In teaching Latin (or other foreign languages) to speakers of American English, is there much difficulty in getting them to give ‘t’ between vowels its full value and not reduce it to ‘d’ or slur it or omit it?
I don’t know about teaching, but when I hear native English speakers speak Latin, there’s no trouble with t, but some major issues with r and l. But the worst I’ve heard are native speakers of German who in addition to the r issue, have an irresistible tendency to pronounce e as if it were i, which really drives me nuts to the point that I can’t listen to Germans speaking Latin.
When I was teaching introductory Latin in college, I was just happy if my students could remember their declensions and conjugations. I didn’t put much attention on pronunciation. I wish I could have used a more modern method of teaching languages, but I had to abide by the department’s expectations for course curricula.
As best as I can remember, most pronunciation issues would have been with vowels rather than consonants.
And elsewhere :: some USA speakers pronouncing English “pen” as “pin” and suchlike is confusing.
When I was at school in the late 1950’s. we learned Latin. One boy in my class always pronounced English long ‘o’ (as in “bone”) as “aw” in “lawn”. As a result of this and of British English arhotacism, in Latin he pronounced “amo” and “amor” identically.
Perperàm hûc misi. Modo alio filo mittere ausus sum.
I sent this to the wrong place. I meant to post to this topic: http://discourse.textkit.com/t/latin-pronunciation/11422/1
According to the ancient grammarians, there is no difference in sound between long and short vowels, just the length of the sound. I think that is true. I suspect it is a habit of English-speakers to use different sounds to distinguish long and short vowels. That clipping a long, full sound seems to result in a different sound is a separate issue, related to the formation of a full sound over time. I don’t think an Italian student of Latin distinguishes long and short in the manner that English speakers were taught to.
Secundum grammaticos antiquos, nullum discrimen exstat inter brevis vocalis sonum et sonum longae, solum est longitudinis vel longinquitatis discrimen. Rectè dicunt, ut opinor. Consuetudo olim erat, ut suspicor, eorum quo anglicè loquuntur ut longitudo vocalis aliter distinguatur. Longa et plena vocalis spatium temporis requirit ut ea planè sonetur, qui correpta aliter sonari videtur. Non novus autem est sonus. De sonis vocalum non itidem sonat italicus latinae linguae discipulus eius qui est anglicus vel americanus.