Pronouncing letters in acronyms

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Carolus Raeticus
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Pronouncing letters in acronyms

Post by Carolus Raeticus »

Salvete!

In an older Nuntii Latini-article titled Morbus avarius in Turcia vagatur I encountered the following sentence:
Grippa aviaria, quam efficit virus, cui nomen H5N1 (ha, quinque, en, unum), in Turcia vagatur.
Now, I am wondering, how does one spell all the letters of the Roman alphabet, like "ha" for "h" and "en" for "n")? Does anyone have an idea?

On a related note, what about the NATO phonetic alphabet, i.e. using "kilo" for "k", "foxtrot" for "f", etc.? Are there any suggested Latin alternatives?

Valete,

Carolus Raeticus
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Alatius
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Re: Pronouncing letters in acronyms

Post by Alatius »

The Latin alphabet is:
a be ce de e ef ge ha i ca el em en o pe cu er es te u ex ypsilon zeta
The last two are Greek in origin, and so have their Greek names. If you want to distinguish between I and J, and U and V, you can call them "i/u vocalis/consonans".
Last edited by Alatius on Sun Jun 02, 2013 8:44 am, edited 1 time in total.

Carolus Raeticus
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Re: Pronouncing letters in acronyms

Post by Carolus Raeticus »

Salve Alati!

Thank you for the list. Shouldn't "p" be represented by pe instead of p? It isn't a vowel, after all. What do you think?

Vale,

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Alatius
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Re: Pronouncing letters in acronyms

Post by Alatius »

Oh, that was just a silly mistake. I have edited my original post.

The principle behind the way the letter names are formed is very simple: for vowels, the name of the letter is simply the (long) vowel itself. For consonants, if it is possible to extend the basic sound of the letter (as is the case with f, l, m, n, r, s, and (partly), x) the name of the letter is simply this sound preceded by a short /e/. If not, the name is the basic sound followed by a long vowel, usually (but not always) /e/.

adrianus
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Re: Pronouncing letters in acronyms

Post by adrianus »

Ut dicit Alatius. Porrò his diebus (non classicè) et haec dicuntur vel scribuntur, nisi fallor:
ve pro u consonante et u duplex pro w litterâ.


As Alatius says. Also these days (not classically) you might pronounce "vē" or spell "ve" for "consonantal u" or "v" and "u duplex" for "w".
I'm writing in Latin hoping for correction, and not because I'm confident in how I express myself. Latinè scribo ut ab omnibus corrigar, non quod confidenter me exprimam.

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