# Why U? [V et U]



## Ben Jamin

Classical Latin used the letter V but did not use the letter U, which was invented in the Middle Ages. Why, then, use U instead of V in Latin?
Is this "more classical"?


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## CapnPrep

Ben Jamin said:


> Classical Latin used the letter V but did not use the letter U, which was invented in the Middle Ages.


The letter ‹U› was not invented in the Middle Ages. As I mentioned earlier today, and as sokol explains in this thread, the Romans used both ‹V› and ‹U›, depending on the writing style. In the Middle Ages both shapes started to appear side by side in the same writing style, but for a long time they were still just positional variants of a single letter. 

The practice of using ‹V, v› for the consonant and ‹U, u› for the vowel is very recent (not fully established until sometime around the 18th century).



> Why, then, use U instead of V in Latin?


Some people like to use all caps or small caps for writing Latin, and usually they take it a step further and use only ‹V›, never ‹U›. ARMA VIRVMQVE CANO. Some people use all lowercase and only ‹u›, never ‹v›: arma uirumque cano. I think that in most situations, it is better to sacrifice "classical" accuracy for readability and accessibility, so I tend to use ‹u› and ‹v› in the modern way when I write Latin words and phrases.


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## Ben Jamin

CapnPrep said:


> The letter ‹U› was not invented in the Middle Ages. As I mentioned earlier today, and as sokol explains in this thread, the Romans used both ‹V› and ‹U›, depending on the writing style. In the Middle Ages both shapes started to appear side by side in the same writing style, but for a long time they were still just positional variants of a single letter.
> 
> The practice of using ‹V, v› for the consonant and ‹U, u› for the vowel is very recent (not fully established until sometime around the 18th century).
> 
> Some people like to use all caps or small caps for writing Latin, and usually they take it a step further and use only ‹V›, never ‹U›. ARMA VIRVMQVE CANO. Some people use all lowercase and only ‹u›, never ‹v›: arma uirumque cano. I think that in most situations, it is better to sacrifice "classical" accuracy for readability and accessibility, so I tend to use ‹u› and ‹v› in the modern way when I write Latin words and phrases.


Thank you for the explanation!
I mean that using only one letter for both U and V (but specially U) makes the texts difficult to read and is unnecessarily puristic.


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## Gadyc

In modern Hebrew, it was quite current to see accademic people using V consonant instead of U for foreign words.

for example: Avtobus, Psevdo - 

untill i read this post, I though it was an influance from German (I don't know German, but they do, as German is a current resarch language)


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## Ben Jamin

Gadyc said:


> In modern Hebrew, it was quite current to see accademic people using V consonant instead of U for foreign words.
> 
> for example: Avtobus, Psevdo -
> 
> untill i read this post, I though it was an influance from German (I don't know German, but they do, as German is a current resarch language)


 
It is difficult to say if this has anything to do with the Latin spelling conventions, as these words did not come from Latin directly (by the way, pseudo is Greek) but from modern European languages, which use 'u' in them. How do you pronounce these words in Ivrit?
Norwegians often pronounce the 'eu' as 'ev'.


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## Gadyc

The regular prononciacion is like in English. Otobus, Psedo. But i heard some "old" people that prononce like you describe psevdo / aovtobus.

I didnt know about Norvegian, but it propably is an influance from other language.


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