Latin pronunciation

[Anthony Appleyard]

In teaching Latin (or other foreign languages) to speakers of American English, is there much difficulty in getting them to give 't' between vowels its full value and not reduce it to 'd' or slur it or omit it?

[Nesrad]

I don't know about teaching, but when I hear native English speakers speak Latin, there's no trouble with t, but some major issues with r and l. But the worst I've heard are native speakers of German who in addition to the r issue, have an irresistible tendency to pronounce e as if it were i, which really drives me nuts to the point that I can't listen to Germans speaking Latin.

[thesaurus]

When I was teaching introductory Latin in college, I was just happy if my students could remember their declensions and conjugations. I didn't put much attention on pronunciation. I wish I could have used a more modern method of teaching languages, but I had to abide by the department's expectations for course curricula.

As best as I can remember, most pronunciation issues would have been with vowels rather than consonants.

[Anthony Appleyard]

... native speakers of German who in addition to the r issue, have an irresistible tendency to pronounce e as if it were i, which really drives me nuts to the point that I can't listen to Germans speaking Latin.

And elsewhere :: some USA speakers pronouncing English "pen" as "pin" and suchlike is confusing.