The Vowel-Consonant Tautonyms: Syllabic Consonants in Etruscan and English

In addition to representing both consonants and vowels, one of the most conspicuous features of our alphabet is the sorting of letter names for the former into two monosyllabic templates: those which start with vowels and end with consonants (e.g., Ef, El, Em, Ar) and those which start with consonants and end with vowels (e.g., Bee, Dee, Kay, Wye, Que). This distinction is unique to all alphabets descendant of the Roman, but is not a Roman innovation. Instead, it appears to be a distinction seeded by the syllabic pronunciation of a range of consonants in ancient Etruscan. Yet syllabic consonants are not unique to Etruscan. Syllabic consonants play a prominent role in the pronunciation and spelling of English words including the one-vowel spelling, but two-syllable pronunciation of words like prism and Cohn, the homophonous pronunciation of word pairs like Abel-able and even the reversed ordering of -er in American center relative to the -re in British spelled centre. This chapter explores the phono-historical origins of this ancient bifurcation across our alphabetic nomenclature, highlighting the role syllabic consonants played in the phonology of ancient Etruscan and continue to play in the pronunciation and spelling of English today.