Just received the book Vox Latina.
A lot of the points in the book are difficult to understand.
I have a couple of questions and look forward to any info any of you has.
Regarding the pronunciation of the letter m at the end of a word, the book says this. …it seems to have been reduced to a mere nasalization of the proceeding vowel.
…the vowel was lengthened as well as nasalized…
…completely lost.
Now, in simple terms… what did the author mean?
Did Latin have nasals like French?
Was diem pronounced dee m or similar to French bien. (exept with a d instead of a b)
Did the tonal accent shift to the last vowel in the accusative?
(The author says the vowel was lengthened)
In the case of vir, how could virum be nasalized?
Really, very difficult to understand the book.
I look forward to hearing comments from anyone with a view.
If I remember correctly, he is talking about the evolution of Latin and not the classical pronunciation itself… In classical pronunciation, there were no nasal vowels as far as I know.
Thanks for you replies.
I’m glad others also found the book difficult to understand.
Yes, much of what is in the book is academic and lacks practical examples.
To this post specifically, about the vowel being nasalized and lengthened…
Yes, the author was talking specifically about classical pronunciation and in fact used early (pre classic) latin to back this up. He uses several quotes from ancient grammarians.
A nasalized vowel at the end of the word means that Latin has nasalization like French or Portuguese. There is no other way to nasalize a final vowel unless it’s like that in French.
If so, this is new to me.
I have never heard anywhere that Latin had French style nasalization.
How can it be both nasalized AND lengthened?
How can you say “ehhh” (long e) as a nasal?
Salvete
From what I’ve read about Latin in the medieval to early-modern periods, there are many examples of nazalisation on n and m, but more especially to do with how Latin was pronounced in France (not surprisingly), and even writing a final “um” as “on” when dictated. I haven’t checked on this specifically but I think I remember information about this in Beaulieux (Histoire de l’Orthographie Francaise, 1927) and Erasmus’s essay ‘De Recta latini graecique sermonis pronuntiatione’. Historically, there are lots of national and regional variations in Latin pronunciation, so sticking to either prescribed “classical” or “modern Italian ecclesiastical” is safest.
And you definitely can say a long ‘e’ nazalized “ehhh” or “ehhhng”, and, if I remember correctly, I think that Erasmus [sorry if it’s not Erasmus and I’m misremembering] suggests that a French person (in the early 16th century) will drawn out the syllable to three beats,–more than the normal two beats for a long vowel.
Adrianus
The book is not at all wrong on this point, nor was final ‘m’ totally lost. Final ‘m’ represents the nasalization of the preceding vowel. If you go to my site, you may listen to a recitation I have done for one of my posts:
The nasalization, however, is very different from that of French because in French the quality of a nasalized vowel is totally changed and corrupted from the pure vowel — not so in Latin: in Latin, the vowel’s quality remains quite constant, and the sound is merely let out through the nose as well as the mouth.
I was listening for the final m. Sometimes you never pronounced it at all and sometimes you did. I heard you speaking with a long vowel but I never heard a nasal.
Is there any chance you could send me an audio file with some single words spoken slowly showing how the final m should be pronounced.