The vowels i and u serve as consonants when pronounced rapidly before a vowel so as to stand in the same syllable.1 Consonant i has the sound of English consonant y; consonant u (v) that of English consonant w.
Consonant i and u (v) are sometimes called Semivowels. 2
J. H. Allen and J. B. Greenough, New Latin Grammar (Boston: Ginn, 1903). Text provided under a CC BY-SA license by Perseus Digital Library, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
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