[About the fifth century A.D., g began to have the soft sound before e and i that is now found in the modern languages. The first change from the old hard sound was to a y sound like that given to g by those who speak the Berliner Dialekt in Germany to-day, and said to be found also in Lowland Scotch. Such variations as magestas for maiestas, and in Greek βειέντι for viginti, occur.]
8. H: had the sound of English h.
(a) H is described as a simple breathing by Marius Victorinus, p. 34 (Keil); Terentianus Maurus, p. 331; and Martianus Capella, III. 261. It is represented in Greek by the rough breathing, and in turn it represents that breathing.
(b) There seems to have existed among the uneducated Romans that irregularity in the use of h which marks the language of the English cockney to-day. Nigidius Figulus, the grammarian, said: "Your speech becomes boorish if you aspirate wrongly." Catullus in one of his epigrams ridicules the cockneyism of a person who said chommoda for commoda, and hinsidiae for insidiae.[3] In later Latin, the varying spelling shows the growing irregularity of usage. H seems to have been omitted or inserted almost at pleasure; thus hauctoritas, hii, and hinventio, stand beside inospita, omini (homini), and abitat (habitat). The reason for this irregularity seems to have been the gradual weakening of the sound until h became a silent letter, as it is in modern Spanish and Italian. [4]
9. I consonant (J): had the sound of English y.
(a) 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. Thus Julius = Ιούλιος.
(c) Nigidius Figulus cautioned his readers that the i (j) in such words as iam, iecur, iocus is not a vowel,—a caution that would have been absurdly unnecessary if i had had any such sound as that of English j.
(d) The true sound of the letter is seen in the alternative spelling Eanus for Janus proposed by some of the ancients, who derived the name from eo, ire. About 300 A.D. the letter got the sound of z or gi.
10. I (vowel): ī as in English "machine"; ĭ as in English "din".