Institutio Oratoria

Quintilian

Quintilian. Institutio Oratoria, Volume 1-4. Butler, Harold Edgeworth, translator. Cambridge, Mass; London: Harvard University Press, William Heinemann Ltd., 1920-1922.

The result of such borrowing is, for some reason or other, the immediate accession to our language of a certain liveliness and charm. Take, for example, words such as sephyri and zophori: [*](Friezes.) if they were spelt according to the Latin alphabet, they would produce a heavy and barbarous sound. For we replace these letters by others of a harsh and unpleasant character, [*]( F and U; zefuri and zofori. ) from which Greece is happily immune.

For the sixth letter in our alphabet is represented by a sound which can scarcely be

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called human or even articulate, being produced by forcing the air through the interstices of the teeth. Such a sound, even when followed by a vowel, is harsh enough and, as often as it clashes ( frangit ) with a consonant, [*](cp. I. iv. 11. ) as it does in this very word frangit, becomes harsher still. Then there is the Aeolic digamma whose sound occurs in words such as our servus and cervus; for even though we have rejected the actual form of the letter, we cannot get rid of that which it represents. [*](A sound approximating to our W.)

Similarly the letter Q, which is superfluous and useless save for the purpose of attaching to itself the vowels by which it is followed, results in the formation of harsh syllables, as, for example, when we write equos and aequum, more especially since these two vowels together produce a sound for which Greek has no equivalent and which cannot therefore be expressed in Greek letters. [*]( The sound of Q in itself does not differ from C. It would therefore be useless, save as an indication that U and another vowel are to follow. The U in this combination following Q was, as Donatus later pointed out, neither a vowel nor a consonant, i.e. it was something between U and V. )