<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
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'I might have known you'd choose the easy way'
(Franz Kline's mother)
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