In Classical times, no distinction was made in writing between /u/
and /w/
, or between /i/
and /j/
. This distinction seems to have been phonemic, because we see names like Jūlius vs Iūlus.
But are there any true minimal pairs here, where two words with different meanings are distinguished only by a vowel vs a semivowel? If not, what's the closest we can get? (Jūlius/Iūlus is pretty close for i/j, but I don't have a similarly good example for u/v.)