I'm currently learning to scan Latin poetry, starting off with simple hexameters and pentameters but I have to say that I'm not getting any idea that this is ever going to come naturally. Whereas with English poetry it's easy to feel whether something is going dum-de-dum or de-dum, de dum, in Latin (for example) some vowels are counted as long simply because they are in front of two consonants and most words don't break at the end of a meter but rather continue over.I don't know how they ever recognised meters by simply hearing them. But surely Horace's involved meter pattern must have been appreciated in its day? "Hey cool anapaestic Flaccus!"
Does this scanning business get easier with practice or is it just too arcane now without native speakers?
Scanning Latin verse
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- Lucus Eques
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It gets much easier with practice. You have to listen to it, too, if only from your own recordings, or from your teacher. But if you have a crappy teacher (like most classics professors, unfortunately), you may not be getting the best understanding.
If you or your teachers are not using the proper classical Latin pronunciation, of course, that will be a severe handicap.
If you or your teachers are not using the proper classical Latin pronunciation, of course, that will be a severe handicap.
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No vowel is considered long because two consonants follow it. The syllable is considered long; hence, if you had a word ending in es and the next word began with t, the e would not be pronounced as if it were long but would still be pronounced as a shor vowel. The only change is that when you scan the syllable, it becomes long.