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From: gmb@natcorp.ox.ac.uk (Glynis Baguley)
Subject: Re: Giulio Cesare
Message-ID: <1995Mar7.110826.6174@onionsnatcorp.ox.ac.uk>
Originator: gmb@onions.natcorp
Organization: British National Corpus, Oxford University, GB
References: <3ij5pd$jg8@newshost.lanl.gov> <3im86n$q9r@ixnews1.ix.netcom.com>
Date: Tue, 7 Mar 1995 11:08:26 GMT
Lines: 31

In article <3im86n$q9r@ixnews1.ix.netcom.com> Marek1@ix.netcom.com (Marek Konski) writes:
> In <3ij5pd$jg8@newshost.lanl.gov> ttw@beta.lanl.gov (Tony Warnock) 
> writes: 
> 
> >
> > This isn't about Esperanto and the EU but here goes:

Thank you for that!

> > Does anyone know why Italian uses "Giulio Cesare" (roughly)
> > for Julius Caesar rather than having the sounds
> > "y" and "k" as initial letters? I looks like the sounds
> > changed and the spelling followed.

Yes. Like any language, Italian has changed in many ways over the
centuries, and many of its sounds are not the same as in Latin. I
don't know when these particular changes took place, whether still in
the Latin period or later.

It would be interesting to know whether Italian has ever undergone a
spelling reform. Did its rational spelling come about naturally,
because the language has been fairly stable (compared with English)
since the days when spelling was more closely related to sound, or did
someone step in and establish rules at some stage?


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{      Glynis.Baguley@oucs.ox.ac.uk     }
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