Audentes fortuna iuvat
Would someone mind posting a phonetic translation of this?
It’s really the “iuvat” I’m not sure of, but might as well make sure of the rest. Thanks.
ow-DEN-tays for-TOO-na YU-watt
If the “a” in “fortuna” is a long “a,” it would be for-TOO-nah
Perhaps the third word’s pronunciation would be clearer as YU-wot (I was thinking of James Watt).
Thought that was it. Thanks.
It needs to be noted that classical Latin pronunciation is what is given above – V represents a W sound, I can be the /i/ of machine, the /I/ of it, or the /j/ where it stands for a semi-consonant Y sound. Church Latin renders the vowels and C and V as in (modern Tuscan) Italian.
That’s what I wanted. From the school of those who say YOO-lee-us KYE-zur
You can get a good approximation by mentally putting an English letter Y in that position in the word. Where Y would be treated as a consonant, so would I, and vice-versa.
BTW, shouldn’t it be “audientes”?
I think he isn’t referring to his audience but to brave people - or am I missing something?
The quote *audentes fortuna iuvat * comes from Book X of Virgil’s *Aeneid * (line 284). It’s usually translated as *fortune favours the brave * or fortune favours the bold. The word *audentes * comes from the present participle of the verb *audeo * (to dare or to be bold), and not from the verb *audio * (to hear).
KYE-sar… the S is always unvoiced in Classical Latin. 
Good to know. But is it sar or sur?
If I’m reading my Latin dictionary right, the short A is just a neutral vowel. That would make it /s/ /schwa/ /tapped r/ (by Og what I wouldn’t give for IPA encoding…)
I need a bit more help. How would this have been spelled? I know Latin had no U or W so would it have been Avdentes Fortvna Ivvat?
In upper case (as on an inscription):
AVDENTES FORTVNA IVVAT
In lower case (as in a manuscript):
audentes fortuna iuuat
or
audentes fortuna juuat
(just to make the i/j stand out from the following u’s)
Thanks, but what gives with the use of “u”? I thought Latin didn’t use it.
use, use, use
In manuscript writing, as Giles said, ‘miniscule’ scripts are found, which are all in lower case. Most of these are from at the earliest the 800s CE, so do not represent necessarily how the Romans themselves would have written it. Also, word divisions are irregular and often absent in both epigraphical evidence and manuscripts.
I realise I didn’t actually answer your question.
In miniscule script, ‘u’ is used for ‘u’ and ‘v’ (which was probably pronounced a lot like ‘w’/‘u’).
Cheers,
Daphne
So which way did the Romans do it if was written with the first letter uppercase and the others lower? Thanks.
Romans (and their Greek contemporaries, BTW) wrote in all caps, and usually without interword spaces or punctuation. So if Romulus had written the phrase, it would have been:
AVDENTESFORTVNAIVVAT
That’s why the verb lego (-ere), which came to mean “to read”, originally had the sense of “picking out”. In order to read, one must “pick out” the words from the confusing jumble of letters.
That’s also why one of the ways that Romans divined the will of the gods was to have a child read particular texts aloud. There was thought to be some significance to the way an unbiased eye would separate the words. See the first image on this page for an example.
Or so my professors told me in school. As always, though, in matters of classics, I bow to Polycarp’s superior knowledge.