Harry Thurston Peck

“ That i had a consonant sound as distinct from its vowel sound is clear from the statement of Priscian (I. p. 13, Keil) . Before a vowel and not preceded by an accented syllable with final consonant, he says that i "passes over to the force of a consonant." That it differs from i the vowel, is also clear from the fact that in prosody it lengthens the preceding vowel.
(b) That it was not like English j is clear from the fact that it readily passes into i, which proves the two sounds to have been closely akin; and in Greek transliterations it is always represented by ι. ”

“ It is natural that the Roman system should make its way more rapidly into use in this country than in Europe, not because Americans are more given to experiments, but because here in the United States the inconveniences of having no standard system have been more sharply felt. New England being wholly settled from Old England, long continued the English system of pronouncing Latin. In the Middle States, the Germans and Dutch introduced their own methods; in the South and West, the French pronunciation came in quite frequently ”

“ But as is always the case, changes in orthography lagged a little behind changes in the pronunciation. Hence even the blunders made by an ignorant lapidary in cutting an inscription are often a source of information to us.
(3) The representation in Greek letters of Roman sounds. A number of Greek writers treated of Roman history, Roman biography, and Roman geography. In so doing they were obliged to represent many Latin names and words in Greek characters. But many of these writers had no particular knowledge of the Latin language, and hence spelled these Latin names and words phonetically. ”

“ Ae represents an early ai which appears in the oldest Latin. Thus, praifecius, quaistor, aulai; and so Vergil to give an antique coloring to his language has pictai, vestis, aquai, aulai, etc. (Quint. I. 7.18) . About the year B.C. 175, the ai sound began to give way to the ae sound, as can be shown from the testimony of inscriptions. The ai sound of the diphthong (that of the English affirmative ay) may have lingered in the pronunciation of purists, for at the time when the Emperor Claudius instituted his reforms, we find a temporary revival of the spelling ai. ”

“ There is no doubt that at this late period, Latin c had become modified before e or i so as to be equivalent to s or z. Latin words received into German at this time represent c before e or i by z. But had this modification been a part of the usage of the classical language, it would have been noticed by the grammarians, who discuss each letter with great minuteness. ”

“ The position of the vocal organs in pronouncing e is described by Terentianus Maurus (p. 329 Keil) ; Marius Victorinus (p. 32) ; and Martianus Capella (III. 261) . It is regularly represented in Greek transliterations by ε when short, and by η when long.
(b) The sound of the letter e seems to have varied more than was the case with other vowels. The later grammarians give to ē a sound approximating to the sound of i. (Cf. Donatus in Servius p. 421, Keil [1] ) . And confusion of ĕ and ĭ in words like timidus, navibos (written timedus, navebos) is to be seen in early Latin. ”

“ This, Cicero says, was taken as an omen; for it sounded like "Cave ne eas," which must therefore have been pronounced Cau' n' eas. Conversely, in poetry, the vowel v sometimes strengthens into consonant v. Thus in Plautus, Lucretius, and even in Vergil and Statius, this happens in such words as puella, suo, genua, larua, and tenuis. Finally, the fact that both sounds of v are represented by the same character, is evidence that those sounds must have been nearly alike. But the consonant sound that is nearest to the vowel sound of u, is the sound of the English w. ”

“ Priscianus Caesariensis, who wrote under Justinian at Constantinople eighteen books of grammatical commentaries which form the most complete grammar of antiquity; and Aelius Donatus (A.D. 333) , whose elementary treatise was so highly thought of in the Middle Ages that the name "donat" (Chaucer) was used as a generic term for a grammar. ”

“ Because it is simpler than the English system, giving as it does but one sound to each alphabetical character, and thus always distinguishing words of different orthography and meaning by their sounds, while the English system often confuses them ”