Talk:Latin phonology and orthography

Quality contrast between long and short vowels
If you read the article "On the Evolution of Short High Vowels of Latin into Romance" by Andrea Calabrese, you'll see that he contests Allen's Classical Latin vowel system as [iː ɪ eː ɛ ä(ː) ɔ oː ʊ uː]. According to Calabrese, Classical Latin had a vowel system with five different qualities, i.e. [i(ː) ɛ(ː) ä(ː) ɔ(ː) u(ː)], with no quality distinction between long and short vowels, at least until the 1st century AD. YanisBourgeois (talk) 00:14, 26 November 2023 (UTC)


 * Yes, this has been discussed before (see archives). Calabrese's view, unfortunately popularized by some youtuber, runs counter to the overwhelming scholarly majority in favour of Allen's. It is mentioned in footnote #4 already. Nicodene (talk) 13:17, 28 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Yet I haven't seen a counterargument against Calabrese's vowel system other than the argument of majority. It has been discarded as a minority view, but not debunked (or maybe I'm wrong, please tell me if I am). Thanks for your response YanisBourgeois (talk) 08:39, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
 * The reason I'm saying that Calabrese hasn't been debunked is that nobody as far as I know has justified Allen's vowel system for Classical Latin while taking into account Calabrese's objection to Allen. All the sources that justify Allen's vowel system accept as a premise that Classical Latin is the most recent "common ancestor" to the Western Romance Languages (French, Spanish, Portuguese, etc.) which is incorrect. Those languages, used to justify Allen's system, are actually descended from Vulgar Latin. So Allen may very well have described Vulgar Latin while believing to describe Classical Latin. The Romance languages that actually descend from Classical Latin as opposed to Vulgar Latin (e.g. Sardinian) tend to indicate Calabrese's vowel system. YanisBourgeois (talk) 09:47, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
 * WP:NOTFORUM and WP:FRINGE. We can discuss this on my private talk page or yours, if you like, but such a discussion will have no impact on this article. Nicodene (talk) 11:26, 30 November 2023 (UTC)