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• #Quaqua in latin how to#

The spelling “- ei -” where you might expect “ -ī- ”: some words that, in Classical Latin, came to be spelled with a long “ i” were spelled instead with “ ei” in Early Latin in this play we see “preimum”, “ quei”, “ sei”, “ seic”, “ sein”, and “ uestei” (instead of the Classical Latin “ primum”, “ qui”, “ si” “ sic”, “ si+ne”, and “ uesti”).Similarly in this play we see “quicum” (instead of the more standard “quacum”) and “aliqui” (instead of “aliquo”). “Qui” where you might expect “quo”, “qua” or “quibus ”: the singular and plural ablative forms of the relative and interrogative pronouns, and of the interrogative adjective (which are normally “quo”, “qua”, and “quibus”) can be instead written as “qui” in Plautus.“Quo-/qu-” where you might expect “cu- ”: the conjunction that was later spelled “cum” is spelled “quom” in Early Latin (though the same is not true for the preposition “ cum”, which is so spelled in both Early and Classical Latin).For this reason we find that “seruus” (nominative singular) and “seruum” (accusative singular) in Plautus are usually spelled “seruos” and “seruom”, respectively. Avoidance of “uu” : Early Latin tended to avoid placing the vowel “ u” immediately after another “ u”.

Those whose Latin skills have reached the point where they can read this play should have no real trouble distinguishing the vowel “ u” from the semivowel “ u”.

#Quaqua in latin how to#

The reason introductory Latin textbooks distinguish between the two is because it is believed to help beginners learn how to pronounce Latin correctly. When written in upper case both the vowel and the semivowel are written like a capital “ V”.įor example, in the word “iuuenis” (line 5 of the play), the first “ u” is a vowel, while the second is a semivowel, and it would consequently be spelled “iuvenis” in most Latin textbooks (like its English derivative “juvenile”). The letter “ u ”: When writing, the Romans did not distinguish between the vowel “ u” and the semivowel that was later written as “ v” (which was pronounced like our “w”), and the Latin text of the play used in this volume (which is Lindsay’s widely used edition from 1903) therefore uses the letter “u” for both the vowel and the semivowel.The following points will enable readers of the Latin text of Epidicus to take in their stride most of the quirks of Plautus’s Latin as they appear in this play. The Latin of Plautus’s day is called “Early Latin ”, as opposed to the later “Classical Latin” that most Latin textbooks teach. This is partly because, between the time of Plautus and the time of Cicero and Caesar, the spelling of some Latin words changed, and partly because poetic Latin retained some variant forms after they had disappeared from Latin prose. Students who read the play in Latin will see that there are a few ways in which this text differs from the Latin introduced in most beginners’ textbooks. Helpful Information for Reading the Latin Text © 2021 Catherine Tracy, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0