Expert: Maria - 5/28/2006

Question
How do you know whether a ‘u’ or an ‘i’ is a to be pronounced as a consonant or a vowel in Latin?
Any instructions on Latin pronunciation will tell you how to pronounce ‘i’ and ‘u’ as vowels and as consonants. But how do you know which pronunciation to choose - whether an ‘i’ or a ‘u’ should be pronounced as a vowel or as a consonant in any particular word (without looking in an old-fashioned dictionary that writes ‘j’ and ‘v’ for consonantal values!)?

Answer
Hello,

First of all the vowels ‘u’ and ‘i’ are not consonants in Latin, but sometimes semi-vowels, also called semiconsonants,  i.e. non-syllabic vowels  (meaning  a sound that is not the nucleus of a syllable) that form diphthongs with syllabic vowels.
For example ‘iustus’ (justice), ‘ iuventus ‘(youth), where the vowel ‘i’ is  a semi-vowel, also known as semi-consonant,  as it stands before another vowel and is not the nucleus of  the syllable like in ‘sica’ ( dagger), e.g.

With regard to its pronunciation, this ‘i’ as a semi-vowel has the same pronunciation as the vowel ‘i’.
Therefore  in either ‘iustus’ and  ‘sica’ the ‘i’ is pronounced like ‘i’ in ‘machine’ or  in ‘pin’.

Finally, there are some dictionaries which uses ‘j’ for the semi-vowel, but it’s not correct in Latin and however the pronunciation is the same, of course.

This for the semi-vowel ‘i’.

Speaking about the ‘u’ used as a semi-vowel, just like in ‘iustus’, ‘iuventus’, ‘iuvenis’ , ‘iungo’, etc., first of all I must repeat that the ‘u’ is not a consonant in Latin , but a semi-vowel, though  here  it stands after (not before ) the vowel. (See below for a definition of a semi-vowel).
Moreover it is pronounced like ‘u’ in the English adjective ‘juvenile’, for example.

As for the ‘v’ used instead of ‘u’ in Latin, please note that in ancient Roman times there were only capital letters. The small letters were introduced and used only later and then "V" was capital letter, while "u" was small letter for the same sound, i.e. like  "oo" in English "look", not like "v"  in English "Vase" .
For example : "CONSVL" and "consul"; "VINVM" and "uinum".
It was in  medieval times that the letter "V "was differentiated into "u" and "v” and passed into English alphabet for instance, where the ‘v’ began to be pronounced as ‘v’ in ‘vase’.
Anyway in some English editions of Latin text (see e.g. Oxford Classical Texts) we read  ‘inuenustum’ instead of ‘invenustum’, ‘soluite’ instead of ‘solvite’, etc.

Hope all is clear enough, though this matter is not easy.
Best,
Maria

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The semi-vowel is a sound  that stands before  or after a vowel.