Attempted Robbery In Cape Town
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The Chase
17 Answers
On The Chase just now Bradley asked what vowel the Romans didn't use and the answer was "u". So what about "plumbum" for lead, then?
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that sounds a bit odd. As JimF says, the letter V was used and could be spoken as either a vowel or a consonant. But we know this mostly from carved script, where they seem to have found it more convenient to carve straight lines. In handwritten script, the same letter was typically written more like a U
"could be spoken as either a vowel or a consonant"
Only in Church Latin, which did not really standardise until the eight century, by which time no-one spoke what might be called Classical Latin any more.
E.g., Caesar's famous quote "veni vidi vici" in Classical Latin would have been pronounced "WAY-nee WEE-dee WEE-kee"
yes; I recall Mr Chips protesting "Instead of 'vy-sissum', you'd make them say 'we-kiss-'em'." But W in modern English is called a consonant, so that's how I'd categorise it for Latin purposes too.
As far as The Chase goes, I don't think it's right that the Romans "didn't use U": they did in handwriting.
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