I am not saying: Don’t ask questions.
I am saying: why do we need a poll for something like this? Do we need to take a vote to validate (by the vote of the majority) one or the other in the popular use? I don’t think so. We would if vowel lengths were absolutely a foreign aspect for western learners, untraditional aspect, new aspect, not practiced aspect in Latin: then its use could be seen as controversial and a poll would be a very good thing. But neither of it is true.
Just using the word “to try” implies that “to do it regularly without thinking” is almost something unheard of, totally new and ‘untraditional’ in the world of Latin philology, foreign, weird, new… something you don’t even know how to do (and that’s why I said “get over it”).
I’m then sorry you haven’t met the right latinists pronunciation-wise. If you want, we can go and speak sometimes (have a voice chat). I don’t say I’m the “rightest” one, but I have no problems in this aspect and… to be honest, I don’t see why anybody else should.
Seems like a reasonable line of questioning, in my eyes.
But why? This is not so uncommon in the modern languages in Europe or in its proximity… I understand when you ask (as I did) something similar over the melodic accent of Greek which is either: not easy to be imitated (as you don’t have much living languages in your proximity to listen to or not enough resources) or it is still perceived as something new in the philological world, world which is/was used to pronounce the Greek always with a dynamic accent which is for a European fairly easy to imitate, and which world haven’t considered a full-scale change yet…
But long vowels in Latin? I think that people have been trying to pronounce them across the pronunciations rigorously since the times of Erasmus, and they didn’t particularly complain… Are we somewhat special generation that we cannot or that it is suddenly so “foreign” to us that we cannot even imagine how to do it and we have to ask whether people around the world “try” (not “do” but “try”)?
I myself didn’t think pster’s question was silly. I, too, have heard recordings by latin teachers that pay no attention to long vowel lengths, though on the right syllable they will invariably give the correct word stress. If the teacher doesn’t care about it, why would the pupil? Personally, I try to voice vowel lengths faithfully and find it a big cognitive burden to recite prose without marked vowel lengths. I make many mistakes, but there’s just one more piece of evidence to prove that I’m not an expert latinist. Others might be brilliant and many will be better than I.
Justam habeo quaestionem illam de pster. Et ego impressiones sonituum latinistarum audivi quae tempora vocalium negligunt etiamsi rectae syllabae emphasin semper dant. Si res curae magistro non est, non erit discipulo. Meâ parte, tempora vocalium rectè sonare conor at non humile onus est loca sine macronibus extensa recitare. Frequenter labor, quod non defigit cum ego minùs quam peritus. Sunt illustres qui nunquam errunt; in numero eorum non sum.
Godmy, I didn’t take the poll to be validation. Vowel length isn’t something weird, you’re right.
I’ve not yet met/interacted with any Latinists. I’m talking about the audio resources and videos I’ve seen. A lot of smart people with bad pronunciation. Voice chat is a nice thing - perhaps for another day as I’m still working through the early lessons of LL and some other books. (Not bothering to listen to Orberg’s recordings - my own pronunciation is already better…)
It seems to me that long vowels are recognised but few bother to do it well or at all. Personally, I’ve moved past that and am now concerned with things like: consonant lengths, voicing assimilations, etc.