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apolloslibrary · 1 year

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Latin Alphabet Revisited: Pars Ⅱ—consonants and digraphs

So last time i talked about vowels in latin, and before i proceed i'd like to make a slight correction: Y in classical latin was most likely pronounced as U which makes sense - some romans would probably know to pronounce it as a rounded i sound having received greek education, but anyway

So the second, larger part of the alphabet is of course made up of consonants. There's little to talk about here imo except some letters that might cause some confusion but I'll go over all of them anyway

so the consonants of the latin alphabet are

B C D F G H J K L M N P Q R S T V X Z

although if you went a bit back in time you'd find the consonant inventory a little bit smaller at

B C D F H (I) K L M N P Q R S T V X

there might be some mistakes, as I am not showing them at a specific point in time, merely listing the ones I know have stuck around since the earliest days

anyway as you can see, at some point the Latin alphabet lacked letters G J and Z - funnily enough, Z was present in the earliest forms of the latin alphabet (and stood between F and H like Ζζ does in the greek alphabet!) but it didn't see much use, so it was dropped

G essentially arose out of necessity—its inventor was Spurius Carvillius Ruga, who supposedly was tired of people pronouncing his cognomen wrong, because at the time both sounds /k/ and /g/ were written with ⟨C⟩ (as K had fallen out of favour and remained in use mostly for abbreviations and to write the word Kalendæ (calends, the first day of the month, etymon of the word Calendar) so he added a stroke to distinguish them

curious might be the inclusion of ⟨i⟩ to some of you: well originally i and v were originally both vowels and consonants—/i~j/ and /u~w/ respectively (which also means that if I wanted to be extra accurate, I could've written the u's as v's, as that's how romans would have done it, but our current latin spelling convention prefers to use ⟨u⟩ for that

Anyway the pronunciation B /b/; C /k/ - in all positions despite what the ecclesiastical (church) pronunciation or most national pronunciations do D /d/; F /f/; G /g/ - as with C, no matter the position it is pronounced as a hard g H /h/; I/J /j/ - this pronunciation occurs when the letter is surrounded by vowels, or at the beginning of the word while being followed by another vowel (e.g. in IVVENIS - nowadays written as iuvenis or juvenis). I'll make a post about the validity of using J in latin spelling some other day! K /k/ - I'll make a post discussing C K and Q another day, as all three make the same sounds, and it may seem like a weird case of redundancy, especially since K, as I said before, didn't see much use L /l/; M /m/ - today it is agreed upon that the classical pronunciation also featured nasalisation (like the thing that happens in French) of vowels in certain environments, usually triggered by M and N - the ending -um was especially guilty of this - but that's another topic for another day! N /n/; P /p/; Q /k/; R /r/; S /s/; T /t/; V /w/ - similar situation to I/J, where it could be used both as a vowel and as a consonant. Again, IVVENIS/iuvenis is an amazing example here X /ks/ Z /z/ - this letter never appears in native latin words, and the sound isn't native to latin either, it was re-borrowed into latin upon the roman conquest of greece (despite having been part of the alphabet before dropping it lmao - anyway that's the reason Z is at the end of the alphabet now), and it was most likely pronounced /ts/ (like in modern italian). In poetry it counted as two consonants, possibly because in ancient greek it was pronounced either /zd/ or /dz/ (about which I will talk in yet another post)

Ok so with single consonants out of the way, let us discuss the digraphs: there are six notable digraphs in latin I believe:

AE, OE, PH, TH, CH, RH

let's start with ae and oe - those two are usually pronounced identically to E in most traditional and the ecclesiastical pronunciation. Romans however pronounced it more as a diphtong - for example Caesar (Cesar the name) - in German the word became Kaiser, which reflects the antique pronunciation, as e in the diphtong would often sound very close to i.

Ph, Th, and Ch are all roman attempts to transcribe the letters φ (phi) θ (theta) and χ (chi), and similarly to those letters, they are pronounced as apsirated plosives (p in party, t in tonne, c in cake - sorry if I got these wrong, I pronounce them with aspirated plosives and no one seems to find it weird) rather than f english th and english ch or something like that

and now rh - seemingly the most useless digraph in all of latin - this one is another spelling adaptation made to accurately transcribe greek loanwords, and the reason behind is the fact that the greek rhotic - ρ - could actually become unvoiced in two situations: - at the beginning of the word (e.g. of such loanwords in latin rho, rhombus, Rhodus/Rhodos) - when geminated (doubled) in which case the second r would become unvoiced (e.g. diarrhoea, Pyrrhus)

So there it is! I think that's all for the Latin alphabet for now, in future posts I will be explaining some history or fun facts regarding the latin alphabet (such as the C-K-Q redundancy), describe the greek alphabet, and of course start doing some grammar and vocab on here!

