medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
On Monday, February 28, 2005, at 11:48 am, chris crockett wrote:
> and i'm not sure i ever saw a "final s" within a word, though i
> could be
> mistaken about that as well.
>
> certainly not common.
Not in the scripts you're used to perhaps. But check out this example
of Insular Half-Uncial:
http://www.lancs.ac.uk/users/english/palwork/week08/palwk8.htm
Round 's' is characteristic of half-uncial. In the traditional
nomenclature of letter-forms based on their appearance in certain
scripts, tall 's' is called "uncial 's'" and round 's' is called "half-
uncial 's'".
> i'll stick to "final s", just to be prevert.
Just so long as you make it clear that you're not dealing with a script
that uses round 's' throughout (see example above) or with one where
tall 's' is commonly used in final position, e.g.
Beneventan (check out 'mirabilis' on the last line):
http://www.nd.edu/~medvllib/musnot/benevscript.html
or Carolingian (Caroline) minuscule (examples at bottom; also,
under "y", _abyssus_):
http://www.lancs.ac.uk/users/english/palwork/week10/palwk10d.htm
To people working with the latter scripts, tall 's' _is_ final 's'.
It's this sort difference in practice among different scripts that
leads many to prefer a nomenclature based on the form of the letter
rather than on the position in which it commonly appears.
> since it's always found there and very rarely (if ever) elsewhere
> in the
> word.
In some Gothic book hands round 's' is used initially if the word is to
be abbreviated; some English scribes working in this script then rather
routinely used round 's' at the beginning of such words (e.g., _sum_,
_sibi_, _suus_) even when these were written out in full. See Albert
Derolez, _The Palaeography of Gothic Manuscript Books: From the Twelfth
to the Early Sixteenth Century_ (Cambridge U.P., 2003), pp. 92-93. S.
Harrison Thomson, _Latin Bookhands of the Later Middle Ages, 1100-1500_
(Cambridge U.P., 1969), has a nice example at plate 102 (British, 1385;
_suum_ a few lines from top in col. 1).
> "long s" is o.k., though it sounds sorta vowelly, to my ear.
It's a very literal translation of the standard Latin term "s longa".
A lot of people use it, just as a lot of people use "caudate 'e'"
for "e caudata".
Best again,
John Dillon
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