēnator/ahēnator, aēnipes/ahēnipes, Aēnobarbus/Ahēnobarbus*.

Perhaps the only exception in Latin.
_(aër is of Greek origin, Aëllo, Aërope, Aëtion, ...)_


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