#latin #latin alphabet #linguistics #Iacomus docet #alphabet revisited #langblr #history #language learning

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jungkookie1998 · 3 years

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Smeraldo (Jin X Reader) PT. 1

🌼 Summary: You decide to start a new life in the town you grew up then, but everything has changed. There are many new places in your old town, including a flower shop with a peculiar name.

🌼 Genre: romance, fluff, strangers to lovers

🌼 Warnings: None, unless you can’t handle Mr. WWH

🌼 Words: 2.12K

🌼 A/N: This is my first Jin FF and second FF ever over all. I hope you all enjoy, and thanks for reading!

Warmth. That’s what you felt as you squint your eyes and look through your fingers towards the bright and protruding sun. The warmth brought you slight comfort as you drag your overfilled suitcase along, walking through the path towards the house you will be staying at from now on. It had once been your childhood home: filled with happiness, sadness, and endless memories. Your grandmother had raised you, as your parents were not in the picture from as far as you can remember. You become painfully aware of how quiet and dark the house feels now as you think about your grandmother that had recently passed away. It had been years since you had left this town, and everything that you remember has now changed. The town had grown exponentially, adding many new stores, restaurants, and even activities that now suited the younger generation that you had not gotten to experience before. After taking time to yourself to figure out what you wanted to do with your life, you decided after your grandmother's passing to come back and make a life for yourself here. Your grandmother left this cottage in her will, and you can’t be more than happy to start your life in the most precious place you remember.

You decided the first step to your new life here would be to fix up the cottage, making it a dream home just like your grandmother once had. You decide to set out tomorrow to buy the equipment needed to upgrade the house. The house wasn’t too run down, but it was quite old and therefore had older appliances, pipes, and hardware that would need fixing to adhere to modern times. You look around at the dusty tarps covering the furniture and let out a breath. “Okay, time to get to work.” You stretch out a bit before you start to take everything down, carefully as to try not to break or drop anything. You take time to clean everything down, and continue this throughout every single room. The house wasn’t too big, just 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms with a decent sized living and kitchen area. It was quite cozy and would suit a small family well, not that you were thinking about that quite yet. After a few hours of cleaning, and putting all the useless items away, you had finally finished and decided you were exhausted. You lay on the freshly clean sheets and take everything in. “First night of my new life. I hope it all goes well from here on out.” You smile to yourself softly, as you slowly drift to sleep.

The next day, you’re out shopping for supplies and decide to also check out the town and see all the new places that were not around when you had lived here. You quite enjoy the bustling of the new town. Laughter fills the air as the children run down the sidewalks; You hear the music from the mini amusement park, and smell the sweetness of the cotton candy. Families are sat down outside of the restaurants, as the weather is quite comfortable here. Although the joy of the world around you is quite contagious, a little part of you also feels a little lonely. You decide to shrug it off, and notice a flower shop a little bit away from everything else. “Smeraldo” you read aloud. You wonder what kind of name that is and why the shop is named that, but don’t dwell on it as you think to yourself that you want to also work on a flower garden for your house and should look inside. As you walk inside, a plethora of different flower scents hit your nose. You’re glad you don’t have allergies, otherwise you might be sneezing like crazy about now.

