# Roman Writing Vsing V Instead Of U **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 3, 2002, 3:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/roman-writing-vsing-v-instead-of-u/140146 "2002-12-03T03:36:06Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Athena](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/35a633/32.png) [@Athena](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Athena)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2002, 1:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/roman-writing-vsing-v-instead-of-u/140146/21 "2002-12-03T13:43:37Z")
Bah, I thought **Alan Smithee** ’s post asked about C and K, not how S and K got associated with C. That’ll teach me to post before coffee. ---
**Author:** ![mrcrow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/838e76/32.png) [@mrcrow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mrcrow)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2002, 1:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/roman-writing-vsing-v-instead-of-u/140146/22 "2002-12-03T13:44:13Z")
ancient alphabets should not be taken as always a mirror on the modern alphabet we have a u phonetic the romans had a v symbolic we say it was pronounced u because thats the letter we have substituted for the v claudivs etc maybe it was pronounced klodiyoos??? soo why not an oo for the v? but that doesnt mean they could not do a u if they wanted to instead its an advancement thing its more difficult with greek and russian jvst my 2c ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2002, 3:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/roman-writing-vsing-v-instead-of-u/140146/23 "2002-12-03T15:12:20Z")
> [@](#): > > _Originally posted by Spavined Gelding_ > > the Cynic, I was a little concerned about you when I read: “Come Spot. Come Spot run. Run Spot run.” I thought we might be into a little classic bad animal porn. Vide Macula. Vide Macula venet. Vene, Macula, vene. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Desmostylus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c57346/32.png) [@Desmostylus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Desmostylus)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2002, 3:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/roman-writing-vsing-v-instead-of-u/140146/24 "2002-12-03T15:16:55Z")
Very good. Now please translate Descartes “I drink therefore I am”. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2002, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/roman-writing-vsing-v-instead-of-u/140146/25 "2002-12-03T16:15:26Z")
Poto [hic] ergo [hic] sum. [hic] 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![FriendBill](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/b5ac83/32.png) [@FriendBill](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FriendBill)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2002, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/roman-writing-vsing-v-instead-of-u/140146/26 "2002-12-03T23:30:57Z")
WOW! (or should that be VOV! or UOU!?) Thank you all so much for the great info! I’ll have to print it out and digest it a bit so I can do some translating into “3rd Grade.” Never realised that J was such a late addition. All this kind of stuff fascinates me… Bill ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2002, 11:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/roman-writing-vsing-v-instead-of-u/140146/27 "2002-12-03T23:59:53Z")
Latin C always had the sound of K, so that the two authors Latin students had to translate from were KYE-sahr and KICK-e-ro, not seeze-ur and siss-uh-ro. It would probably be more accurate to say, rather than “Latin used V _instead_ of U” that "Latin used the letter form V in inscriptions for both the present U sound and the W sound, which was consonantal classic Latin V. Just as the same letter, written with a tail only when final, sufficed for the sounds of I and Y, being written as I initially and medially and as J finally. (Roman numeral eight would be VIIJ in uncial script, VIII only in inscriptions where the curve was avoided when possible.) ---
**Author:** ![Alan\_Smithee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/2acd7d/32.png) [@Alan\_Smithee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alan_Smithee)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2002, 3:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/roman-writing-vsing-v-instead-of-u/140146/28 "2002-12-04T03:50:55Z")
Thanks, **Athena** , I still found that helpful. I didn’t know that. I did, however, know that Latin C was pronounced /k/, as **Poly** pointed out. (Thanks, **Poly**!) But how did it get an /s/ sound? And since you mentioned it, how did /dzh/ get attatched to J? Did George Wahington use I for a /dzh/ sound (when he didn’t use a G)? Sorry if this is a hijack (and a hijack of a hijack), but I’m assuming we can move on to other letters since they’re related questions and we’ve heard a lot about U/V. I’ve always wanted to start a thread about this, but I never have. ---
**Author:** ![lindsay.reid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/82dd89/32.png) [@lindsay.reid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lindsay.reid)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2002, 6:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/roman-writing-vsing-v-instead-of-u/140146/29 "2002-12-04T06:06:02Z")
One thing that I keep noticing people saying here is that letters like u and v or i and j weren’t distinguished in Latin because, in ancient times, there was no distinct difference in sound between them. This would seem logical at first, but how do you explain scansion of Latin poetry that way? When you are scanning Latin poetry, there is a distinctive difference between a i/j that is a constanant and an i/j that is a vowel. This indicates a marked distinction in pronounciation that goes back to Roman times. In addition, when thinking about the u/v problem, think of dipthongs that involve the u/v letter. There’s no way you could convince me that the u in “puella” for example is pronounced the same way as “uenire” and so on. Thinking about it in terms of scansion makes it clear that there were always distinctive sounds for each letter, dating even to Roman times; however, people simpy knew whether there i/j or u/v were a vowel or constanant from the context. It makes me think of y in the modern English alphabet. Remember learning your vowels as a child “a, e, i, o, u, and SOMETIMES y…” I think it’s essentially the same thing for us today. We simply know when y is a vowel and when it is not instinctually. ---
**Author:** ![bibliophage](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bibliophage/32/7615_2.png) [@bibliophage](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bibliophage)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2002, 6:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/roman-writing-vsing-v-instead-of-u/140146/30 "2002-12-04T06:52:16Z")
It’s not an easy one to search for, but **Cecil Adams** touched on this in the column [Why is there an I Street and a K Street but no J Street in Washington, D.C.?](http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a3_262b.html) ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2002, 10:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/roman-writing-vsing-v-instead-of-u/140146/31 "2002-12-04T10:59:17Z")
**linsay.reid** , how did the Romans know, in the scansion of verse, which vowels were long and which were short? The writing didn’t distinguish between those either, even though the distinction was essential for figuring out the metrical scansion. The answer, I guess, is “you just have to know how it sounds because you speak the language.” Renaissance & modern scholars can figure out which vowels were long and mark them that way by analyzing the meter in Latin verse. I guess the original Romans played it by ear according to what sounded right to them. Also, the position of “i” and “u” to the letters around them determined their pronunciation: betweeen two vowels, they were sounded as semiconsonants y and w (and came to be written j and v in medieval Latin). Between two consonants, they remained vowels, so we write “i” and “u”. There was a system for sorting these out. In the case of being preceded by a consonant and followed by a vowel, as in your example of _puella_, they seem to have been realized as a vowel followed by a semiconsonantal glide. However, when u follows q, all I hear in it is the glide, no vowel. So maybe q is an an exception. When the u came between a [k] sound and a vowel, Latin uses “c” instead of “q”: e.g. _cuius_ pronounced kuius. The phonotactics had to be systematic and probably a comprehensive Latin grammar would cover all the rules. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/roman-writing-vsing-v-instead-of-u/140146.md?page=1)