I also think that English speakers should worry about their Latin vowels instead of worrying about consonantal u’s and i’s, for which they have the ready English sounds of ‘w’ and ‘y’. It breaks my heart to hear J.C. being quoted as saying “Weenay, weeday, wykie.”
D’accordo.
Bardo - Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying don’t worry about the vowel lengths, I’m just saying that the use of those little lines came much later and aren’t present in all the texts you will find, so it’s advantageous to be able to read the text without them.
My point is that writing and reading constantly with macrons makes their absense easier to adapt to.
Amadeus - Just because those letters appeared in the Middle Ages doesn’t mean it wasn’t pragmatic. Your first link even says that the ‘j’ is used for “convenience” and that ‘u’ and ‘v’ are used in “modern texts.” To impose them on classic works is artificial, since they were not originally there, and thus “retrofitting” someone’s work with them is analogous to the use of macrons. Why not argue that we should read Cicero in Italian since that is the “natural evolution of the language?”
I do not agree with this in principle. Using miniscule and majuscule letters in writing Latin, to say nothing of punctuation and spaces, are also modern conventions that make reading easier. Thus macrons, certainly punctual in nature, have a place among such conventions, in my opinion, until they are no longer needed. Indeed, since writing ‘j’ and ‘v’ is the same thing as writing short ‘i’ and ‘u’, they are not in principle artificial any more than these other conventions — their fault is in their lack of aesthetic appeal, and the confusion which later arrises, in my opinion.
However, I completely agree with the point of your last sentence. Naturally to read in translation does not offer even half the experience.
[OK, I don’t really believe Italian is the natural evolution of Latin, but I just wanted to make the point. I’m also not arguing against the use of ‘j’ or ‘v’, that’s certainly been hashed through here before, I’m just pointing out that it seems inconsistent to be in favor of macrons but against ‘j’ and ‘v.’]
Granted, the introduction of j’s and v’s was pragmatic, but not in the sense that they were intended to improve our ability to pronounce the language, as is the case with the macrons. The latter are certainly modern, the former were more of a necessity as latin evolved, and then became conventionalized during the Middle Ages.
But, I totally agree in that there should be no mixing of alphabets. Read Cicero with i’s and u’s, but read St. Thomas Aquinas with j’s and v’s.
Btw, I take it that when my source says that u and v are used in modern texts, what is meant is “modern printing of classical latin texts”
I’m just pointing out that it seems inconsistent to be in favor of macrons but against ‘j’ and ‘v.’
If the introduction of macrons is fairly recent, I think one can be against their use in modern compositions (id est, not for learning).
I don’t think I misunderstood you, Ed, my point was that if you go for post-Classical pronunciation you don’t have to worry about macrons.
If you all don’t mind a little punctiliousness, I don’t think that the term Medieval applies to our subject. The Latin pronunciation preserved by the Roman Catholic Church is still being spoken, and we could argue that we know how the Papists speak Latin today, but not how Petrarch spoke it 700 years ago.
Speaking of Papists, is part of being Protestant protesting the Papists’ Latin pronunciation?
Classical Romans wrote everything in capital letters, and the shape of their u’s looked like this: V. ‘I live’ was written VIVO (with two u’s), so Classical Latin didn’t use v’s, it used u’s with a different shape. When lower case letters were invented, vocalic V’s became ‘u’, and consonantal V’s became ‘v’. Taking the first syllable of VIVO: VI: Latin ‘V’ sounds like a short English ‘oo’ and Latin ‘I’ sounds like a short English ‘ee’; if you say ‘oo-ee’ fast, making it one syllable, you’ll end up saying ‘we’.
Of the 5 Latin vowel sounds, ‘a’, ‘e’ and ‘o’ are open vowels, and ‘i’ and ‘u’ are closed vowels. You can pronounce diphthongs that start with an open vowel without the help of lips, tongue, teeth or palate, as the English words ‘eye’ (ai), ‘a’ (ei) and ‘owe’ (ou); but you cannot pronounce a diphthong starting with a closed vowel without turning that closed vowel into a semiconsonant: ‘you’ (iu), ‘we’ (ui).
Except that St. Thomas Aquinas likely predated their appearance. In that period “j” was frequently used for “Ä«,” among other conventions.
Btw, I take it that when my source says that u and v are used in modern texts, what is meant is “modern printing of classical latin texts”
If the introduction of macrons is fairly recent, I think one > can > be against their use in modern compositions (id est, not for learning).
I don’t understand this at all. It makes absolutely no sense to me. Please explain such harsh reasoning that produces such an unhelpful result.
