There were a couple of Latin related threads recently and it got me to thinking, “How do you pronounce Latin?”
Without revealing my age I can say that I once said the Mass in Latin, so I have the church-biased pronunciation of Ah-vay Mah-ree-ah and not Ah-way Mah-ree-ah. Personally, I think I’ve always been saying Oy Vey Maria but that’s a different thread.
So what’s the spread on classic Latin speak? I’m currently brushing back up on my Latin so help me out here. I don’t want to sound like a Gaul or some other transalpine heathen at my next cenum.
I’m currently working towards being a lecturer in classics. I’m more of a classical Greek person than a Latin fan, but of course I have experience in both.
I strongly believe that students should be taught the reconstructed pronunciation of classical languages. Knowing how to pronounce Latin as it was by the Romans is essentially to understand Latin’s relationship to Proto-Indo-European (and by extension Greek and Sanskrit), which is where most interesting research in the classics has been at over the last 150 years.
Essentially, the two things that confuse readers are the c pronounced as “k”, and the “v” pronounced as “w”. But beyond that, few students make the important distinction between short vowels and long ones. The “o” in provincia should last for twice as long as the “o” in novus.
Most students pronounce Latin fairly decently. Greek, on the other hand, is not as strictly pronounced in many schools and universities. While some enlightened textbook writers advocate pronouncing thetha and phi as aspirated stops, as it was with the people of Athens 2500 years ago, most students are told to pronounced them with values they acquired hundreds of years afterwards.
Another point is that “i” and “u” can be pronounced as “y” (which would later become “j”) and “u” as “w” (the consonental form of which became “v”). This leads to super words like “iuuenalis” which is more like “juvenilis” (though not pronounced as we’d say it, of course).
Both pronunciations of Latin are “correct”–they simply represent different centuries. The Latin of Cicero (1st century B.C.E.) had simply changed in the succeeding four/five hundred years as it picked up the changes that were fossilized in “Church Latin” before it then morphed into Italian.
As far as I know, the majority of texts and web sites devoted to the study of Latin, today, tend to use Ciceronian rather than “Church” Latin, so most aids that you will find will give you what you need.
Unless, of course, one is pronouncing Koine or its descendent Liturgical Greek. What drives me nuts are the “educated” individuals who insist upon infliciting the Erasmian mistake or reconstructed “classical” pronunciation upon Church Greek.
As far as I know, the jury is still out on how exactly Koine was pronounced concerning theta and phi. And the quality of the vowels, i.e. when did eta, iota, and upsilon all come to be pronounced as “ee”, is most contentious. The Greek people assert it was like that already in the first centuries AD for nationalist reasons; they want to think their current language is so much closer to the language spoken in the early church. Some classicists, on the other hand, would argue that the values did not change until nearly the year 1000.
When I say “reconstructed pronunciation” I’m not referring to Erasmus’ system. His had a lot of problems. I’m referring to advances in understanding the phonology of the languages nearest to PIE that have occured over the last 150 years or so. But you have to admit, even Erasmus’ system was preferably to the old British system. <shudder>
** kiwiboy** I just can’t get my head around the whole v as w thing.
There was nice joke on this in one of the Inspector Morse episodes. An artist was selling fake coats-of-arms, one with the alleged family motto “Ventosa viri restabit” (i.e. “When toes are weary, rest a bit”).
The one thing I got the most entertainment from in Historical Linguistics class was the point where we learned that it’s possible that the reconstruction is for a language that never existed.
Part of the entertainment value was that one of my classmates just refused to accept any of the premises. Come to think of it, he refuses to accept any of the premises in the other Linguistics classes. Sadly, he’s a Linguistics major!
Hey, great responses all. And thanks. A couple of follow-up questions:
I may have been proceeding from a false premise, but I thought that long vowels had a different sound as opposed to length of vocalization. For example I say Chay-nahm (for cenam) but sehd (for sed). And the vowel sounds for I I’ve always gone with ‘ee’ and ‘ih’, et cetera. Am I way off base here?
So in 400 A.D. was Latin being pronounced in a church Latin way? And I’ve heard the story that Dante Alighieri would have said that we was writing in Latin, had anyone asked. Do tell…
Even in Church Latin there’s at least two major versions. The Italianate is the one you’re most likely to use. C before e, i or y is pronounced like a ch, G before e, i or y is a dzh sound. GN is pronounced like the NY in canyon and Vs are Vs. There’s also German Church Latin. C before e, i or y is like a TS. G is always as in Good. GN is pronounced as GN, i.e., MAGNUM is pronounced MAHG NOOM. The QU followed by a vowel is pronounced KV.
I love the way church Latin sounds. As I re-learn the language I can’t help but say Sahl-vay Ray-jee-na. Am I handcuffing myself for any discussion with a real classicist?
And UnuMondo if you check back in here, can you give the skinny on vowel sounds? I mean on them being merely longer or different in character.
What some language textbooks for learners call short and long vowels are different vowels for us linguists/linguisticians. For us, a long vowel is the same sound as the short vowel, but of a longer duration.
A language tutoring text would say the short “i” in English is pronounced as the “i” in “bid.” The long “i” is pronounced as the “i” in “write.”
A linguist would say the “i” in “bid” is * & the “i” in “write” is *.
That’s a really short and simplified version of it. I’ve left out nasalization and dipthongs.
Actually, I’ve heard people do an “American” pronunciation of Latin. Like fingernails on chalkboard, it was.
Me, I usually go for the Italianate pronunciation (or Solemnes), given that the only context I tend to use it in is sung liturgical music, but have on occasion used the German, French and English versions.
As a comparison, for “Regina coeli” you get (very roughly):
Italian: “rayjeena chay-li”
English “rayj(eye)na chay-li”
French: “rayzheena say-li”
German “raygheena kay-li” (or “raygheena tsay-li”; I’ve heard both)
Eh, that’s exactly what I was talking about Monty. Latin (and Greek) long vowels were twice as long in duration as short vowels. In poetry at least there should have been no difference in quality between a long and short vowel.
UnuMondo: Shall we enlighten them with the info about half-long vowels? What about tone-carrying nasal consonants which have a different tone than the vowel in the same syllable? Tone sanding?