Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2023 February 16

= February 16 =

Latin names of æ and œ
Given that æ and œ were so widely used in early modern printed Latin, were there conventional names for them? Something like "a et e ligatæ", or "a cum e", or "a, e in a" like in French? Lazar Taxon (talk) 14:45, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Æ is conventionally named "ash" in English (per the article Æ), while Œ is conventionally named "ethel", per the article Œ.  -- Jayron 32 17:11, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Have tried a range of English-Latin and French-Latin dictionaries, but none had an entry for æ or ash/æsh or e-dans-l'a that would permit finding out the word in Latin. Posting this failure here in case other volunteers have access to more detailed dictionaries and might have better luck. 70.67.193.176 (talk) 22:55, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

Jayron32 -- Those names come from Anglo-Saxon runes, and are valid for the ligature letters as used in Old English, but there's no reason why they would be relevant for Latin outside of England. In Old English, the ligatures really were separate letters of the alphabet, but in Latin they were basically just abbreviations for the letter sequences "ae" and "oe", with a tendency to be replaced by "e" in medieval Latin, so there was less need for distinct names for the ligatures than in Old English... AnonMoos (talk) 00:31, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
 * That's because I'm a bad person. Sorry I can't help myself sometimes.  I will try to be better.  I apologize to all involved for giving incorrect information. -- Jayron 32 13:13, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Apparently I can't even apologize right. Sorry again for doing so.  -- Jayron 32 17:35, 17 February 2023 (UTC)


 * Does the article on the Latin Wikipedia answer the question? DuncanHill (talk) 14:14, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Not at all; it does not say what the ligatures were called, as far as I can tell. --jpgordon&#x1d122;&#x1d106;&#x1D110;&#x1d107; 15:36, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
 * The article la:E caudata states that the ę means the same as the "ligatura æ&thinsp;", which we can translate as "the ligature æ". It is a noun phrase that serves as a name in the sense of a term used for identification, but not a simple proper or common noun. --Lambiam 12:00, 20 February 2023 (UTC)
 * How would 'æ' and 'œ' be pronounced in these cases, when discussing the ligature glyph? [ae̯] and [oe̯]? [a'ɛ] and [ɔ'ɛ]? 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 13:13, 20 February 2023 (UTC)
 * That is how Google translate pronounces it, but this is a reconstruction of the Classical pronunciation. Unfortunately, the people who produced early modern printed Latin failed to leave us sound recordings of their discussions of typographical topics, so we cannot be sure, but it seems unlikely they would have used the Classical pronunciation. An unambiguous possible diction is to use "ligatura litterarum a et e&thinsp;". Even shorter: "a et e ligatae". --Lambiam 11:30, 21 February 2023 (UTC)