# eius
## Latin
### Alternative forms

* ejus, eiius, eijus, ejjus

### Pronunciation

* (Classical Latin) IPA: /ˈei̯.i̯us/, [ˈɛi̯ːʊs̠]
* (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA: /ˈe.jus/, [ˈɛːjus]
* The first syllable scans as heavy in Classical Latin verse. In accordance with this, some dictionaries and other linguistic resources mark the "E" in the first syllable with a length marker (ēius/ējus): however, there is no consensus that the vowel itself was long. Historically, some scholars have thought that the first syllable contained a long vowel /eː/ derived by monophthongization of an earlier diphthong [ei̯]. But the geminate consonant /jj/, which was regularly written with single "i" in Latin, would have rendered the preceding syllable heavy even if the vowel itself was short /e/. Compare peior and ieiūnus, and see the discussion of intervocalic -i- in Allen 1978:38-40. An alternative interpretation treats the first syllable as containing a diphthong /ei̯/; this is essentially equivalent to /ej/, as there is no contrast in Latin between vowel-consonant sequences ending in /j/ and diphthongs ending in i̯. (Cser 2016:31-37 discusses the question of the best phonemic analysis of so-called 'diphthongs' in Latin and concludes that it is preferable to analyze them all as vowel-consonant sequences such as /ej/.)
* An iambic pronunciation, /e.jus/ (with a light first syllable) may occur in Plautus.

### Pronoun

eius
* genitive singular of is, ea, and id: his, of him, her, of her, its, of it; of this/of that
** 405 CE, Jerome, Vulgate Daniel.1.2:Et tradidit Dominus in manu eius Ioachim regem Iudae.And the Lord gave Jehoiakim king of Judah into his hand.

#### Descendants

* Sardinian: eju

#### See also

* suus, sua, suum

### References

* ↑ Raphael Kühner, Friedrich Holzweissig, Carl Stegmann (1912) Ausführliche Grammatik der lateinischen Sprache, 2 edition, Hanover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, page 591: “Die Länge des Stammvokals ē im Gen. Sing. — stets ēius — erklärt sich aus der Bildung aus ei̯-i̯o-s; ebenso die fast stets beibehaltene Länge e im Dat. S. aus der Bildung aus ei̯-i-ei. s. § 131 d.”
* ↑ András Cser (2016) Aspects of the Phonology and Morphology of Classical Latin (PhD thesis), Budapest, page 13: “Gemination is marked in spelling for all consonants except [j], which is rendered invariably with a single ⟨i⟩ or sometimes ⟨j⟩ in modern editorial practice, as in ⟨eius/ejus⟩ [ejjus] ‘his/her’.”
* ↑ Nishimura, Kanehiro (2011) “Notes on Glide Treatment in Latin Orthography and Phonology: -iciō, servus, aiō”, in Historische Sprachforschung / Historical Linguistics, volume 124, page 193:the provision of a macron (i.e., māior, as if the vowel were long) in order to display the syllable weight — the way common in a number of grammar books and dictionaries — is utterly misleading in that it disguises the phonological reality. The same is true of another comparative adjective peior 'worse' (< *ped-i̯os-, via *-di̯- > -i̯i̯-), the verb aiō 'say' (< *ag-i̯ō; see §3), and pronouns like eius (< *esi̯o-s, cf. Ved. asyá).
* ↑ W. Sidney Allen (1978) Vox Latina, 2nd edition, pages 38-39: “With a few exceptions noted below, wherever a single, intervocalic i-consonant is written, it stands for a double consonant, i.e. [yy] [...] the consonant must be double in order to account for the fact that the preceding syllable is always metrically heavy; for the actual vowel is short”
* ↑ Pedro Manuel Suárez-Martínez (2017) “Le vocatif en -ī de la deuxième déclinaison latine”, in Pallas‎, volume 103: “Comme Moralejo le montre, ces graphies avec un double -ii- reflèteraient la prononciation [ei-yus], due à la distribution syllabique des -i (-ii-) qui existaient, de manière sous-jacente, dans le -ī à l’origine de la forme eius.”

### Further reading

* “eius”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
* eius in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.
* Carl Meißner, Henry William Auden (1894) Latin Phrase-Book‎, London: Macmillan and Co. nothing will ever make me forgetful of him: memoriam eius nulla umquam delebit (obscurabit) oblivio (Fam. 2. 1) nothing will ever make me forgetful of him: semper memoria eius in (omnium) mentibus haerebit no word escaped him: nullum verbum ex ore eius excidit (or simply ei) he is in a suspicious mood: suspicio insidet in animo ejus