You can’t help but notice how clean and organized everything is, almost a little too much. You notice you are the only one in the shop, and that you don’t see an owner or worker. You decide to wait a bit before searching for them, as you originally came to browse. You don’t remember ever seeing so many flowers in one place, it was almost impressive. You feel a bit overwhelmed as you don’t know flowers too well, you just really enjoy how they look. As you look closer at a specific flower that catches your eye, you are suddenly surprised by an unfamiliar presence that made their way behind you. You look towards this person, not expecting to see the person that graced your eyes. It was a man, late 20’s with strikingly good looks that almost shake you to your core. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you. I noticed you were looking and wanted to check on you and see if you needed help.” You regain your composure, feeling slightly embarrassed. “Oh, don’t worry about it. I was just browsing.” He gives you a sincere smile, as he nods in understanding. His lips were so perfectly shaped, it baffled you how someone could look so perfect. “Well… let me know if I can help you out in any way, miss.” He goes to turn, but before he could you spoke out. “Um, actually I was looking for some flowers to plant outside of my cottage, but I don’t know flowers too well. I just like how beautiful they are.” You flushed a little, feeling shy suddenly. He tilts his head and offers a reassuring smile. “Yes, of course. They’re in the back. Follow me.” You follow him towards the back, and come upon one of the best flower collections you have ever seen. He takes a moment to look at all the options, before turning to you and asking, “What are you looking for? Is there anything in particular you want as far as color or size?” You ponder for a second, really thinking about what you want. “Honestly, I don’t know. I really just came with the idea of finding something I just thought was pretty…” You crouch down and assess some nearby flowers, taking the time to sniff each one. The man doesn’t say anything for what seems like a while. “What made you want to plant flowers suddenly, if you don’t mind me asking?” He turns to you, curiosity plaguing his face. You smile softly to yourself, while lightly caressing the flower in front of you. “I just moved here after being away for a long time. My grandma had passed away, so I decided to come and fix up the old cottage and I thought adding flowers would be a nice change.” The man takes in what you say, and suddenly reaches to grab an assortment of different flowers. “Say… do you know that flowers have a meaning behind them?” You tilt your head and hum. “Well, I do know that of course but I couldn’t tell you what the meanings are at all.” The man places the flowers in front of you, and begins pointing at a collection of pink and white bulbous flowers. “Protea. This flower’s meaning is change, transformation, and courage.” He points at another flower, a stem of tiny white flowers. “Lily of the valley. While there are many meanings, one meaning is the return of happiness.” He points at the final flower, one that you even recognize even with the different colors. “Iris. The meaning of this one is hope.” You were stunned for a moment, not expecting him to have put so much thought into something that seemed so small to you. You could feel yourself getting a little emotional. “O-Oh thank you. That’s perfectly suited towards my feelings.” you stuttered slightly. For a moment, neither of you speak or move and the atmosphere starts to make you feel stuffy. You decided to break the silence. “So… I’m new around here and don’t know anyone yet, and I have a feeling that I might be coming here often. May I know your name? My name is Y/N.” He looks around frantically for a second, before searching the counter and picking up a small object. “Sorry! I didn’t realize my name tag was off! My name is Jin.” He pins his name back on before laughing off his mistake. “Anyways, nice to meet you Y/N.” You smile at him again before looking down at the flowers again. You’re not the best at talking to people, but you try. “If you don’t mind me asking... I was curious about your shop’s name. What is the meaning behind it?” You nonchalantly say as you start gathering up the flowers that he brought to you, and putting them on the counter. “Smeraldo?” he hesitates for a second and bites his lip before continuing on. “Smeraldo is a flower that does not exist. It is the flower of a legend you could say. Smeraldo means “emerald” in Italian, although the true meaning of the flower is different. The flower’s language is ‘non potevo dire la verità’ which translates to ‘the truth that couldn’t be told.’ The story is about a man who lived in a castle alone, who had come to hate people. He grew flowers in his garden, and one day a little girl had stolen some. He grew angry with the girl and decided to watch the garden to catch her in the act. He later learned that she was in fact poor, and was trying to sell the flowers for a living. He wanted to help the little girl, so he decided to create a new flower no one had ever seen before so she could fetch a higher price. However, after creating this flower, he did not see the girl again. She had passed away. The flower's meaning comes from the feelings of the man who had wondered if maybe he should have shown himself to her, and shown the truth of his existence.” You listened to his story quietly, and watched his expression. You couldn’t help but wonder if maybe the story related to him in a way, as you saw a flicker of sadness take over his face. It only lasted a brief moment, as he was smiling again, perhaps to hide his feelings. “I really liked the story so I decided to name it after the flower from that story.” he finishes explaining quickly, now trying to help assist you in getting the plants ready for you to take. “Well Jin, I really like the meaning behind it and although it is quite sad, the meaning is very deep. I think it's wonderful how flowers have a language of their own. Thank you for teaching me that today.” Jin pauses a moment, before clearing his throat and nodding his head slightly. You could swear you saw a blush plaster over his cheeks. “You’re welcome. I’d be happy to teach you anytime. Also, If you’d be interested… I’d be more than happy to help you plant all these flowers and bring you more tomorrow as well. This is a lot of work for one person after all.” He shrugs it off, acting like it's not a big deal. You bite your lip, and play with your fingers. “Are you sure? I don’t want to interrupt your work or anything.” He smiles brightly again at you, seemingly in a better mood. “Of course. I love flowers after all, and I’d love to see them in your garden fulfilling their new purpose.” You could feel the passion in his voice, and in the energy surrounding him. “Alright, thank you Jin. I’ll pay for it all now and I’ll see you tomorrow?” you said hopefully. Jin nods and goes to ring you up. “Of course. I’ll come by sometime in the afternoon.” You grab your receipt and bow down slightly to him before saying your goodbye, and get out of there quickly, tightly holding your receipt to your chest. You didn’t know how such a short interaction with him could be making you feel so excited but… you couldn’t wait for tomorrow.

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