# pronunciation : coniugāre



## chajadan

I was wondering how people pronounce coniugāre. My text says that latin only has six dipthongs, and "iu" is not listed as one of them.

So would it be "con-i-u-GA-re"?

I'm tempted to pronounce it "con-yu-GA-re".


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## Cagey

chajadan said:


> I was wondering how people pronounce coniugāre. My text says that latin only has six dipthongs, and "iu" is not listed as one of them.
> 
> So would it be "con-i-u-GA-re"?
> 
> I'm tempted to pronounce it "con-yu-GA-re".



You should give in to the temptation.  This is the "consonantal Y", that is written as "J" in English words derived from Latin (cf. _conjugate_).  In classical Latin, we pronounce it as "Y".

And the accent is correct, too.


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## chajadan

My text, Wheelock's Latin 6th Edition Revised, said that consonantal i occurs at the beginning of a word followed by a vowel, or between two vowels within a word -- it didn't mention the effect of adding a prefix prior to the former type. Shall I suppose that since iugāre has a consonantal i, that coniugāre preserves it and then shall I extrapolate this idea to other instances as well?


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## Cagey

chajadan said:


> My text, Wheelock's Latin 6th Edition Revised, said that consonantal i occurs at the beginning of a word followed by a vowel, or between two vowels within a word -- it didn't mention the effect of adding a prefix prior to the former type. Shall I suppose that since iugāre has a consonantal i, that coniugāre preserves it and then shall I extrapolate this idea to other instances as well?


 
Yes. The prefix will not change a consonatal I to a vowel.


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## modus.irrealis

This is (probably) also the case with compounds of _iacio_ even though there's no explicit sign for the consonantal i, so:

conicio = con-YI-ki-o
inicio = in-YI-ki-o

and so on. The Romans didn't seem to be big fans of writing double i, either in cases like this or between vowels as in _maior _and so on.


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## J.F. de TROYES

modus.irrealis said:


> This is (probably) also the case with compounds of _iacio_ even though there's no explicit sign for the consonantal i, so:
> 
> conicio = con-YI-ki-o
> inicio = in-YI-ki-o
> 
> and so on. The Romans didn't seem to be big fans of writing double i, either in cases like this or between vowels as in _maior _and so on.


 
Yes, it is . French school books and even the reference Gaffiot dictionary opted for the spelling with a "j"  when  the Latin "i" writes down this consonant : jacio, conjicio, injicio and so on.


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## modus.irrealis

I added the "(probably)" just because I've seen some grammars that see it as _cōnicio_ and so on, i.e. the vowel has been lengthened to compensate for the alleged loss of the [j], although most sources I've seen don't take this approach.

As far as I know the spelling _conicio _is the Classical spelling and _conjicio_ is later -- not that there's anything wrong with that (I, at least, prefer _veni_ to _ueni_).


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