On Mon, Sep 09, 2002 at 11:43:52AM +0200, Marco Cimarosti wrote:
> Mark Davis wrote:
> > I need to get a list of Latin characters that are generally considered
> > vowels. I partitioned the characters as in the list below, but there
> > are lots of oddball ones for which I can only guess (LATIN CAPITAL
> > LETTER OU? LATIN LETTER WYNN?...).
> >
> > http://www.macchiato.com/unicode/latin_vowels.html
>
...
>
> - In Latin, i and u were also used to represent consonants /j/ and /v/
> (originally, /w/). This ambiguity is still partly present in modern
> languages, especially for i.
> - Notice that capital U is not listed, because it is a new form of V,
> invented in the 16th century precisely for the purpose of distinguishing
> the vowel and the consonantal sounds.
Originally, of course, latin had only capital letters
> - The macron on L and R with dot below makes clear that they are used as
> "sonants", i.e. a kind of vowels.
in Slovak, l and r with acute accents are technically vowels
(long ones at that), as well as sometimes l and r.
However, officially they are classified as consonants.
> I would treat all these as vowels, although I know a few rare exceptions.
> Apart Welsh W, all other exceptions are very rare:
> - J is normally a consonant, but it originally was a font variant of I. In
> ancient texts in many languages, and in some rare Italian proper names, it
> can still stand for vowel /i/.
A bookcase full of old (~100 years) hungarian books has just got into
my posession. I noticed that "J" is there often used as a vowel
at the beginning of word before consonant (where modern hungarian has "I").
However, before vowels, "J" stands for consonant /j/ universally, and
in the middle of word "i" is used for /i/, as one would expect.
I also noticed this (classified as vowel):
U+016C # (Ŭ) LATIN CAPITAL LETTER U WITH BREVE
U+016D # (ŭ) LATIN SMALL LETTER U WITH BREVE
this is a semivowel :-), at least in Esperanto
U+00D4 # (Ô) LATIN CAPITAL LETTER O WITH CIRCUMFLEX
U+00F4 # (ô) LATIN SMALL LETTER O WITH CIRCUMFLEX
this is also classified as a semivowel (in Slovak), though
technically it is a glide plus following vowel.
Conclusion? It is pointless to talk about vowels and consonants,
if you are speaking about a _writing_ system (especially disregarding
the language it concerns).
Vowels and consonants make sense when speaking about pronunciation.
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