Pronunciation watch

[Lateralthinking1]

Yes, but what's not always realised is that y is a vowel in English, too. It's also a consonant - the word 'yesterday' has the consonantal form at the beginning and the vowel form at the end. There used to be others. 'U' and 'v' were once just different forms of the same ('u') - as in Latin - but eventually the consonantal form became the separate letter 'v' (and there was even a third form - double 'u' - which became a separate letter). That's why the alphabet has u, v and w all in a row. That was (largely) sorted out by the 17th Century.

The other one was 'i', which developed a consonantal form at the beginning of words - iustice would be pronounced justice - and a decorated 'i' might be used in that position (j). It wasn't entirely treated as a separate letter till Webster's and the OED did so in the mid-1900s.
Dr Johnson, for instance, included all J words among the I's.

That will never happen with Y because it's too well established, and we've never had a different form of the letter anyway.

The mid-1900s?? How does this work? If some I words, but not all, were pronounced as J, why would all J words have been with the I words? James, John, Johnson? They were I words?

I don't quite understand this. Why didn't Johnson place the I words that were pronounced as J with the J words that were very well-established even in the 1700s?

Example - J in 1644 : http://special.lib.gla.ac.uk/images/.../BD1i48_tp.jpg

And here - http://special.lib.gla.ac.uk/images/...D1i48_p108.jpg

[Pabmusic]

The mid-1900s?? How does this work? If some I words, but not all, were pronounced as J, why would all J words have been with the I words? James, John, Johnson?

No, a slip. It should have been mid-1800s (Webster's was 1838, I think). I've amended it.

J was not treated as a separate letter, it was an I with a different sound, which is how it had developed. Originally, there was no separate symbol (the Romans didn't use a different one, for instance) but during the late medieval period, scribes began to use a decorated I at the beginning of words or stressed syllables, which just happened to be the position where a consonantal sound for I had developed previously. So when Dr Johnson compiled his dictionary, he simply put all the Js and Is together, treating them all as Is, even though, by now, they were written and pronounced differently. That would not have seemed unusual at the time - anyone who separated them would have seemed more strange. 2-300 years earlier, the same had happened with U and V, but no-one wrote dictionaries then.

[edit]

I've seen your edits, which are good examples, but they were not separate letters as we view them now, but rather different ways of writing the same thing (or more confusingly, sometimes they were and sometimes they weren't - there's an earlier dictionary than Johnson's that does separate them - but it didn't catch on, and there are many more examples of lists not making the distinction). Imagine that we came up with a new symbol for the consonantal Y of yet (we could use ¥ - ¥et). It would probably still be viewed as a type of Y, unless there's a conscious decision to create a new letter. I and J were like this, and I could paste examples of I being used for J-words, and many examples of J as a decorated I. You can still find I-for-J occasionally in 19th century printing. It was Webster's, the OED and the growth of daily newspapers that established J beyond question as a separate letter - the youngest one in our alphabet.

[Moderator - it might be useful to move 315, 316 and 317 to the Evolution of Language thread before I wrench this thread off topic!]

[Lateralthinking1]

No, a slip. It should have been mid-1800s (Webster's was 1838, I think). I've amended it.

J was not treated as a separate letter, it was an I with a different sound, which is how it had developed. Originally, there was no separate symbol (the Romans didn't use a different one, for instance) but during the late medieval period, scribes began to use a decorated I at the beginning of words or stressed syllables, which just happened to be the position where a consonantal sound for I had developed previously. So when Dr Johnson compiled his dictionary, he simply put all the Js and Is together, treating them all as Is, even though, by now, they were written and pronounced differently. That would not have seemed unusual at the time - anyone who separated them would have seemed more strange. 2-300 years earlier, the same had happened with U and V, but no-one wrote dictionaries then.

[edit]

I've seen your edits, which are good examples, but they were not separate letters as we view them now, but rather different ways of writing the same thing (or more confusingly, sometimes they were and sometimes they weren't - there's an earlier dictionary than Johnson's that does separate them - but it didn't catch on, and there are many more examples of lists not making the distinction). Imagine that we came up with a new symbol for the consonantal Y of yet (we could use ¥ - ¥et). It would probably still be viewed as a type of Y, unless there's a conscious decision to create a new letter. I and J were like this, and I could paste examples of I being used for J-words, and many examples of J as a decorated I. You can still find I-for-J occasionally in 19th century printing. It was Webster's, the OED and the growth of daily newspapers that established J beyond question as a separate letter.

