Talk:tabvla

I hope Muke comments because he is our Latin expert but I believe the current title for this article is totally wrong. When Latin was living there was no letter "u" at all and no minuscules so the spelling was TABULA. In the middle ages when Latin was dead, v and u were somewhat interchangeable but the general idea of "correct" spelling for Latin in dual-case is to use "u" for the vowel and "v" for the consonant. As such "tabvla" may exist but your Latin teacher would probably mark you wrong if you spelled it this way. &mdash; Hippietrail 16:15, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

Over on the Latin Wiktionary they do not have this word yet. However, if you scan through the category "Lingua Latina" you will see no words in all UPPERCASE but plenty with a letter "u" e.g. aurum. SemperBlotto 16:24, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

Yes that would be the mediaeval orthography where both "u"s indicate vowels. This page's title currently uses neither the Roman orthography nor the mediaeval orthography if my hunch is right. &mdash; Hippietrail 16:29, 21 July 2005 (UTC)


 * Actually, standards of v vs. u have changed several times. It is true the original spelling was TABVLA.  Since then, standards have varied; a couple of rules I have seen in operation are: v at the beginning of a word, with u elsewhere (the word vt I have seen very often); V as the uppercase form of both v and u (Among others I have SVPERIORVM and Vmbriaticem to hand in a book here); and I'm not entirely sure whether I might have seen a rule regarding use of one in italics, but lacking examples I won't say.
 * The modern rule, adopted on Latin wikimedia projects for Latin words is to use v where, in church Latin pronunciation, /v/ is pronounced, and u in all other contexts, whether /u/ (as 'ut') or /w/ (as 'suavis') or otherwise, unless being deliberately decorative.
 * As for whether en: should follow la:'s practice, that's up to you all; I know that en.wikipedia has had similar arguments about following ang's orthographic practices, such as whether to use macrons or acutes for long vowels. en: has to decide whether Latin was the domain of the Romans, or has since become a public language subject to the later mutilations of anyone who cares to write in it.  Clearly anyone who would write on la: would believe the latter. Barring those at la.wikt and la.wikipedia who would respell words according to the standards of lingua Latina viva ('the living Latin language,') the dictionary's job is to report words as they are actually found. —Muke Tever 19:42, 21 July 2005 (UTC)