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I'm talking about historical use of these letters in Latin. But if you've seen middle and early modern English text that hasn't been sanitized for modern reade
by asveikau 2y ago
I'm talking about historical use of these letters in Latin.
But if you've seen middle and early modern English text that hasn't been sanitized for modern readers, you will see a lot of stuff. You'll see W written as uu. You'll see lots of Vs and Us trading places, in places we no longer put them.
And eg. I kind of suspect the UK pronunciation of lieutenant, where u is /f/, has roots in it being /v/.
- romanhn 2y agoInterestingly, the OED disagrees with this (quite reasonably sounding) origin theory of lieutenant: https://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2015/02/lieutenant.html https://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2015/02/lieutenant.html
- asveikau 2y agoI read it as supporting my theory. It says that in French of the time as heard by English people at the time, the phonetic value of that u was ambiguously heard as f or v. My position is v and u were phonetically ambiguous or sometimes heard as the same in Latin and romance languages. Maybe also in older forms of English.