(b) Q represents the old Greek letter koppa and is a sharp guttural mute. Colloquially qu may have been carelessly sounded like k, or like qu in modern French. A candidate for office whose father had been a cook, once approached Cicero and asked a bystander for his vote; whereupon Cicero, who was an inveterate punster, said: "Ego quoque tibi iure favebo," pronouncing quoque "koké" so as to suggest coque, the vocative of coquus, a cook. (Quint, VI. 3. 47.)
17. R: in general had the sound of the English r with a slight trill; i.e. that of the Italian r.
(a) Because of its snarling sound it is called by the satirist Persius "the dog's letter" (littera canina).
(b) The Romans seem not to have liked a too frequent repetition of this letter, for it is omitted often when a following syllable contains it; as pejero for perjero; and grammarians have noticed that the genitive plural of the future participle is of rare occurrence. In the colloquial and provincial Latin, r is often dulled into l. Thus on one of the walls at Pompeii a part of the first line of the Aeneid was found written, "ALMA VILVMQVE CANO TLO"—a rendering which might have been produced by a modern Chinese. Cf. the playful use of Hillus for Hirrus in one of Cicero's letters (ad Fam. ii. 10. 1.)
18. S: had regularly the sound of the English initial s sharp as in "sip"; at the end of words it was barely audible.
(a) That s was a sharp hiss is clear from the fact that it maintains its place before the sharp consonants, as in sto, spes, squama, scelus; and does not maintain its place before flat consonants, as in cano (casno), iudex (iusdex), dilabor (dislabor), diripio (disripio), trado (transdo), viden (videsne); while it regularly changes a preceding flat consonant to a sharp, as scripsi (scribsi), and rexi (regsi).
(b) That it was very lightly sounded at the end of words is clear from the fact that until after Cicero's time it was neglected in scanning when the next word began with a consonant; that in the early inscriptions it is frequently omitted in writing, as Cornelio for Cornelios; and that in a great number of words it fell away altogether at all periods of the language; as in ipse for ipsus, pote for potis, vigil for vigilis, puer for puerus; and compare such forms as poeta, nauta and luxuria with ποιητής, ναύτης, luxuries: and so in modern Italian.
[The neglect of final s in scanning is extremely frequent. Cf. such a line as this hexameter from Ennius, where the s is suppressed three times:
"Tum laterali(s) dolor certissimu(s) nuntiu(s) mortis.">[
19. T: had the sound of English t, always hard.