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On Oct 17, 2009, at 6:47 PM, Padraic Brown wrote:
--- On Sat, 10/17/09, Capsicum <thomas@hidden.email> wrote:I read not long time ago, that '-vi' is said as '-wuy'. I don't know >where I read this and I don't find it anymore. Can it be true? And if >yes, how can I proove it? I also read that '-avi' changed to '-ai' in >late Vulgar Latin.I know that is not exactly conlanging but I could need the information to >decide how I could treat these endings in my language. I say again, that >I am not very far with it.Many things touch on the conlanger's art. I would say that how sounds were produced by progenitors of the conlang's speakers touches rather closely!I might also say that rather a lot depends on what exactly you mean by "'wuy'". I could interpret that to mean anything between "wee" and "wooey" and "wouy". I've always pronounced -vi as "we": cantavi = "cantawee".Sidney Allen has a bit to say about U, both consonantal and vocalic, in "Vox Latina" (along with "From Latin to Romance in Soundcharts", these form part of the core of classic works for the Romance conlanger). Particularly the seeming difficulty the Roman writers themselves had in deciding what UI actually is (diphthong, two vowels, consonant vowel); and how it was treated in poetry.Grandgent in "V.L." treats the loss of V in 1st conj. verbs. Probably a very early development, since he mentions a grafitto "triumphaut" at Pompeii. So you have -ai, -aste, -aut, -aront, etc. Even some places had -aumus.
I seem to remember reading that the -v- might have itself been secondary, added either to break hiatus or by analogy to -ui, or both.
Guildersleeve and Lodge do say that UI sounded like "we (almost)". Many examples of variants are given in the pronoun section -- seems like it could be anything from /wi/ to /u:i:/.Sihler says that Proto-Italic short vowels become u before w: *domaway > *domeway > domui. I can see how that might have been pronounced "dom-eh-wuy"!Anyone who's ever studied French knows that UI did some strange things in French. illuic > lui /lyi/. So, I don't think you're far off in considering how these sounds were actually pronounced in Latin in order to determine how your conlang should realise the descendant sounds.PadraicCapsicum