Reading Response 1
I found this reading very informative. I feel like we as people often over look the mundane and simply choose not to question its origin or reasoning. Though, I know this is not true for everyone, I would say it’s a an accurate assumption for the majority. I would never have though that the letter J had such a historical and significant purpose. Languages and alphabets don’t interest me very much but learning about the origin of the letter J might have changed that for me. The letter J was the last letter to join the Roman alphabet along with V and W. I originally thought they were lined up in chronological order of creation but it’s much more purposeful than that. The letter J came from the letter “I” and before the creation of the letter J all words that now start with J were written with an “I” and all of those J words were pronounced with a U sound. For example, Junior would be pronounced YOUnior, and names like Julius Caesar would be YOUlius Ceaser. It’s such an interesting thought to think about how language morphs and changes over time, and it’s never a blunt change, it’s always a slow changing process. I couldn’t imagine our current alphabet or language looking any other way but a thousand years from now some researchers might look at our current language and think how silly or incomplete it looks. My other Initial was G and that letter came from the letter C, which honestly makes sense, they are very similar looking already and have a similar form in the mouth when sounding the letter, Guh and Cuh.