Salvete! Yes, I’m making yet another post on pronunciation! This time I’m writing here instead of in the Greek board, because the problem seems slightly bigger in Latin than it is in Greek (as in Greek you have two letters that represent only long vowels, and two others that represent only short vowels, the monophthongized diphthongs being equivalent to long vowels; only three, α, ι, υ, are dubious, then).
Most didactic texts out there bring vowel length neatly marked, as far as I’m aware: Familia Romana and all the ancillaries of LLPSI, the Cambridge Latin Course, maybe the Oxford (haven’t looked that one, though)… But what if I’m reading a book that doesn’t bring those quantities marked (some older books don’t, for example) and I found a word whose quantities I don’t know? How should I proceed then? I’m aware that some rules exist to determine the quantity (a vowel before two consonants is long, a vowel before another vowel is short…), but there aren’t rules for every single case, AFAIK. Am I condemned to checking the dictionary each single time I don’t know the quantities of a word, and then die of boredom when the text has many words I don’t know? What would people do when they hadn’t a dictionary at hand? Ignore the vowel length?
Much thanks!
-John
Yes, at the end of the day you just have to check a dictionary. But if you pay attention while doing this, you’ll develop a feeling for what’s more likely in many cases. Mostly based on morphological rules and etymology: the thematic vowel of 1st, 2nd and 4th conjugation verbs is long, which means that nouns derived from such verbs will have a corresponding long vowel (firmāre → firmāmentum), derivational endings are invariable (-tās always long), perfect stems like rūpi from rumpo (always?) have a long root vowel, short final vowels other than a and e are rare, etc. But there’s no telling the i in firmare is long too, unless you look it up.
You’re always permitted to guess or just not care and move on, if you deem it unimportant. If I read a text that once in passing mentions some species of bird I will likely never hear about again in Latin, I don’t feel bad just ignoring the vowel lengths.
And when reading verse, it’s generally not a problem of course, since the meter will give you most vowel lengths.
I see… btw, do you know of any recordings in the “Ecclesiastical” pronunciation that respect those lengths? I’ve seen some, actually, but all those long vowels seemed exaggeratedly long (but maybe I’m just not used to hearing them).
I don’t know anything about recordings, I’m afraid. I don’t know what you want them for, but no recording of Latin in any pronunciation scheme will give you a “correct” example of what actual historical Latin sounded like or how it ought to be pronounced. At least not down to the minutiae like the precise rendering of vowel quantity, intonation etc. – for historical Latin we just can’t know, and the artificial norms like “Ecclesiastical” are largely based on equivalences in modern languages. Some people do a good job pronouncing something plausible and esthetically pleasing; that’s probably as good as it gets.
I see. Much thanks for the help!