QuoteReplyTopic: How to pronounce Roman names (Latin Pronunciation Guide) Posted: 18-Mar-2005 at 20:50
Whatever happened to those pronunciation guides we used to have here?
Well, anyways, for the purists here, this is the one for Latin. The
pronunciation of Latin has changed significantly from Classical latin
to modern Latinate languages (and English). Even the Latin heard in
churches is pronounced different from that of the ancients. But
of course, most of this stuff here is for curiosity, since it's no
longer a spoken language, even scholars of the written language discard
the "correct" pronunciation, which is largely speculation.
Examples represent commonly "mispronounced" words
Consonants with Examples
(examples used are with modern English pronunciation) [c] Pronounced as a hard c, such as Car, Cat, Cage. It is NOT sounded like the c in cent, cede, and cease.
Examples: Centurio (Centurion): Ken-tur-ri-oh Cicero (the Orator): Kick-ker-roh Caesar:Kai-sahr
[g] Always hard G, such as Got, Gothic, God, Goat. NOT pronounced soft, such as in German and gist.
Examples: Germanicus: Grr-man-ni-cus
Exception [gn]: (pronounced ngn after vowel)
Examples: Pompeius Magnus (Pompey the great): Mahng-nus Gnaeus:Nee-us (nasal n)
[h] as in English. [i, consonant] like the English
y. (The I can be both a vowel and a consonant. Later, consonant Is were
written as J's, such as Julius instead of Iulius)
Examples: Traianus (Trajan): Trah-yan-nus Iulius (Julius): Yoo-li-us
[qu] as in English, eg. Queen, Quack, etc. [r] rolled r. The roll is proabably the most discarded part of pronunciation among modern english latin readers. [s] soft s, such as Sam and son [u/v] U and V were the same
letter in classical latin. u/v as a consonant is pronunced as a "w". As
a vowel, it has two different pronunciations.
Examples: Veni, Vedi, Vici (I came, I saw, I conquered): Wen-nee, wed-di, wee-kee Via Appia (Appian way, the road): Wiya (1 syllable) Ap-pia
[x] as in English
Vowels
Each vowel has two different pronuncations, long and short. Common
words are given as examples here, but obviously, the long and short
difference would usually not be applicable to non-latin readers. [a] short: cat, long: (ah) father
Example: Menelaus (Greek, actually): Men-nah-lah-us (long a)
Dipthongs
There are more than two, but the others are too rare for the common reader. [ae] as in my, high, sky Examples: Caesar:Kai-sahr
[oe] as in oyster
Examples: Oedipus: Oy-di-pus
How to pronounce the Alphabet a (ah), b (bay), c (kay), d (day), e ("A"), f (ef), g (gay) h (ha), i (ee), k (ka), l-o (same as english), p (pay), q (koo), r (air), s (es), t (tay), u/v (oo), x (ex).
Neo-latin terms in Classical Pronunciation
Alumi: Alum-nee
Alumae: Alum-nigh (i and ae pronunciation swapped between C. Latin and English)
Stare Decisis (law term): Star-reh Dee-kai-sis (English: Stair-ree, Da-cy-sis)
Dies Irae (day of Wrath): Dies Ir-rye (Church Latin: Dies Iray)
Sub Poena (law term): Sub Poe-ena (English: Sub peena)
Consonants with Examples (examples used are with modern English pronunciation) [c] Pronounced as a hard c, such as Car, Cat, Cage. It is NOT sounded like the c in cent, cede, and cease. Examples: Centurio (Centurion): Ken-tur-ri-oh Cicero (the Orator): Kick-ker-roh Caesar:Kai-sahr
Are you sure this is true? I would say the pronunciation of the c has not changed and it is pronunced like nowadays ( Cicero: Ci-cer-oh, but Caesar: Ka-e-sahr)
I mean that the c with e and i like "century" or "civil" in English,while with a, o and u is pronunced like in "car", "corporation" or "curly", isn't it? the same happens in other languages derivated of latin, at least in Spanish, "centuria", "ciudad", but "cabeza" "coche" and "curioso", and I think it's the same in French, "campeur", "cellule" , Italian, Portuguese... So it would be very strange that in all that languages the pronunciation have changed in the same way.
Yes, tha'ts correct. The pronunciation II posted is the so-called "restituta", a present day reconstruction of what should have been the way 1st century BC- 1st century CE Romans (e.g. Caesar, Cicero) spoke. It's commonly believed that that pronunciation was somewhat different before and after that age.
If I find some time, I'll post something more later.
gives a reconstructed classical pronunciation, similar (but not identical! of course, those are alh hypotheses, since we have no voice record from those times, and there are subtle differences among scholars) to the one posted by our II, plus hints about how the pronuciation was before classical times and how it evolved in late latinity (among which, the c and g palatalization into which Faram was interested)
shortly explains the techniques to reconstruct classical pronunciation, and also presents a synoptic tables of main 4 ways to read Latin (Classical reconstructed, Souther European approx. coinciding with "church" or "ecclesiastic" latin, Northern European and English traditional).
Latin c in all cases represent a velar plosive - ie. in popular terminology, it is always hard and never soft
- even before the front voewls e and i. Inscriptions in fact sometimes
write k for c in this environment (eg. pake), and Greek regularly
transcribes Latin c by (kappa);
the sound was also preserved in words borrowed from Latin by Celtic and
Germanic between the first and fifth cneturies A.D., In the grammarians
there is no sugestion of anything other than a velar plosive; and Varro
(Priscian, K. ii, 30) provides positive evidence by citing anceps beside ancora
as an example of the velar value of n (see p. 27) - which only makes
sense if the following sound is the samein both cases. There is a
further hint in the alliterative formula "censuit consensit consciuit"
(Livy, i, 32, 13)
It is true that in the course of time a "softening" took place before e and i (compared the pronunciation of c in French cent, Italian cento, Spanish ciento, from Latin centum); but there is no evidence for this before the fifth century A.D; and even today the word for 100 is prnounced kentu in the Logudoro dialect fo Sardinia.
This of course does not mean to say that Laitn c represents an
absolutely identifcal pronunciation in all environments. In English,
for example, the initial sound in kit is articulated somewhat further
foraward on the palate than in cat, and is accompanied by a cetain
degree of lip-rounding in coot. There is perhaps some actual evidence
for this in latin; an original short e followed by a "dark" l normally
developed to a back vowel, o or u - thus Old Latin helus becomes holus,
and the past participle of pello is pulsus; but scelus does not change
into scolus, and the past participle of the obsolete cello is celsus,
not culsus; one possible explanation of this is that the change was
prevented by the frontness of the preceding consonant.
...then it goes on about the usage difference between c and k. If
you're interesed in this type of stuff, which I'm sure many are!, I can
post more.
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