Talk:Latin regional pronunciation

Font problem
Hi- I'm not getting the IPA symbols on my screen--presumably I need to download a font? Could this page be modified with a sentence saying this, or an appropriate link? Presumably lots of readers would have the same problem. Thanks, Opus33 16:02, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * This is a standard problem of IE. Tough luck :) Get yourself a modern browser that supports current standards like Firefox :) Ok, jokes aside, I added the standard notice for possible problems with special characters. --Tbackstr 22:25, Nov 13, 2004 (UTC)

Classical 'ae'
The pronunciation given for Classical Latin for 'ae' looks to be incorrect. The correct Classical pronunciation would be [ai] (roughly like the English "I"/"eye"). The standard work on this subject is W. Sidney Allen, 'Vox Latina' (Cambridge University Press, 2nd ed., 1978, London).
 * I don't have any references at hand, but your proposition seems a bit odd to me. I can't remember ever having heard "bonai". Are you sure? If you are sure, please, go ahead and make the correction. Otherwise I can check it within a few days, since I have Timothy McGee's book waiting for me in the mail. They tell me that this book is widely used by singers. --Tbackstr 14:03, Dec 30, 2004 (UTC)
 * Uh, the McGee book doesn't have Classical Latin - just the regional ones. Somebody, help us out. --Tbackstr 18:42, Jan 7, 2005 (UTC)

for me, the "ai" pronunciation is better because you can distinguish things like "amice" (vocative) and "amicae" (genitive). --Revolución (talk) 18:03, 17 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Ai is indeed accepted as the Classical pronunciation of ae. Alexander 007 10:49, 14 January 2006 (UTC)


 * No - [ai] is the archaic pronounciation, in Classical times it was already [aɪ] or even [ae]. Qubux 02:59, 16 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Qubux is right. In Archaic Latin, the spelling was AI, so we can conjecture that the pronuciation then was along the lines of [ai] or [aɪ]. In Classical Latin though, the spelling was consciously changed to AE, which again can only be interpreted as suggesting a change also in pronunciation towards [ae] or [aɛ]. Aggfvavitus 11:26, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
 * That is right. But the difference in pronunciation of [ai] and [ae] is practically zero - so little that it could be a writing fashion only whether to write bonai (as the Archaic Latins did) or bonae as Cicero would.--93.133.195.55 (talk) 19:04, 15 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Not for a speaker of a language which distinguishes the diphthongs [ai] and [ae], such as Estonian. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 20:47, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

Iberian
What about Iberian??? --Revolución (talk) 05:42, 17 December 2005 (UTC)


 * I know Spanish, but not Portuguese or Catalan or any of the other Iberian languages, so I'll guess the best I can.Cameron Nedland 13:42, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

excelsis
Is it true that the Italian Latin pronuncation of "xc" is [tʃ]? When singing in choirs, I have been told to do various things, including [kstʃ], [kʃ], [gʃ], but I have never heard the pronunciation [etʃelsis]. Lesgles ( talk ) 21:11, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

It's Eh-ks-chel-sees (I'm Italian). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 151.51.42.167 (talk) 22:46, 11 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I put a "citation needed" template because in choirs that teach the "church Latin" pronunciation, at least in America it's always pronounced /kʃ/. This is consistent with the fact that excelsis is really ekscelsis and -sce- becomes /ʃ/.  If it's really true that Italians generally (not just some random editor) say /kstʃ/, then we should (a) put in a "choral pronunciation", which I suspect is the same everywhere, and indicate that it, not the Italian pronunciation, is the definition of the "church Latin" pronunciation. Benwing (talk) 10:51, 27 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't think the choral pronunciation is the same everywhere, though. When I sang in choirs in America, excelsis always had /kS/, but here in Germany it has /kstS/ when the Italianate pronunciation of Latin is desired. (The German pronunciation of Latin has /ksts/, but lately in Germany it's become fashionable to use Italo-Latin rather than Germano-Latin.) —Angr 10:57, 27 April 2009 (UTC)
 * According to page xxxviij of the Liber Usualis (English)—though the information is the same in the Latin and Italian versions—the ecclesiastical pronunciation (generally understood to be synonym for Italiante Latin) is /kʃ/. If, for some reason, the Liber Usualis is not sufficiently authoritative, this pronunciation is also given by site for EWTN (major Catholic network), Kansas University, and numerous other sources. If anything, the pronunciation should be listed as primarily /kʃ/ and a footnote added that some Italian dialects may alter this to /kstʃ/ from that standard. However, this is typically just a problem found in choral directors who don't know any better.Numorelda (talk) 13:52, 15 September 2017 (UTC)

Others
Certainly there are dozens if not hundreds of other regional versions of Latin. I personally would like to know what the Greeks sound like. Can anyone add some others?Cameron Nedland 13:51, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

French qu
Wouldn't this just be a 'k' sound?Cameron Nedland 02:11, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

S as s/z
Aren't any variation of letter 's' pronunciation? Who and when pronounces it as z? --ŠJů (talk) 22:12, 7 May 2008 (UTC)"

"S" is pronunciated as "z" in czech pronunciation, in the case that it is located between two vowels, or between vowel and one of this letters - n,l,r. Source: Eva Kuťáková, Dana Slabochová. AD FONTES CURSUS LATINUS. 3rd ed. Praha: Nakladatelství Karolinum, 2010.

