Latin alphabets, fonts, punctuation, pronunciation etc

[Cinefactus]

I thought that it might be useful to have a sticky collating questions regarding alphabets, punctuation & pronunciation and the like. I have put it in the English to Latin translation forum to start with, as these questions are often asked here, but we can move it if it is more appropriate elsewhere.
Please feel free to contribute your expertise to this thread

[Cinefactus]

The Romans originally used 22 letters. Y and z did not form part of the native Latin alphabet, and were only added towards the end of the Classical period.

The letter 'i' was used for both the vowel 'i' sound, and also for the sound we write as 'j'. In mediaeval documents, often j is used as the last letter in a series of Roman numerals, eg iiij for 4.

U was used both as a vowel and to represent 'v', which the Romans pronounced as a 'w'. In inscriptions you will see 'V' used instead of a 'U'. In mediaeval documents, often the 'v' is used if it is the first letter, and 'u' is used in the middle of the word, for example ' vuidus'.

Some modern dictionaries or textbooks may distinguish 'i' and 'j', and 'u' and 'v', depending on whether they are vowels or consonants. It would be incorrect to use 'j' for a vowel, but otherwise it is correct to use these letters interchangeably, as long as the system is consistent.
For example you may see the same word:
uvidus in a modern dictionary
vuidus in a mediaeval document
uuidus in a classical or mediaeval document
VVIDVS in an inscription

or jam in a textbook, but iam in an older document (or more modern textbook).
All of these are correct.

People did not however write a 'u' for the first letter, and 'v' for subsequent letters, so uvidvs would look strange.

This thread discusses the pronunciation of the letters themselves.
Vox Latina by W. Sidney Allen covers the names of the letters used in the Latin alphabet.

[Cinefactus]

The two common ways used now to pronounce Latin are Classical and Ecclesiastical. Classical is how we believed that the Romans themselves pronounced the words. Ecclesiastical is how the modern church pronounces them. You should remember that the pronunciation and spelling changed during the Classical period itself.

During the middle ages, the pronunciation of Latin was probably influenced by the origin of the speaker. There is in fact an old joke, "Beati Hispani quibus bibere vivere est", which makes reference to this. (Blessed are the Spaniards, for whom to drink is to live) This refers to the Spaniards at the time pronouncing 'b' as 'v'.

There is a good article here, and also a wikipedia article on Latin pronunciation. Here is a site where the sounds are available as audio files.

Vox Latina by W. Sidney Allen discusses Classical Latin pronunciation in detail.

[Matthaeus]

As mentioned before by Bitmap, the wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulgar_Latin is also interesting, mentioning the various changes Latin underwent in the medieval centuries, eventually evolving into the Romance languages.

[Cinefactus]

There is no right script in which to write Latin. Different hands were used for writing on wax tablets, informal documents, formal documents, and for inscriptions.
Roman inscriptions were written in letters similar to modern capitals. Often there was a point placed between the words.
You can see examples of Roman Cursive hands. here and here.
In the first few centuries AD a cursive hand called Roman Rustic was used.

During the middle ages miniscule scripts (small letters) were developed. One example of a miniscule script is Carolingian Miniscule.

Initially documents were written either in a miniscule or a majuscule (Capital Letter) script, rather than a mixture of both. Later on, initial capital letters were used for important words like Lord, and God, and larger capitals were used to mark the beginnings of new sections. Our current sentence capitalisation was developed in the high middle ages.

All Caps style was used with some hands for inscriptions, and to mark the beginning of sections in documents. I have never seen 'Gothic' capitals used in this fashion.

A large variety of hands were used in the middle ages. Some examples can be seen here.

[Cinefactus]

The Romans did not use modern punctuation. Often all of the words were ran together with no spacing at all. In inscriptions and in the early empire they sometimes used point between words, like a full-stop (period) placed at mid height rather than at the bottom of the line, such as we currently use.

Punctuation was used in the middle ages, but had different functions to our current punctuation. Our current system of punctuation was standardised after the advent of printing.

You can find an article on the history of punctuation here.

There is a discussion of the use of punctuation in Roman letters here.

[Iohannes Aurum]

There is also the Latin Wikipedia's style guide.