The Claudian letters were a set of three new letters for the Latin alphabet developed by the Roman emperor Claudius, who reigned the Roman Empire from the year 41 to the year 54. These letters, according to the emperor, were much needed for the language, although they did not outlast his reign.
Antisigma (Ↄ)
Ↄ or
/X (antisigma) to replace BS and PS , much as X stood in for CS and GS . The shape of this letter is disputed, however, since no inscription bearing it has been found. Franz Bücheler identified it with the variant
Roman numerals Ↄ,
[Bücheler, Franz: (Latin), Elberfeld (Germany) 1856] but 20th-century philologists, working from copies of
Priscian's books, believe it to instead resemble two linked Cs (Ↄ+Ϲ), which was a preexisting variant of Greek
sigma, and easily mistaken for X by later writers. Revilo P. Oliver argued that Claudius would have based this letter upon the Arcadian variant of psi
or
.
This letter should not be confused with the "open O" letter. (Ɔ)
As noted, there are no examples of this letter being used at the time currently discovered; however, it is possible to assume where this letter would be utilized. It would probably replace the PS or BS sequence in Latin words, especially those with Greek etymology, such as DYSPEↃIA (dyspepsia), EPILEↃIA (epilepsia), ↃALMVS (psalmus), or VRↃ (urbs).
Digamma inversum (Ⅎ)
Ⅎ, a turned F or
digamma (digamma inversum) to be used instead of the letter V when denoting the consonantal phoneme or .
Thus, it resembles the use of the letter V in modern Latin texts, where the vocalic use of the letter V is represented by its variant U, which has been recognized as a different letter only later.
Examples of Ⅎ: AMPLIAℲIT (ampliavit), ARℲALES (arvales), ARℲALIVM (arvalium), BOℲE (bove), IOℲI (Iovi), TERMINAℲITQVE (terminavitque), VOℲIMVS (vovimus), ℲELINA (Velina), ℲIR (vir), ℲOℲEMVS (vovemus).
Half H (â±µ)
â±µ, a half H, probably had the name in harmony with other vowels. The value of this letter is unclear, but it may have represented the so-called
sonus medius, a short vowel sound, likely , but it could have also been . It was used before
in Latin words such as optumus and optimus. The letter was later used as a variant of in inscriptions for short Greek
upsilon (as in Olympicus). It may have disappeared because the sonus medius itself disappeared from spoken language.
Examples of â±µ: Bâ±µBLIOTHECA (bibliotheca), Câ±µCNVS (cycnus), MAXâ±µMVS (maximus), OPTâ±µME (optime), and once in Gâ±µBERNATOR (gubernator).
Usage
These letters were used to a small extent on public inscriptions dating from Claudius' reign, but their use was abandoned after his death.
[Tacitus, Annals 1110:14] Their forms were probably chosen to ease the transition, as they could be made from templates for existing letters. He may have been inspired by his ancestor Appius Claudius the
Roman censor, who made earlier changes to the Latin alphabet.
Claudius did indeed introduce his letters during his own term as censor (47–48), using arguments preserved in the historian
Tacitus' account of his reign, although the original proclamation is no longer extant.
Suetonius said of Claudius' letters:
Assuming that the letters were added at the end of the alphabet, just like Y and Z were, and that the order of these 3 letters does not matter, the Latin alphabet with these letters would look like this:
| + Classical Latin alphabet with the additional Claudian letters |
|
|
Support for the letters was added in version 5.0.0 of Unicode.
The letters are encoded as follows:
See also
-
Chinese characters of Empress Wu
