180 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 



vowel of vcho may continue short in vexl^ vector but this is 

 difficult to determine, because e, of rego, regimen is long in 

 regdlis, reglna, and perhaps in r-cx. In Greek (liXf'^- (ochre) we 

 have length by nature and position, and in o')^?^^ (a crowd) the 

 syllable is lengthened by two continuous consonants. 



Those who pronounce the first syllable of the Greek ulo^: 

 (son) like English hivee, convert u into a consonant, instead of 

 keeping it strictly to its vowel power of French or German ii, 

 and subjecting the c to modification, for as two vowels cannot 

 make a single syllable, one (usually the latter) must become a 

 liquid consonant of the lip or throat series. A German can- 

 not pronounce such an English form as hwee-os, although he 

 can pronounce every letter of the Greek word, which in his 

 alphabet is hiijos. To sap hwee-os instead of this, is like say- 

 ing why for high. 



The initial vowel of Greek and Latin diphthongs does not 

 vary from its ordinary sound, so that if Latin o is German and 

 English 0, the dipthongoe is nearer to English oi in going than 

 to that of loiter ; and Greek sc (with £ of e7id) should not be 

 confounded with ac. Greek oo became the Latin vowel u (in 

 fool) at an early period, but it is properly a diphthong begin- 

 ning with 0, which shows the relation between /5oyc and the 

 Latin genitive bovis where the middle consonant is English 

 w. Compare the double forms sUvd and silica, m'llvus and 

 mlliius. 



As the Latin angular letter v is now rounded when it stands 

 for the vowel u (oo), and as] the letter q (coo) was introduced 

 to show the consonant nature of the next element, qv should 

 be printed instead of qu, the power being that of English kw. 

 Some words in the derived modern languages have lost the 

 liquid sound, leaving such forms as French qui, Italian chi, and 

 Spanish quien^ which have led some to believe that the Eo- 

 mans said ' aca ' for aqva, and ' cando ' for qvando. Even 

 granting that some Komans may have pronounced thus, the 

 liquid must have had an existence in normal Latin, because 



