What is the best known historical reconstruction of long and short e and o? I’ve heard some say the short e is is like egg and others saying, its a shorter version of “A” without gliding into i. For short o, some say it’s like otter while others say it’s like bone, without the glide again.
I’m confused, for the other letters, I try to imitate Italian vowels but Italian has two separate vowel sounds for the above 2 at least.
I can tell you that Allen in Vox Latina says that short e and o are more open and long e and o are more close (actually it seems like the section on vowels in the book is available for preview on Google books). So using your examples, he says short e is like egg, long e is like “A” without the glide (and long of course), long o is like bone without the glide. And I guess that leaves otter for short o (although that example wouldn’t work for me because the o in otter is the same as the a in father, which isn’t the Latin sound). But using Italian, what I’ve read is that Latin long o and e are long versions of Italian close o and close e, and Latin short o and e are the same as Italian open o and open e.
Good post. There (for some reason) are lot of different ideas on this subject. Bantam dictionary say O-short is “often” and long “hope”, but henle say O- short is “obey” and teach yourself Latin says O-short is “not” yet wheelock say O-short is “orb, off”, two words that I say different from each other so…? Mostly thought long O is “hope” and short e is “pet” and long e is “day” with out the i sound at the end like in English.
I use “orb” so…
A practical problem for using some of these guides is that people pronounce English so differently that it can be difficult to know exactly what is meant by some of the English equivalents. If I recall, Allen references a specific dialect in Southern Britain, but fancy lot of good that does me down here Nashville.
I haven’t read any works on Latin phonetics, but I’m simply amazed that any author wouldn’t use IPA or another phonetic alphabet.
Instead of writing ‘e’ as in ‘pet’ with General American Pronunciation, all you have to do is write is /É›/. Instead of ‘o’ as in ‘off’ in Who-Knows-What pronunciation, all you have to do is write /É”/ or /É‘/… or whatever it is you mean.
I’m sure many people here already know IPA, but it is a great tool for those who don’t. Introductory phonetics will help you better conceptualize sound changes and morphological oddities in Latin and (especially) Greek. Plus, you get to learn about all sorts of weird sounds that you never fathomed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ipa
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Articulatory_phonetics
Most (or many) latin grammar books are older so I can see the lack of IPA (according to some the fact that we do not know exactly what Latin sounded like, at lest completely, may add to this) but why is it not standard for English? Even things like dictionary.com do not use it as a standard but I have to switch to it, vexing.
I used the wheelock audio by Mr. Mark Miner. By the way, he uses a “O” like “orb” (American), not a “ah” sound like “off” (American). I would use IPA but I do not know how to type it (I’m more of a book kind of guy).
“Now somewhere between the sacred silence
Sacred silence and sleep
somewhere between the sacred silence and sleep
disorder, disorder, disorder”