Macrons demonstrate the long vowels, and writing them demonstrates that the writer is not ignorant of them.
Bardo, your reasoning is quite sound, and I agree, but it was also true that their "V"s in handwriting frequently got rounded into this shape: “U” or even this shape: “u.” I personally am very fond of the V/u convention as a result.
Your point above Bardo is, sadly, a valid one. I was in Cambridge a few weeks ago, the greatest classical centre on the face of the earth, and I found that consonantal u was indeed pronounced u (I did not even consider that any one might pronounce it as english v). However in terms of vowels and pronunciation overall there seemed to be no effort it was spoken as if english. And to think, I was insecure, fearing lest my spoken latin should be criticized. It is either that the greatest minds in classics can not be bothered, or that they accept one can never be sure as to exactly how the Romans pronounced their language, and so they see no point in trying. I gave out a good “compónere” though. One Professor actually said that no one knows really what the poets were trying to say - in ambiguous language one can only speculate, and ponder all of the possible interpretations of text. The same might go for pronunciation to some extent. However it is worth noting that I was in Sweden a few weeks ago also, and my guesses as to the true pronunciation of Swedish were quite accurate. There was of course some inaccuracy, but if I had put on my constructed Swedish accent prior to arriving in Sweden, my accent would surely have been far more accurate than one of me not bothering to even try and giving out Anglican dog swedish vowels which will not work if you experiment with words such as “hus” “syster” “själv” or even simple adverbs or demonstratives such as “här” and “det där” respectively.
I don’t follow. In the first sentence you say St. Thomas predated the appearance of j’s and v’s, and in the second, you say j’s were used for i’s in that same period. (???)
By your logic, every language should have diacritical marks (id est, accents, macros, etcetera), but that is not the case. English does not have accents, yet English-speaking people know where to stress the syllable.
Perhaps my phrasing was wrong (I’m not a native English speaker, you know). What I meant to say was that macrons are helpful, but, IMO, they should be restricted to the learning phases. I see no reason why they should still be used in the production of literary works. Neither classical or medieval authors used them.
You should go to Spain, dear Episcopus; our Latinist research might be siestant, but man: Can we do vowels!
I’ve been meaning to ask you: What is a Latin Hendecasyllable? Would it use qualitative meter and have the same rules as Petrarch’s hendecasyllables? Show us what you got!
I totally prefer a Classical pronunciation, reconstructed as much as possible.
I seem to side with all the points Lucus makes, in that I like to stress a correct and consistent Latin pronunciation, and we seem to agree on what that should be.
(And Lucus, even though we haven’t had to chance to, I’d love to chat with you some time on Skype/MSN).
Oh, yeah, agreeing with Bardo too, Spanish speakers usually keep at least the quality of the Latin vowels. Once I commented here of some recordings I heard on some internet site that were undoubtedly British (indeed they were): MATER and PATER were pronounced “ma-tuh” and “pa-tuh”, respectively. I mean… c’mon.. that is probably the extremes of all extremes, but yeah.
~FILIUS
P.S. Recently, somebody pointed out to me the recordings placed on the Wheelock’s book site, and I was rather satisfied with them; they truly got somebody learned on the subject who can reproduce a Classical pronunciation.
By your logic, every language should have diacritical marks (id est, accents, macros, etcetera), but that is not the case. English does not have accents, yet English-speaking people know where to stress the syllable.[/quote]
But not foreigners who learn our language. (To suggest that we are otherwise with regard to Latin is foolhardy.) It takes hearing the language to learn it and get a feel for it. Absent this advantage, we must take every step to inform our pronunciation as vividly as possibly. Episcopus spoke well on this point.
Perhaps my phrasing was wrong (I’m not a native English speaker, you know). What I meant to say was that macrons are helpful, but, IMO, they should be restricted to the learning phases. I see no reason why they should still be used in the production of literary works. Neither classical or medieval authors used them.
Agreed. In my opinion I define a very long learning phase, to the point of perfect fluency and sonoric mastery of the tongue. Or near to that. Takes a while.
For litterary works? it depends who’s learning. For newer students, absolutely. For those who are completely fluent in the manner I described, they would be superfluous.
I believe there’s a British tradition of pronouncing Latin with English pronunciation rules. My first Latin teacher, an American educated in Germany, loved to harp on this fact. Also, I seem to remember there is an episode in Casanova’s memoirs where an Italian at a dinner party asks a visiting Englishman a question in Latin; the Englishman completely fails to understand --or even to recognize it’s in Latin-- because the Italian speaks Latin with Italian pronunciation.
