Eliot certainly knew Latin. Have you read his Essays ? His comments on the Catholic schools of his day are interesting. He considered them the last bastion for the classics in the common Western curriculum.
Re: The Divine Comedy. Armed with some time in Italy and a head full of Latin, I first tackled the Commedia (in Italiano) some years ago, I read it entirely, then I re-read the Inferno, three more times in fact. I read the Purgatorio twice and the Paradiso only once. I guess you can tell what interests me…
Dante’s Italian is rather easy. Ivy and I augmented our readings with Michel Thomas’s instructional CDs for conversational practice, but I also went on to read all of Cavalcanti’s sonnets (so beautiful!), La Vita Nuova, and a lot of other literary Italian. However, Dante’s language is definitely not contemporary Italian.
Btw, I picked up a great tip from my European friends re: language acquisition: Videos, particularly videos “sottotituli per non udenti” (subtitled for the deaf). Sometimes the titling matches exactly what’s spoken, though often the variant phrases make you think a bit harder. If you already know the movie in your own language it’s even easier to follow and comprehend. A great learning aid.
And if you’re going to get into Dante make sure you check out the Princeton Dante Project:
After listening to a variety of recordings of Latin verse I offer these observations and suggestions regarding reading Latin verse aloud.
Learn to read poetry out loud in your own language. This is emphatically non-trivial, and if you want to be good performer you’ll have to practice recitation just like any other performer in any other art. Just because you understand well what you read, don’t assume you can read it well out loud without practice, and just because you can talk doesn’t automatically mean you can recite. Learn to recognize and articulate poetic effects and intentions (another non-trivial task). Basically, if you can’t do poetry well in your own language you’re probably not going to recite Latin poetry convincingly either. But take hope, there’s probably a lot more recorded work in your own language than there is in Latin, so your models are much closer at hand, with far less controversy regarding matters of pronunciation and other details.
Study the available pedagogical material regarding Latin verse recitation, study it intently, and jettison it as soon as feasible. The closer you try to adhere to rules, the further you’ll drift from an expressive reading. Nevertheless, you will need to consider, assimilate, and come to your own conclusion regarding such matters as accent, pitch, and even quantity. Have no fear, the listeners who know what to listen for will also know whether you’ve really done this work.
Listen to the many recordings made by others. You’ll quickly see that there is little agreement among scholars regarding accurate pronunciation, but you must try to glean what is useful from their attempts (as future students will do with yours). When all is said and done, the descriptions from the grammarians are like attempts to describe a painting in words. While the attempt may be praiseworthy, it can never suffice for the painting itself. In the absence of audio recordings, we are merely making more-or-les informed guesses. That’s okay, don’t take it all too seriously, just try to do the best you can with the available materials and hope that Virgil and Ovid never return in the flesh. I shiver to think what they’d say about my own efforts, but that won’t stop me from making them.
Record yourself, listen to your recordings, and share them with others here on Textkit. We are all learners here, and Latin phonology is a relatively new field. Your recordings may provide a clue for another student, we can all help each other. Don’t fear criticism, and remember that Latin comes alive most fully for us when we try to recreate and experience the rhythms of its splendid poetry and prose. Those rhythms are in fact the very internal rhythms of the Romans themselves, and by reading their words out loud we connect with them through time through the lively medium of sound.
Some personal pet-peeve hobby-horses:
Sing-songiness: If you like Sonkowsky, more power to you, but he’s proceeding on a pretty slender thread.
Monotony: The opposite of the above. Maybe even more irritating.
Hammered stops at line-ends: Oh for goodness sake, even the Greeks understood the concept of enjambment. If you want to ruin one of the most musical effects of quantitative verse just be sure to hammer the end-stops.
Inattention to clauses: English speakers will have trouble with this until they’ve learned how to listen to Latin. I might extrapolate and suggest that you’ll read Latin verse better as you improve your ability to hear and think in the language. Some poets are easier than others: Horace can be especially difficult, yet those very difficulties contain some of his most artistic effects.
