Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2019 May 19

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May 19

L M N & R as semivowels?

In John Baret's 1574 dictionary An Alvearie he claims that the letters L M N & R are semivowels.

his commentary on L
his commentary on M
his commentary on N
his commentary on R

His reasoning (as I interpret it) is that in order to produce the L M N & R sounds one must voice the schwa vowel while having the tongue and lips in different positions. L is the schwa vowel + pressing tongue to upper teeth, M is the schwa vowel + closed lips, etc.

Does his reasoning have relevancy or validity in our present day understanding of semivowels? And are his views worth mentioning in the semivowels article? --78.9.139.5 (talk) 08:03, 19 May 2019 (UTC)

Baret's terminology is just following the terminological tradition of Greek antiquity, inherited from Aristotle, who used "hemiphona" ("semivowels") as a cover term for all continuant (non-plosive) consonants, including what we would call fricatives, nasals, liquids and approximants. Fut.Perf. ☼ 09:06, 19 May 2019 (UTC)

Ah I think I understand now. Thank you for your answer! --78.9.139.5 (talk) 19:01, 22 May 2019 (UTC)

78.9.139.5 -- I haven't followed the links, but in that usage, "semi-vowel" basically means "consonant which can be pronounced syllabically". In the names of the letters of the Roman alphabet, the vowel letters (A E I O V) were named by their own sounds (i.e. [a] [e] [i] [o] [u]), the consonant letters that could not be pronounced syllabically (B C D G H K P Q T) were usually given names of the corresponding consonant sounds + "e" (i.e. [be], [ke], [de] etc., except that K only occurred before A and Q before V, so these two were given the names [ka] and [ku]), while the letters that could be pronounced syllabically (F L M N R S) were either given syllabic consonant names (i.e. [f] [l] [m] [n] [r] [s]) or names preceded by "e" (i.e. [ef] [el] [em] [en] [er] [es]). The name of X was derived from that of S... AnonMoos (talk) 04:25, 22 May 2019 (UTC)

AnonMoos -- In the 4 links to pages I provided the author is referring to the sounds the letters make, not to the names of the letters. Though thanks for that bit of trivia! I've now learned something I never thought to ask about. Cheers! --78.9.139.5 (talk) 19:01, 22 May 2019 (UTC)

Sorry if I got bogged down in details, but my attempted point was that originally the names of letters of the Latin alphabet were formed in 3 different ways, depending on whether the main sound written by the letter was a vowel, "semi-vowel", or full consonant... AnonMoos (talk) 01:20, 23 May 2019 (UTC)

I understand but it is only those specific 4 letters that the author calls 'semivowels' so FPaS's answer seems cogent. --78.9.139.5 (talk) 23:17, 23 May 2019 (UTC)