Comment on Vesuvius

CaptainBlagbird@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨years⁩ ago

• Paraneoptera@sopuli.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨years⁩ ago

  “Anglicized” is probably not the best way to think about it. The Latin letter “v” was pronounced “w” through the classical period, but had shifted to β or v (fricative) by the third century, long before English existed. V was pronounced v (voiced labiodental fricative) for many centuries. And though we do tend to give the classical period a lot of prestige, it was just one phase for Latin.

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  • rockerface@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨years⁩ ago

    Funny part is, the same shift happened in a lot of languages. I think some more obvious examples are modern German and Polish, where letter W corresponds to the V sound. Although I believe that the shift happened in German and then Polish borrowed the letter with the new pronunciation.

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    • flughoernchen@feddit.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨years⁩ ago

      Thanks so much for pointing this out. As a native German speaker I still had no idea what’s going on until this comment made me question what a W sounds like in other languages. It’s literally a double-U in English, how come I never stumbled upon that.

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    • Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨2⁩ ⁨years⁩ ago

      in swedish i think we’ve just gone from “fv” to “v”, somehow

      very common example since it’s in old surnames: hufvud > huvud

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• Ashyr@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨years⁩ ago

  Veh-soo-vee-us.

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• usualsuspect191@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨years⁩ ago

  With “v” sounding like it does in other English words like valve.

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  • fakeman_pretendname@feddit.uk ⁨2⁩ ⁨years⁩ ago

    Walwe

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