What’s all the fuss about? I was taught Classical pronunciation but I usually hash it English-wise in front of British professors unless I’m reading poetry, for which the Classical pronunciation is actually demonstrably useful.
Well, the same feeling from a portuguese speaker… I’m a layman on latin, but the v/u thing sounds very strange to my ears… maybe there’s also the influence of the ecclesiastical latin, that was still taught on schools some years ago . “Curriculum vitae” sounds very awkward in classical pronounciation.
Interesting to say that I wrote that post almost a year ago. And I almost completely changed my mind now.
That’s because I made some research about that hated “u” sound and I discovered that it was most likely pronounced neither as English “wine” nor as Italian “vino”.
Indeed. To be impolite, pronouncing the U in Latin as though it were English W just sucks.
When I pronounce a word like vita the U sound starts farther back than a W. It sounds more uocalic and less uimpy. English V is of course a fricative and is (IMPO) simply the wrong sound to make for Latin U (in CL pronunciation). Thus, oowee-ta (instead of wee-ta), where the oo diphthong is “unlong”. I also pronounce it with a slight glottal stop before vocalizing. The U then sounds much better and has more force before the vowel, pushing it forward in the auditory space.
Perhaps cultures with relatively low ambient noise factors tend to pay more attention to the subtle sounds of things such as language elements ? As Basil Bunting points out, quantity is most certainly present in English, we just don’t pay much attention to it.
It is an interesting notion that the semivowel which we represent various’y ‘u’ and ‘v’ in Latin would have been more vocalic, as ‘u’ the vowel, than the consonant ‘w’. I once tried this too. And it is possible that a very ancient form of Latin practiced this. However, it contradicts the Roman testimony.
It’s been a few days since I las visited the forum (lots and lots of work to do for weeks to come), but I’m glad someon revived this thread. As you all know, my favourite pronunciation is Medieval/Ecclesiastical, but since buying “Roma Aeterna” I’ve been trying to accustom myself to the classical pronunciation, which I like to call Baba Wawa because of that weird-sounding V. I just can’t master it. Sometimes I will pronounce it like a German W (as professor Francis E. Lord seems to suggest), at other times like an English W or a Spanish U. However, if I understood you correctly, care cantator, the latin V should be pronounced like a W but with tighter lips, almost closed? In that case, I can imagine how V turned into a fricative. Or maybe I completely misrepresented what you said?
I’ve stated my case badly, sorry about that. As I hear it, the problem with English W for Latin U is that the W starts forward, with the lips, where the U begins (as I try to do it, anyway) further back in the throat than if it were English U. As I said, I begin its pronunciation with a slight glottal stop, adding percussive force to its enunciation. The Wawa effect is annoying because it includes no percussive force at all, turning “Veni vidi vici” into an unintentionally comedic phrase.
I’ll put up some recordings tomorrow that should clarify all that.
I’ve been reading Lord’s book, it’s very interesting. Turns out I may have been correct in wanting to pronounce “miser” as “meezer” (but maybe not). I was reminded that obdura should be pronounced more like opdura, and that ad, apud, and similar words should articulate the d more like a t sound. Alas, it appears I may have to revisit my interpretations and work on a somewhat different pronunciation. Oh well.
Just out of curiosity, how do Lord’s conclusions compare with Vox Latina, a considerably more recent book (if I recall correctly)? Are there considerable differences?
Also, I’m not sure that veni vidi vici with the English w is necessarily wimpy. At least, it doesn’t sound so to me. I’ve been reading Latin texts with a w for two years (since I started, basically) and so for me it’s perfectly normal. Cf. “Even the winds and the waves obey him.” from the gospel: hardly a “wimpy” sentence.
(As a side note, Korean uses w’s quite a bit. Interestingly, the writing system literally combines a u with another vowel to indicate the w sound. Now the Korean alphabet was designed in the 1400s by a royal project, but it is considered one of the most elegant and accurate alphabets (technically, more of a syllabary) in the world. In regards to Latin, though, the w is almost identical to English. It just seems like a useful analogy: u before a vowel becomes w, in Korean and, one presumes, in Latin.
woops.
No, just kidding. I’m not mad. 
myself to the classical pronunciation, which I like to call Baba Wawa because of that weird-sounding V. I just can’t master it. Sometimes I will pronounce it like a German W (as professor Francis E. Lord seems to suggest), at other times like an English W or a Spanish U. However, if I understood you correctly, care cantator, the latin V should be pronounced like a W but with tighter lips, almost closed? In that case, I can imagine how V turned into a fricative. Or maybe I completely misrepresented what you said? 