I understand what you mean but this is King John's signature (1166-1216). It looks like a J and it would have sounded like a J unless they called him "Yon" which I doubt. And for nearly 700 years it was viewed as an I? They learnt slowly in those days!

[Pabmusic]

I understand what you mean but this is King John's signature (1166-1216). It looks like a J and it would have sounded like a J unless they called him "Yon" which I doubt. And for nearly 700 years it was viewed as an I? They learnt slowly in those days!

An I with a tail does go back to late Roman times, but it was still an I and not pronounced differently, as far as we know. The consonantal pronunciation came (in English) some time after the Norman invasion, usually applied to an I at the beginning of a word or perhaps at the beginning of a stressed syllable, and usually in words taken from French. In parallel, the long version of I (J) became fashionable among scribes, and the new pronunciation and new script gravitated toward each other, but in fits and starts. The King James Bible (1603) and Shakespeare First Folio (1611) don't use J at all (except the First Folio has J capitals in secondary text - lists of contents and the like). Other print of this period has J capitals but I lower-case. The English alphabet of - say - 1640 had 24 letters, and there was much written scholarly debate about whether V and J should be added. V was accepted more readily than J was.

Here's a sample from Johnson's dictionary of 1755, in the order they appear:

I, Jabber, Jabberer, Jackal, Jam, Iambick, Jangle, Ibis, Ice, Idiot, Jealous

Before the early-19th Century, the name of J was not jay but rhymed with dye (literally 'the J type of I').

As to King John. Well, his name wasn't John (it was the Tudors who renamed the Norman kings) but he has simply written an I with a tail for his name of Jean (a similar thing was happening in French with the consonantal shj sound given to I in certain positions).

Here's the first few Norman kings as they were known:

Guillaume le Bâtard
Guillaume le Roux
Henri Beauclerc
Etienne le Blois
Henri Courtmanteau
Richard Coeur de Lion
Jean Sans Terre

[Lateralthinking1]

An I with a tail does go back to late Roman times, but it was still an I and not pronounced differently, as far as we know. The consonantal pronunciation came (in English) some time after the Norman invasion, usually applied to an I at the beginning of a word or perhaps at the beginning of a stressed syllable, and usually in words taken from French. In parallel, the long version of I (J) became fashionable among scribes, and the new pronunciation and new script gravitated toward each other, but in fits and starts. The King James Bible (1603) and Shakespeare First Folio (1611) don't use J at all (except the First Folio has J capitals in secondary text - lists of contents and the like). Other print of this period has J capitals but I lower-case. The English alphabet of - say - 1640 had 24 letters, and there was much written scholarly debate about whether V and J should be added. V was accepted more readily than J was.

Here's a sample from Johnson's dictionary of 1755, in the order they appear:

I, Jabber, Jabberer, Jackal, Jam, Iambick, Jangle, Ibis, Ice, Idiot, Jealous

Before the early-19th Century, the name of J was not jay but rhymed with dye (literally 'the J type of I').

As to King John. Well, his name wasn't John (it was the Tudors who renamed the Norman kings) but he has simply written an I with a tail for his name of Jean.

Here's the first few Norman kings as they were known:

Guillaume le Bâtard
Guillaume le Roux
Henri Beauclerc
Etienne le Blois
Henri Courtmanteau
Richard Coeur de Lion
Jean Sans Terre

My name begins with a J and I used to write it much as shown with King John (Jean) without a top line. I never then thought of it as I. In some ways I'm playing devil's advocate here and in other ways I am not. I like to understand enough of the logic for things to make logical sense to me. Currently - and you are being very helpful and patient - I don't quite have enough of a logical link in my mind. You have admitted that Johnson was out of step on this matter. Perhaps that's important. To me, there is no strong logic in what we have discussed so far of the development. Now that you have provided a list there is a further problem. Consonants can be placed immediately after I but not J so it isn't even as if the letters have a similar way of working. King James's signature:

[Lateralthinking1]

......on a completely irrelevant point, I found these on my Google travels. I think they are stunning:

http://special.lib.gla.ac.uk/exhibns/month/june2008.html

[Pabmusic]

My name begins with a J and I used to write it much as shown with King John (Jean) without a top line. I never then thought of it as I. In some ways I'm playing devil's advocate here and in other ways I am not. I like to understand enough of the logic for things to make logical sense to me. Currently - and you are being very patient and helpful - I don't quite have enough of a logical link in my mind. You have admitted that Johnson was out of step on this matter. Perhaps that's important. To me, there is no strong logic in what we have discussed so far of the development. Now that you helpfully provide that list there is a further problem. Consonants can be placed immediately after I but not J so it isn't as if the two letters even have a similar way of working. King James signature:

It's a pleasure to talk with you again, Lat, though I've asked that these posts be moved to the Evolution of Language thread.