I’ve studied and read poetry in various languages for more than thirty years. These peeves are not arbitrary, they constitute bad recitation in any poetry. We’ve been discussing many interesting aspects of Latin pronunciation in the Audio and Prosody threads, some of which can have immediate effect on our vocal attempts, some of which are more subtle and require more experimentation. But most of the discussion is focused on Latin pronunciation at the atomic level (vowels and syllables), and precious little has been proffered regarding the recitation of whole poems. What pertains at the atomic level can change under larger stresses, and the comprehension and presentation of larger-scale forms has not been approached at all.
These notes are intended for provocation. I hope responses and position statements will come in the form of WAV, MP3, Ogg, or other recordings rather than in plaintext, but do feel free to share your own opinions regarding the recitation of Latin poetry.
“… But weigh this song with the great and their pride: I made it out of a mouthful of air…”
A few notes to assist readers who wish to record themselves reading Latin prose or poetry:
Despite the oft-repeated suggestion that 22050 Hz is an acceptable sampling rate for recording solo voice recitation, you’re much better off recording at 44100 Hz. Remember that you’re probably going to compress your original file into a lossy format, so make your original as clear as possible. Also, avoid 8-bit resolution, always record to a 16-bit format. Mono (one channel) output is fine, you don’t need stereo unless you plan to burn your WAV files to CD. Be aware that CD audio is strictly defined as 16-bit stereo recorded with a sampling rate of 44100 Hz.
Record at a strong level, but avoid clipping (distortion). Digital distortion (aka aliasing) is unlovely and cannot be removed by filtering or equalization. Keep your meters out of the red. If you really have trouble with clipping you could plug in a peak limiter before the input stage to your recorder.
Normalize your WAV files before converting them. Normalization is a process that raises all levels relative to the peak amplitude (which is itself raised to a selected factor). This way your voice should be heard clearly even if your original levels were rather low.
Compress to MP3 if you don’t mind supporting closed-source proprietary formats. Use Ogg if you prefer an free and open-source format with better sound quality. Encoders for both formats are available for all platforms. FLAC is also nice, it’s a lossless encoder, but it’s not quite so widely supported by available players.
Regarding hardware: Your laptop’s electret mic isn’t really going to give you very good results, no matter what your selected sampling rate. At the least, get a better microphone, even an inexpensive Logitech mic is better than most built-in mics.
Regarding software: Many fine audio recorders and editors are available for free, try searching the Web or look at the software archives for Harmony Central (http://www.harmony-central.com). An editor is a great aid to producing the best possible desktop recording, you can trim excess space, mute noise, apply effects, and so forth. Some editors will even do your WAV-to-whatever conversion. Audacity is a good (and completely free) cross-platform editor (http://audacity.sourceforge.net), but there are many others to choose from.
Regarding storage: Even compressed audio files take a good chunk of disk-space and bandwidth, so you’ll need to find a host with ample storage for your files. See other messages in this thread regarding free hosting sites for soundfiles, or just search Google for free media file hosting services. And make sure you read and understand their policies regarding privacy, ownership of files, and licensing requirements.
I hope these notes help beginners with their efforts. If you have questions regarding other aspects of desktop recording, feel free to write to me, I’ll help as I’m able.
Especially Chapter 25, Track 15 - The Death Of Laocoon. The reader/performer certainly “clamores horrendos ad caelum tollit”! What is the verdict of our expert panel of Textkittens?
By the way, I’ve never had a problem with the various strains of ‘w’ sound for V/U but I am still in denial when it comes to nasalized final M. Can anyone tell me what evidence the ‘classical restorers’ based their inferences on in this case? Sure, I can pronounce French ‘faim’ as well as the next foreign speaker but in order to pronounce ‘bellum’ as ‘bellung’ , I seem to require some rational persuasion. And I wonder how John Milton (who advocated an Italian-style pronunciation) would have pronounced it?
“Bellung”? It would be pronounced “bellu” with a nasal u.
As for the evidence:
-Final m can be elided in poetry (…multum ille et terris…, Aeneid I.3)
-Inscriptions that show the elision (such as “scriptust” for “scriptum est”)
-Loss of -m in the Romance languages. The normal stage from -m to -0 (no sound) is nasalization (I think).
