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[29]
For the sixth letter in our alphabet
is represented by a sound which can scarcely be
[p. 467]
called human or even articulate, being produced by
forcing the air through the interstices of the teeth.
Such a sound, even when followed by a vowel, is
harsh enough and, as often as it clashes (frangit）
with a consonant,1 as it does in this very word
frangit, becomes harsher still. Then there is the
Aeolic digamma whose sound occurs in words such
as our servus and cervus; for even though we have
rejected the actual form of the letter, we cannot
get rid of that which it represents.2
Quintilian. With An English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1922.
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