There isn't a logic to it - or rather it's difficult in hindsight to apply much logic. I and J are different symbols, although one developed from the other largely out of fashion. It then became useful to distinguish the two different ways people pronounced I (as we have two ways of pronouncing Y - 'yesterday'). You can call that a different letter, and that probably makes more sense to us, but it clearly wasn't seen as wholly independent from I at the time. Samuel Johnson's Dictionary was hugely influential and probably delayed J's separation for 75 years, but I'd not say he was out of step particularly, just rather conservative.

I think that if I were to start a movement to use ¥ as the consonantal Y (we could call it the letter yen), there'd be plenty who'd say it wasn't necessary because we know how to use Y. It took Noah Webster, who was not impressed by British linguistics anyway, to clear it all up - and then the OED followed suit.

[vinteuil]

An I with a tail does go back to late Roman times, but it was still an I .

... and the use of a lower-case "i with a tail" also persisted when used as part of roman numerals - when alone, or at the end :

I have xviij children

take a potion of viij fluid ounces metheglin

there are three things that need doing, viz :
j. catch the hare
ij. skin the hare
iij. drain the blood.

[Pabmusic]

... and the use of a lower-case "i with a tail" also persisted when used as part of roman numerals - when alone, or at the end :

I have xviij children

take a potion of viij fluid ounces metheglin

there are three things that need doing, viz :
j. catch the hare
ij. skin the hare
iij. drain the blood.

Thanks - interesting.

[Lateralthinking1]

Yes, thank you to both of you. There is still something about it that troubles me mildly. I'm not quite sure why.

[jean]

Not sure where this fits in, bit the advocates of authentic Elizabethan pronunciation of Latin favour a consonantal j souind in a word like eius.

You can hear it on recordings if you listen carefully.

[french frank]

Not sure where this fits in, bit the advocates of authentic Elizabethan pronunciation of Latin favour a consonantal j souind in a word like eius.

You can hear it on recordings if you listen carefully.

I think that may be 'natural' phonetics? In Spanish, for example, the 1st person pronoun 'yo' ( y as in yacht) is heard in some dialects as 'zho' (similar to the sound heard in 'leisure'). It's the result of a slight, involuntary modification in the points of articulation.

[french frank]

In Welsh, 'y' and 'w' are vowels and 'yw' is a diphthong

But both y and w can have different sounds. So Hywel is almost HUH-wel (y with the so-called obscure sound, w a consonant), not Hyooell (rhyming with 'fuel' or as 'byw' would be bee-yoo).

Pronounce HUH-wel with a Welsh accent and you hesitate as to whether it is Howl or Hole (as Powl or Pole). In any event, it is pronouced as two very distinct syllables, unlike in English where Powell and Pole are no more than single syllables.

Bryn Terfel always objects to the lazy English pronunciation of Tair-vle, the stress is on the first, but second is separately and clearly pronounced.


[Too much information? - Ed]

[vinteuil]

[Too much information? - Ed]

... on these Boards - on this Thread - I wd say : never possible to have "too much" information. We always thirst for more...



[Welcome back, French Frank. You have been missed... ]

[amateur51]

But both y and w can have different sounds. So Hywel is almost HUH-wel (y with the so-called obscure sound, w a consonant), not Hyooell (rhyming with 'fuel' or as 'byw' would be bee-yoo).

Pronounce HUH-wel with a Welsh accent and you hesitate as to whether it is Howl or Hole (as Powl or Pole). In any event, it is pronouced as two very distinct syllables, unlike in English where Powell and Pole are no more than single syllables.

Bryn Terfel always objects to the lazy English pronunciation of Tair-vle, the stress is on the first, but second is separately and clearly pronounced.


[Too much information? - Ed]

You're doing pretty well there, french frank

Bryn is quite right of course to object to the the lazy pronunciation - the trick is to pronounce the 'Ter' as in 'terra' and really roll that 'r'; and the second syllable is 'vel' with the same 'terra' e sound.