Why Caesar was the master of all he surweyed

JULIUS Caesar uttered his famous phrase ‘I came, I saw, I conquered’ after achieving a swift victory in battle.

Generations of Latin scholars have been taught that the phrase ‘Veni, vidi, vici’ was actually pronounced ‘Weni, widi, wici’. But now speech experts have explained why.

Scientists say humans have only been able to pronounce the letters ‘v’ and ‘f’ relatively recently. These sounds are now possible because people eat softer diets and use teeth less than our ancestors.

Hunter-gatherers had to chew through badly-cooked meat and bones. They had worn-down teeth which sat differently in their mouths.

Adults in the last 2,000 years have a much softer diet. It has led to an overbite which makes it easier to make ‘v’ and ‘f’ sounds by touching the lower lips to the top teeth. The change is believed to happened in Europe after Roman Empire ruler Caesar died in 44BC.

Dr Steven Moran, a speech expert at the University of Zurich, said the change ‘correlated with the rise of food processing technology such as industrial milling’. He added: ‘The influence of biological conditions on the development of sounds has so far been underestimated.’

A study by the university states that people who have only recently adopted softer food in diets, as in Greenland, have fewer ‘v’ and ‘f’ sounds. The authors say the findings ‘challenge the assumption that, when it comes to language, the past sounds just like the present’.