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Related - I've searched for an authoritative voice on why the letter 'V' was used in place of 'U'. Does anyone know? I do like the story about U with its round

• Bud 16y ago
  As far as I know, the story about V being easier to carve in stone is accurate. Also, there is no U in the Roman alphabet. So there's that.
  • tedunangst 16y ago
    V is certainly easier to carve, but since U didn't exist, it's not like anybody really had to choose.
• thwarted 16y ago
  I do like the story about U with its round curves being too hard to chisel I find this hard to believe when I see other characters that have have tighter curves having been chiseled in stone. Is it true that there are no/few curves in chiseled letters in classic works? The only ones I've seen are in modern buildings, as in PVLIC LIBRARY.
• tedunangst 16y ago
  There's also no J. U/V and I/J were simply the same letter, and could be either vowel or consonant, much like Y. Today, we transcribe it as Julius, but it was written Iulius 2000 years ago. There are plenty of round Roman letters carved into stone and coins. See image. They didn't use U because they didn't know they "needed" it. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Grabmal_des_Iulius_Baccus.jpg http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Grabmal_des_Iulius_Ba...
  • tedunangst 16y ago
    Er, that would be more like IVLIVS in real Latin. duh.