I don’t really expect any answers, I just want to ventilate on a topic that irks me. Why in modern editions of latin language books do the editors not bother to indicate the vowel quantities? It seems ridiculous not to. Oh, you might say, you are supposed to learn those! But how many actually do and at what effort?? Charles Bennett has written that in 20 years of testing undergraduates at Cornell (I believe) he could not find ONE who could even come close to marking ten lines of Caesar for quantity.
Modern editions should be marked for vowel length? Why not? It would certainly make reading aloud a lot easier. And save many trips to the dicitonary. Actually, I find the task of looking up vowel quantity so onerous that I don’t even bother. If modern editions employ punctuation (which the Romans did not do), and if spaces are placed between words (which the Romans did not do), why shouldn’t modern editions indicate vowel length (which the Romans also did not do)? Don’t modern editions employ punctuation to make reading easier? Well, duh, why not go all the way? After all, this is not an easy subject.
Here is a quote from Bennett:
But even when the pupil has acquired a knowledge of these [inflectional endings], there remains the multitude of vowels in the interior of words—in root syllables, in stems and in suffixes. Here nothing but sheer force of memory can enable anyone to become the master of the vast number of vowels to be pronounced. Even the same root often varies, e.g. fido, but fides; fidelis, but fidus. Some few general principles can, of course, be given, but there remain literally thousands of vowels that must be learned outright and retained by memory alone.
Regarding the “SHEER FORCE OF MEMORY”, Bennett states that such a great effort is called for to memorize vowel lengths that even college professors can’t do it.
In the article referenced Bennett argues that teachers should abandon the classical pronunciation because of the difficulty of presented by vowel length. I don’t agree with him on his main point and argue there is no problem keeping the classical pronunciation as long as we are given a few helps by the up-to-now stupid editors of classical texts!! I include all the big shots at harvard and oxford and elsewhere. They are stupid if they don’t see this point.
Whatever the explanations, the editors are pedantic dunces for not marking the vowel lengths in ALL modern editions of works printed in latin. Besides helping you to pronounce knowing the lengths also helps in translating. Ancient languages are not easy. Nay they are very hard; why not do as much possible from the editorial standpoint to make them accessible? What rationale is there that justifies not marking the vowels. Marking provides many advantages and presents no disadvantages. Can anyone explain to me why modern editions (except perhaps some “study” editions) do not mark vowel lengths? Shouldn’t all editions be study editions? Aren’t we all students? What besides blind obscurantism can justify printing editions of works in latin without indicating the lengths of vowels in every word?
I agree, maxime with regards to new works, harrius or cattus et cetera…
I dont think remembering long/ short vowels is that hard but for the sake of clarity and memorisation, why not? also it reminds me of lingua latina.
malum vs malum
furor vs furor
alium vs alium
latro vs latro
levis vs levis
latus vs latus
lustrum vs lustrum
(why so many l’s, all but one word has a l, weird?)
oh, i know “acer vs acer” yes, no l’s and I think cuncto vs cuntco, well no, i guess cunctor is the right verb, not cunto, but close.I know there is more.
You may have hit upon part of the answer right here. Who exactly would do it? It’s not easy, and they don’t just need to marked, they need to marked as close to 100% correctly as possible. This is labor intensive and those out there who really do have the latin skills to mark all those quantities probably aren’t too excited at the prospect of such a tedious job (no doubt for pennies, at best).
Provocative statement: if someone doesn’t know the lengths of the vowels in a word then they don’t know the word and have to go to the dictionary anyway.
Unfortunately most of our Latin and Greek training material is almost wholly focused on the written language, so the very little effort needed to train a native speaker of English, say, to recognize and produce constrastive vowel length is never taken. If that were done learning a new word would include learning the vowel length automatically.
edonnelly has already touched on the economic difficulties for a massive macronification of Latin texts.
Well, I hadn’t thought of the economic impact on the publishers. This is just sort of a pet peeve for me as by nature I don’t memorize vowel quantities easily. Then later when I am reading - I am trying to read aloud a lot these days - I keep having to stop to look up words whose meanings I know but whose syllabic quantities I am ignorant of; in the end I usually just make a guess and blunder forward. Thus my beef. Bummer. Happy Thanksgiving to all the Americans on this board. Sure am stuffed. ZZZZzzzzzzz
It’s a lot of work for the publisher and for the editor. Besides, if you had learned the vocabulary with the proper vowel lengths to begin with, you’d soon be tired of seeing all the macrons in your texts.
By the way, when you read out loud, which practice I heartily endorse as I understand that it’s the way the ancients would usually have approached their texts, when reading poetry, do you keep the word accents on the correct syllables and make the longs long and the shorts short? It’s far more melodic that way than reading it like DUM da da Dum da da… etc.