-Statements from grammarians that -m is pronounced differently from normal m.
I’d like to go into specifics but I have no references (Vox Latina et al.) with me. Still, there’s plenty of information on the Internet; perhaps somebody could post a reference?
Thanks! You have given me something to get my teeth into.
Forgive my simplified phonetic notation ‘bellung’. Naturally, we’re talking about the same sound.
One immediate gut response: why should the elision or loss of the -M result in a Nasal M? Couldn’t the M just have been downplayed without being nasalized?
If the ‘m’ were merely played down, there wouldn’t be elision. The grammarians describe the nasalized final ‘m’ quite clearly, and it’s most likely, given the evidence of Sanskrit and, to a degree, Greek, where the exact same thing happens, that the nasalized final ‘m’, particularly for neuters and for accusative singulars, was always an aspect of the IE branches leading to Latin — it was never a true, hard ‘m’ at the end. The only reason that the Romans chose the letter ‘m’ for this sound is that it was the closest character that could repræsent it, and that it became true ‘m’ in combination (committere et alia). Far stranger but still true is that modern Italians use the digraph ‘gl’ to repræsent what in Spanish is spelled ‘ll’, for various reasons – the idea of ‘g’ as a palatizer was strong enough for them to apply it to ‘l’ to indicate an ‘l+y’ sound. The Roman final ‘m’ as a nazalization of the vowel is much more comfortable by comparison.
As for the recording you linked us to, it’s not that bad, but his 'r’s are … a little beyond exaggerated. He also needs to pronounce ‘i’ consistently, that is as Italian, not ever as in English.
Now this I don’t care for. Lucus is right, the R’s are just too exaggerated; and, IMO, the reading is slow and affected. I wouldn’t pay to hear the rest; the FREE recordings here on Texkit are way better.
I will bump this excellent thread, which I, sadly, found just now, half a year too late. The matter of pronounciation has always been one of my primary interests when it comes to the Latin language, and I have found that the amount of Latin recordings on the net is, regretably, relatively low. Hence, to find this forum and thread, filled not only with high quality audio files, but with with learned discussion and critisism as well, has been very exciting.
Once I have prepared a recording which I am (at least moderately) pleased with, I would like to offer it to your scrutinizing ears!
In the meantime, I wanted to ask cantator about his sound files. They were to be found at http://linux-sound.org/latin-audio-examples/ but today I only get the message “You don’t have permission to access /latin-audio-examples/ on this server.” when trying to acces it. Has the site moved?
That collection has been removed. I intend to redo everything, incorporating some ideas re: pronuciation that I’ve discovered in this thread. I’ll notify the forum when I’ve re-recorded the poems, but it may be some time from now. Sorry, I’m involved with other concerns at the moment.
I agree, this is one of the most brilliant threads produced by Textkittens so far. Excellent notes on the recording of Latin prose or poetry, cantator. I’ll be using quite a few of them from now on. My lengthy Latin hiatus (which for me has been quite the punishment! ) is finally over.
since it has been ressurrected form the topic hell, i would like to take the opportunity to pose a question
i would like to know whether the pitches in the italian pronunciation are equal to the classical latin ones. it is easy to hear and to copy them from the recording of st augustine confessions (here the recording; and here the text), in contrast, i could hear the pitch only in some recordings in classical pronunciation(too fast for me! )
Nescio, amice. Sed i ad locum “Outside Links of Interest” audique professorem Aloisium Miragliam latine loquentem. Equidem linguam censeo latinam cum moderna voce italiana loqui convenire.
Any critique is most welcome! There are several things I’m not fully satisfied with, but, as most of you know, I’m sure, there are just so many recording attempts you can make before your throat as well as head starts to ache…
(There are other clips on my site as well, but the one above is the latest one.)
Man, that was one of the best Latin recordings I’ve heard! Great job, man!
I haven’t studied my Latin for two weeks now. Methinks I should get back in the game as soon as possible, and start recording! I hate being a procrastinator
Excellent reading, my compliments. I’m still undecided whether I like the elision in prose recitation, but it doesn’t bother me enough to really complain.
) is finally over.
)
