Thanks! -- I've found all of this extremely interesting.

best joanna

----- Original Message -----
From: "Christopher Walker" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, February 21, 2005 8:19 AM
Subject: Re: Elizabethan orthography (Re: Some toenotes )


> <snip>
> You say -- English 'double-u' isn't -- which I take to mean, isn't a
> double
> u. Could you go a bit further and explain what it is, then?
> <snip>
>
> I was being too easily flippant about how English and Italian refer to the
> 'w'. About the modern letter I am right: it's now a double v. But it began
> as a double u in the first transcriptions of OE into Latin - preceding the
> glorious wen, alas for the wen, which was an import out of runes. And when
> the wen fell into permanent desuetude (in which word Latin <u> represents
> /w/, incidentally), it reappeared as a double v.
>
> The point being that there'd been a shift in the dominant pronounciation
> of
> Latin away from /w/ in initial positions, represented by <u> or <v>, to
> /v/.
> So if you wanted to represent the sound of a devocalised /u/ (which is
> pretty much what /w/ actually is) you had to invent something.
>
> I don't know how Mark would pronounce his surname, but my default would be
> 'Vice'. And in several parts of the world my own ends up as 'Valka'.
>
> <snip>
> And should we, whilst we're on the subject, expand this discussion to take
> in the i/j aspect? Or is enough enough?
> <snip>
>
> Another English character that's derived from Greek upsilon is the 'y',
> which links up with the i/j problem. (Thus 'tyrant' comes from Gr.
> 'turannos', loosely transcribed. Although Modern Greek now pronounces
> upsilon as the French pronounce their <y>. But I digresss.) Besides its
> various uses in medial and final positions, we currently use it ('you'
> etc)
> to represent the sound of an initial devocalised /i/ before vowels and did
> use it ('yclept' etc) as a fully vocalised /i/ before consonants.
>
> But back to <i> and <j>....
>
> Like <u> and <v> this was an orthographic rather than a phonetic
> distinction, I think, with <j> the later form. But phonetically you also
> get
> a shift in the initial /i/ sound towards a sort of diphthong or soft g and
> this influences French orthography which in turn influences our own. And
> _eventually_ , <j> comes to represent only the diphthong or soft g.
>
> And with that I should probably stop.
>
> CW
>
> __________________________________________
>
> 'I might have known you'd choose the easy way'
> (Franz Kline's mother)
>