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2023-03-18 21:43 dustin  
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^ knows exactly where his abc journey leads him next: back to the big latin fuvwy-family! he's looking forward to see the four little birds f, u, v and w again, and he's especially excited to finally meet their daddy "y", who promised him to reveal the very last secrets of the family!   
  
^: hello "y"!   
  
y: hello rockford! or shall i call you "rocky" as my four children always do? ;)  
  
^: well, if you like it, yes :d ehm, speaking of your children... why are they trapped in cages?  
  
u, v and w: hi rocky! we trapped ourselves because we needed a new idea how to give you a new challenge! after all, it's already the third time for you to be here! :d  
  
f: and i'm trapped alone in a single cage. phhh. just because the others are triiplets!  
  
u, v and w: ah, our brother has a bad mood again!  lol  
  
^: ehm... so, "y", there's one thing about your family that i don't understand yet.  
  
y: so then, what is it?  
  
^: well, i already know a lot about you. your phoenician root is their sixth letter "waw" which looks like a rounded version of you. this letter was split in two by the ancient greek: their sixth letter "digamma" which went on to become latin "f", and their (formerly) last letter "ypsilon", which was turned into "v" by the romans. later in history, "u" and "w" were created from the "v".  
  
y: a very good summary, yes.  
  
^: now, here's what i don't understand yet. if greek "digamma" became "f" and if greek "ypsilon" became "v", "u" and "w", then how did you enter the latin alphabet? what was your way in?  
  
y: a very good question! in fact, i was not in the latin alphabet at the beginning!  
  
^: ah, yes i already know from my previous cave that "x" was once the final latin letter!  
  
y: that's right. that was until the romans conquered greece and added it to their empire.  
  
^: ah! But they didn't add a new letter just for celebration, did they? :d  
  
y: well, the romans had their difficulties to pronounce some greek names and words. they could pronounce most of the greek letters, but not all of them.  
  
^: wait... are you saying that they could not pronounce the greek letters "ypsilon" and "zeta"?  
  
y: exactly! very good!  
  
^: but if i remember correctly, your greek equivalent "ypsilon" was spoken [u] as in "you". the romans did have that sound in their language, didn't they?  
  
y: well, yes, they did. but by that time, there had already been phonetic changes in greek language. "ypsilon" was no longer spoken [u]. it made a slightly different sound.  
  
^: which one?  
  
y: it's not an english sound. it's somewhere between [u] and [i]. in languages where this sound exists, it's often written with an "u" with two extra dots.  
  
(here's the wikipedia article with audio sample of that greek "ypsilon" sound, which is also written [y] in the phonetic alphabet:)  
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close_front_rounded_vowel" target="external">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close_front_rounded_vowel</a>  
  
^: so does this mean that the romans adopted you into their alphabet only to write a few greek names and words?  
  
y: exactly! i was introduced into the roman alphabet as a "special greek character". together with "z", i was added at the end of the roman alphabet!  
  
wait... now that i think of it... i learned some french at school and don't they call you "i grec", meaning "greek i"?  
  
y: yes, exactly! that's the name the romans gave me back then. they found that my [y] sound (see the link above) sounded much like [i], so they just called me "the greek i"! some languages, like french and also spanish, still have the same name for me today! other languages call me "ypsilon", which comes directly from my greek name!  
  
^: that's funny! so you were actually adopted twice into the latin alphabet, weren't you? first when the romans adopted the old italic alphabet, when your "y" shape was changed into a "v" shape, and second when the romans conquered greece, this time without changing your shape!  
  
y: yeah, that's very funny indeed! :d  
  
^: thank you! now i think i've understood everything about you and your big family!  
  
y: well, you don't know about my english cousin yet.  
  
^: cousin? what? who?  
  
y: do you know what "yellow" means in  other languages? i mean, not in e v e r y other language. i mean languages which have a similar word for this color!  
  
^: hmmm... wait a moment. (takes his phone out and starts googling) OK, so "yellow" means "geel" in dutch, "gelb" in german, "giallo" in italian, "galben" in romanian, "gul" in several scandinavian languages...  
  
y: all these words sound quite similar, don't they?  
  
^: yes, but they all start with "g" instead of "y". wait... is that your english cousin? the "g"?  
  
y: yes! Although our relationship is not too close. In Old English, "yellow" meant "geolu", which then became "yelwe" in Middle English. This switch from "y" to "g" can only be found in a few English words, but still, you could argue that "g" is also kind of related to me, at least for English speakers :d  
  
after solving the cave and freeing the four siblings out of their cages, ^ still sits and chats with the fuvwy family, finding out that "u"'s best friend, the q-monkey, is lately fond of a chinese method to vitalize body and spirit: qigong! :d  
  
cave difficulty: 4/10

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2023-03-19 19:04 dustin  
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edit: i forgot to write that this story makes "y" the fourth-youngest letter of the alphabet, completing our list of the five youngest letters:  
  
1. "j" (19th century a.d.)  
2. "U" (18th century a.d.)  
3. "w" (16th century a.d.)  
4. "y" (1st century b.c.)  
5. "g" (5th century b.c.)  
  
all the other 21 latin letters were already there in the earliest (archaic) latin alphabet, which went as follows:  
  
a b c d e f z h i k l m n o p q r s t v x  
  
but wait! isn't something wrong here? isn't one letter at the completely wrong position...?  
  
well, if you were careful in this series so far, you already know that everything's correct here. otherwise, make sure not to miss the next cave for the whole story! :d