Talk:aevom
Latin Pronunciation
[edit]How was this Latin word pronunced? Was it /ˈae̯.wom/ ({{la-IPA|aevom}}) or /ˈae̯.wum/ ({{la-IPA|aevum}})?
old Latin until the modern era did not differ between a consonant v and a vocal u. Maybe the spelling AEVOM at some older time was retained with VO = /wu/ to distingish it from an AEVVM with VV for /uː/ or simply because people at some older time thought VV would look strange.
At some ancient time long vowel sounds were sometimes marked by two vowel letters like AA for ā or VV for ū, so there would be a reason to avoid a spelling AEVVM. Appearance could be an argument too, as can be seen in German. German grammarians did argue against logical spellings like Bekken (similar to kommen, Rennen and instead of Becken) based on the appearance as: "Yet, one then doesn't write kk, because it gives a ridiculous appearance" (Gottsched: "Allein, man schreibt alsdann nicht kk, [...] welches ein lächerliches Ansehen giebt"). -80.133.98.38 02:51, 2 June 2017 (UTC)