Anthropology

by A. L. Kroeber

141. The Tail of the Alphabet

In fact, the last six letters of our alphabet are additions of this sort. The original Semitic alphabet ended with T. U was differentiated by the Greeks from F to provide for one of their vowel sounds. This addition was made at an early enough period to be communicated to the Romans. This nation wrote U both for the vowel U and the consonantal or semi-vowel sound of our W. To be exact, they did not write U at all, but what we should call V, pronouncing it sometimes U and sometimes W. They spelled cvm, not cum.

Later, they added X. An old Semitic S-sound, in fifteenth place in the alphabet and distinct from the S in twenty-first position which is the original of our S, was used for both SS and KS. In classic Greek, one form, with KS value, maintained itself in its original place. In other early Græco-Italic alphabets, the second form, with SS value, kept fifteenth place and the X or KS variant was put at the end, after U. The SS letter later dropped out because it was not distinguished in pronunciation from S.

The Y that follows X is intrinsically nothing but the U which the Romans already had—a sort of double of it. The Greek U however was pronounced differently from the Latin one—like French U or German ü. The literary Roman felt that he could not adequately represent it in Greek words by his own U. He therefore took over the U as the Greeks wrote it—that is, a reduced V on top of a vertical stroke. This character naturally came to be known as Greek U; and in modern French Y is not simply called “Y,” as in English, but “Y-grec,” that is, “Greek Y.”

With Z added to U (V), X, and Y, the ancient Roman alphabet was completed.

Our modern Roman alphabet is however still fuller. The two values which V had in Latin, that of the vowel U and the semi-vowel W, are so similar that no particular hardship was caused through their representation by the one character. But in the development of Latin from the classic period to mediæval times, the semi-vowel sound W came to be pronounced as the consonant V as we speak it in English. This change occurred both in Latin in its survival as a religious and literary tongue, and in the popularly spoken Romance languages, like French and Italian, that sprang out of Latin. Finally it was felt that the full vowel U and the pure consonant V were so different that separate letters for them would be convenient. The two forms with rounded and pointed bottom were already actually in use as mere calligraphic variants, although not distinguished in sound, V being usually written at the beginning of words, U in the middle. Not until after the tenth century did the custom slowly and undesignedly take root of using the pointed letter exclusively for the consonant, which happened to come most frequently at the head of words, and the rounded letter for the vowel which was commoner medially.

In the same way I and J were originally one letter. In the original Semitic this stood for the semi-vowel J (or “Y” as in yet); in Greek for the vowel I; in Latin indifferently for vowel or semi-vowel, as in Ianuarius. Later, however, in English, French, and Spanish speech, the semi-vowel became a consonant just as V had become. When differentiation between I as vowel and as consonant seemed necessary, it was effected by seizing upon a distinction in form which had originated merely as a calligraphic flourish. About the fifteenth century, I was given a round turn to the left, when at the beginning of words, as an ornamental initial. The distinction in sound value came still later. The forms I and J were kept together in the alphabet, as U and V had been, the juxtaposition serving as a memento of their recency of distinction—like the useless dot over small j. Had the people of the Middle Ages still been using the letters of the alphabet for numerical figures as did the Greeks, they would undoubtedly have found it more convenient to keep the order of the old letters intact. J and U would in that case almost certainly have been put at the end of the alphabet instead of adjacent to I and V.

J presents a survival—a significant anachronism. Although now recognized in the alphabet, the letter is not always accorded its full place in the series; now and then it is treated like an adopted child whose position in the family is somewhat subsidiary. When a continental European uses letters to designate rows of chairs in a theater, paragraph headings in a book, a series of shipping marks, or any other listing, he often omits J, passing directly from I to K as a Roman of two thousand years ago would have done. Americans occasionally do the same: in Washington, K street follows directly on I street. If asked the reason, we perhaps rationalize the omission on the ground that I and J look so much alike that they run risk of being confused. Yet it scarcely occurs to us that I and L, or I and T, can also be easily confused. The true cause of the habit seems to be the unconscious one that our ancestors, in using the letters seriatim, followed I by K because they had no J.

The origin of W is accounted for by its name, “Double-U,” and by its form, which is that of two V’s. The old Latin pronunciation of V gradually changed from W to V, and many of the later European languages either contained no W-sound or indicated it by the device of writing U or some combination into which U entered. Thus the French write OU and the Spanish HU for the sound of W. In English, however, and in a few other European languages, the semi-vowel sound was important enough to make a less circumstantial representation advisable. Since the sound of the semi-vowel was felt to be fuller than that of the consonant, a new letter was coined for the former by coupling together two of the latter. This innovation did not begin to creep into English until the eleventh century. Being an outgrowth of U and V, W was inserted after them as J was after I. It is a slight but interesting instance of convergence that its name is exactly parallel to the name “Double Gamma” which the Greek grammarians coined for F long before.