Pronunciation of Y?

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Mark
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Pronunciation of Y?

Post by Mark »

I'm curious of to how the letter y is pronounced. This is what my Latin dictionary says:

ў as in German Hütte
y (with macron) as in German über

Now that's great, but I don't know German, and I don't know how those words would be pronounced.

Does anyone know of an English equivalent to the Latin y?

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benissimus
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Post by benissimus »

It is supposed to be pronounced like the Greek upsilon (υ) which it represents. That letter is to be pronounced like a French 'u'. There is unfortunately no way to express this in English terms, but you can probably get someone to make the sound for you or find a recording. As with all Latin nouns, the macronized version is about twice as long as the short version.
flebile nescio quid queritur lyra, flebile lingua murmurat exanimis, respondent flebile ripae

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1%homeless
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Post by 1%homeless »

Basically, it's the e sound like bee, but with lip rounding. Sounds far fetched, but try it with puckered lips. If you look at the IPA chart, it lists almost all the vowels in pairs of lip rounded and non lip rounded vowels. Anyway, I'm not sure if most Romans pronounced it like the Greeks did... You probably can get away with the Roman version of Y.

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Post by Eureka »

Click here, then click on the upsilon (υυ).

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Post by Mark »

Thanks, I understand it now.

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Post by Michaelyus »

To describe it in words:

Put your lips in a position as if saying oops, hold that position, then say eat instead.

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