Maybe I’ve been listening to too many old movies,
Example: Rationibus. Is this always rah-tee-o-nee-bus or can it be ra-shun-ee-bus? (like Eng. “ration.”)
TIA,
Cathexis
Only in the old-fashioned and discredited English pronunciation of Latin.
I knew it! Too much “Mr. Chips”, etc.
Thanks!
Cathexis
I should have waited one more day to ask,
After some recent discussion in another thread, I found a copy of Nutting’s Primer, 1911 for sale on Ebay for $9.96.
I ordered it and received it yesterday. The Guide to Pronunciation is in the back as Appendix I. Right there it said,
"T always as in tin(never as in rational.)"
So there you go,
Cathexis
How could we possibly know?
You will be able to find people at various levels of expertise, up to the highest, with ideas about alternative pronunciations in certain environments.
These ideas have nothing going for them but subjective opinion regarding euphony. But some of them are probably right (just looking at probabilities).
I’m sure my opinion of pronouncing rationibus with “shun” because “ration” is pronounced that way in English needn’t be stated.
How could we possibly know?
We can be pretty certain that -tio(n-) was pronounced as two syllable because pronouncing it as a single syllable wouldn’t scan in Latin verse.
Indeed! I stand mistaken.
My point of course was more generally intended.
Ancient Latin pronunciation is pretty well understood. Allen’s Vox Latina lays it out along with the evidence.
That evidence is far too thin on the ground to make statements about a given grapheme “always” being pronounced a certain way.
On pg. 51 of Vox Latina, Allen mentions that short i may have had a closer quality before vowels. Compare, he mentions, Latin dies → Italian/Old French di, quī → chi/qui.
These closer pre-vocalic qualities of > e > and > i > are probably due to the > y> -‘glide’ which automatically follows them in these conditions–and which the English speaker will automatically produce.
Footnote:
There seems to have been a similar effect on > u > before a vowel (e.g. in > duo> ), due to an automatic > w> -‘glide’.