Re: [tied] Re: Iove/Jupiter

30-12-03 04:55, Daniel J. Milton wrote:

> For starters, switching fonts gets rid of any Iove - Love
> confusion. But anyway, let's spell it 'Jovis' (in the nominative
> case). I and J were a single letter in the Latin alphabet, and only
> split to distinguish the vowel and the consonant a few hundred years
> ago. I'm far from an expert on Roman phonology, but I suspect it
> was always pronounced closer to "Jo-wis" than "Yo-wis".

In Classical times the phonetic value of non-syllabic <i> was still IPA
[j] = English <y>. The "hardening" into an affricate, i.e. [dZ] =
English <j> is a later phenomenon.

> It derives
> (as does Zeus) from the Indo-European root *deiw- "shine, sky, sky-
> god" and was still spelled Diovis in Old Latin. Nothing whatsover
> to do with Hebrew.

Just to complete the info: the original declension was

nom.sg. *dijé:us ~ *dje:us 'daytime, bright sky, the Sky God'
acc.sg. *dijé:m ~ *dje:m (< *djeu-m)
gen.sg. *diwós
...
voc.sg. *djeu

Latin regularised the pattern, creating a new fifth-declension common
noun <die:s> 'day' on the basis of the irregular acc.sg. die:m <
*dije:m, while the name of the Sky God came to be based on the constant
root form *djew- > OLat. diov- > Class.Lat. iov- [jow-], hence <iovem>,
<iovis>, etc. The old nom.sg. was replaced by the fossilised vocative
_phrase_ *djeu p&2ter 'O Father Sky!' > *dju:-pater > iu:piter ~
iuppiter. No connection with YHWH.

Piotr