“Anglicized” is probably not the best way to think about it. The Latin letter “v” was pronounced “w” through the classical period, but had shifted to β or v (fricative) by the third century, long before English existed. V was pronounced v (voiced labiodental fricative) for many centuries. And though we do tend to give the classical period a lot of prestige, it was just one phase for Latin.
Funny part is, the same shift happened in a lot of languages. I think some more obvious examples are modern German and Polish, where letter W corresponds to the V sound. Although I believe that the shift happened in German and then Polish borrowed the letter with the new pronunciation.
“Anglicized” is probably not the best way to think about it. The Latin letter “v” was pronounced “w” through the classical period, but had shifted to β or v (fricative) by the third century, long before English existed. V was pronounced v (voiced labiodental fricative) for many centuries. And though we do tend to give the classical period a lot of prestige, it was just one phase for Latin.
Funny part is, the same shift happened in a lot of languages. I think some more obvious examples are modern German and Polish, where letter W corresponds to the V sound. Although I believe that the shift happened in German and then Polish borrowed the letter with the new pronunciation.
in swedish i think we’ve just gone from “fv” to “v”, somehow
very common example since it’s in old surnames: hufvud > huvud