Short and Long O

Latin Learning Latin
1

Hi
This has probably been asked many times, but I’m going to ask it again. Whats the difference between the short and long o? Long as in holy and short as in wholly. Last time I checked those sounded the exact same. Thanks

EDIT: Another question. Are the ae and oe ligatures commonly accepted as correct, or would it be better just to use ae, or does it really not matter?

2

Basically they are the same sound, but a long O should be pronounced for about twice the duration as the short O, which should be rather clipped.

EDIT: Another question. Are the ae and oe ligatures commonly accepted as correct, or would it be better just to use ae, or does it really not matter?

ae and oe can be written æ and œ respectively. Modern practice is usually to write them separately. I have seen both styles used in inscriptions, so I imagine that the Romans themselves used both styles.

3

OK, that makes sense.

Another question. It says that the letter V is prounced as a W as in wine. Why doesn’t that seem right? I could have swore that the word vox was pronounced like vox, not wox.

EDIT:
Many questions. :stuck_out_tongue: When pronouncing a vowel cluster that isnt a dipthong, do you pronounce the first vowel long?
Dia - Dee-uh
Diana - Dee-un-uh

EDIT 2:
Dianas sagittas portat et faras necat.
Diana is carrying her arrows and killing wild beats?

The fact that sagitta is in genetive means that she is carrying HER arrows not just arrows in general, right?

Thanks again

4

Hello Hullabaloo, regarding your questions,

Well, it depends :slight_smile: The wine pronunciation as you refer is called the classical accent and it’s the one normally used in a lot of learning systems. Probably, Cicero would have usually said ‘vox’ that way. But, depending on time and region, you could have at least three possibilities: ‘vox’ like ‘wox’ (as in wine), like ‘vox’ (as in vain) or like ‘box’ (as in :slight_smile: box). So, an author from Spain in the third or fourth century A.D. would most likely not pronounce it like wine.

Let me just add that, in some places nowadays, like Italy, they use the traditional pronounce which sports vox like in vain.


According to the Allen and Greenough’s New Latin Grammar, “a vowel before another vowel or h is short: as in via, nihil” and, I add, as in Diana.

I think that sentence is incorrect. Probably it should be:

‘Diana sagittas portat et feras necat’ - Diana carries arrows and kills wild beasts.

There’s no ‘-as’ genitive is Latin. So, if we take into account that the word is saggita,ae - ‘sagittas’ is plural acusative and object of the verb ‘portat’, just like ‘feras’ is the object of ‘necat’.

Hope that helps, Cheers!
Luís

5

Pronouncing ia without making the i long seems quite awkward. Dee-ahn-uh makes more sense that trying to say di-ahn-uh unless i have a sort of gottal stop between the i and a.

Nautae - Now-tie
^ is that pronounced correctly?

6

The ‘i’ in latin should always be pronounced like (taking an english example, which isn’t the best, but will do) ‘dee’ (like in ‘tea’ or in ‘meat’)and never ‘di’.

In ‘Diana’, you just have to make the open ‘a’ longer than the ‘i’. It’s only awkward if you pronounce it like in English - dii-a-na.

Perfect :wink: If you’re a native english speaker, you have to try and ignore your accent when reading Latin and get into the groove :smiley:

Cheers!

7

OK, thanks. The O’Dooge book or what ever it is says the un-macron I is prounced like in “bit”

8

In the ablative ending for singular -a nouns, the ending is just a macron a. Well I believe that the macron a is just longer and when saying that it shifts the stress to the last syllable. So would the ablative ending like that just be a stress shift to the last syllable? Maybe theres 2 accents now? Maybe neither. I’m not sure.

9

Except a few words (adduc, illic, illuc, illac), the accent in latin never falls in the last syllable. If the penultimate is long, it stays there; if not, it goes back to the antepenultimate (general rule).

So, an example: puella ablative, the last ‘a’ is long, but so is the ‘e’; so the accent falls on the ‘e’.

Now, a Roman would stress that syllable in an higher pitch; in most modern languages, we stress diferently, lenghtening the vowel (or cluster), or saying it more intensively. I think most Latin learners and readers stress Latin in this fashion.

Thus, in that case, you probalby should clearly stress the ‘e’ - as the accent lies there - but still pronounce the long ‘a’ open. I know that to our ears that doesn’t make the nominative very different from the ablative, but the romans (as were the greeks) at some point were surely able to distinct both just through the quantity of that last ‘a’.

I hope that helps, maybe others will add further information.
Cheers!

10

OK, that makes sense. Thanks! :smiley:

EDIT: Nother question. Why does the word “est” occasionaly change to “estne”, and “sunt” to “suntne”? I’m guessing it changes the meanings to “Is it” and “Are they” respectivly, but I’m guessing.

11

Exactly, the -ne suffix is used when asking a question.

Pulchra est means “She’s beautiful”, while Pulchra estne? means “Is she beautiful?”. You can add -ne to any word in the sentence, to shift the focus. So Pulchrane est? would mean “Is it beautiful she is?”.

12

Ahh, thanks. Say, is there a book like O’Dooges with vocabulary that might actually benifit someone. I can say “He killed the slave” and “Galba carries water to his cottage” but not “I’m reading the book” or “I’m walking to the store to buy milk”. Some useful vocabulary would be nice. Hell, the book doesn’t have the words book or read in the dictionary at the back, yet it has cohort and commonwealth. Are there any guides that have useful vocabulary?

13

-ne is traditionally appended to the first word in a question sentence, though it is not unheard of for it to go with the second or third word.

14

I thought it also tended to be appended (ha) to the verb, which was moved to the head of the sentance.