Latin pronounciation
Hi, just want to make this comment: Good article, very helpful. But: isn't the correct spelling "pronounciation" and not "pronunciation"? My Webster agrees with me. Best regards C3klamu (talk) 19:40, 21 December 2008 (UTC)


 * You might want to look at your Webster more closely. "Pronunciation" is the correct spelling; "pronounciation" is a misspelling. —Angr 20:00, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Audio examples
We cannot use two non-free audio examples to illustrate the same thing, as per WP:NFCC 3a. I have removed one (chosen arbitrarily) accordingly. -kotra (talk) 19:07, 29 June 2009 (UTC)


 * There is some encyclopedic value to illustrating how different performers approach Franco-flemish Latin; much more questionable is whether any complete track is neccessary. Sparafucil (talk) 19:57, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Missing: J
(OK, there were never a J in classical Latin). The J phoneme as per ma i or and  i acere is missing. Since English-speakers cannot avoid mishandling Latin horribly (^#)) completeness is very important. ... said: Rursus (bork²) 07:38, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I added a line for J. I don't know whether Spanish and Portuguese pronounce it /j/ or like their own letter J (/x/ and /ʒ/ respectively), though. +Angr 12:51, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

French
French vowels are not adequatly treated yet; I have a stylesheet for late 17c:

Æ, E, OE [ɛ] (in closed syllable) [e] (open): "sédèt" AU [o] EU either [ø] "euripus" or diphthong [eɤ] "Deus"

AM, AN am, an if final or followed by m, n, -que, or vowel; ã before other consonants: "sanctus" EM, EN ɛn, ɛm if final or followed by m, n, -que, or vowel; ɜ~ (as in "faim") before other consonants: "semper" IM, IN im, in if final; ɛ~ otherwise: "ingratus" OM, ON ɔm, ɔn if final or followed by m, n, -que, or vowel; ɔ~ (as in "prononce") before other consonants: "fons" UM, UN om, on if final or followed by m, n, -que, or vowel: "aurum" [orɔm]; nasal õ before other consonants, excepting c; UNC ɶ~  following c: "sunt" (like Fr "sont) but "cuncti"

I dont quite believe [k] for QU, this usually gets the italianate [kw] treatment. Sparafucil (talk) 03:13, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

international?
Isn´t thera an international standard for pronunciation? I heard, that some 50 years ago there was a conference of latinists from various countries, and they did not understand anything. How is today´s situation in schools?--Hans W (talk) 14:36, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

English vowels
Nearly every vowel-box in the English column has two or three alternates, with no sign of when to use which. If these represent competing standards, let's split the column (we can do that, this is English WP). If they're for different environments, say which! —Tamfang (talk) 04:56, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

Catalan
I've added Catalan to the table. --Victar (talk) 21:46, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

Slavic
I think Slavic should be split into Russian and Polish. As is, it takes up a lot of space. --Victar (talk) 21:56, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

I think that some Slavic languages (at least Czech) distinguish between short and long vowels, but the table doesn't take it into consideration. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.111.93.162 (talk) 21:16, 28 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Definitely it was the case during my school years. I think it is quite close to the German pronunciation. Vladimír Fuka (talk) 23:26, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

German Wiki-Page
There is none. Stephanie — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.128.81.217 (talk) 09:17, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

French pronunciation of CH
I'm surprise by the given French pronunciation of CH: /sh/. It's not proper phonetics if it means /ʃ/, but as a French native, my experience of it is always /k/ like in MICHI and CHORUS. Sorry for not bringing any source, only raising the issue! --Napish (talk) 15:27, 9 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Ah, I caught this independently on seeing that horrid /sh/ in the table. Good to see that /k/ was correct.  I've tagged it as wanting a source, though.  4pq1injbok (talk) 20:44, 19 June 2016 (UTC)

German pronunciation
I think the given German pronunciation might not be completely right, because at first, I think ti could also be pronunced /tsj/ instead of /tsɪ/ because vocalic /ɪ/ does not occur in front of a vowel in German. Besides, the article about German pronunciation of Latin in the German Wikipedia ("Deutsche Aussprache des Lateinischen") says that long and short vowels aren't always distinguished (which this article does for i, o, u) (unfortunately, the German article does not cite any sources):

"In contrast to the classical pronunciation of Latin the use of long and short vowels doesn't follow any strict rules; there only are conventions which are: - Long vowels may only occur in stressed syllables, if their vowel is long at all. Example: "Romani" = [ʁo.ˈmaː.ni]; "facere" = ['fa(ː).tsə.ʁə]. - As in (Standard) German a vowel in front of a doubled consonant is always short. Example: "stella" = ['stɛla] - Vowels in open syllables are always pronunced long. Examples: - "globus" = [ˈɡloːbʊs] - "rosa" = [ˈʁoːza] - "Venus" = [ˈveːnʊs]/[ˈfeːnʊs] As in German, there is a correspondence between quality (open / closed) and length of a vowel:

letter: a, e, i, o, u, y short: [a], [ɛ] / [ə], [ɪ] / [i], [ɔ], [ʊ], [ɪ] / [i] / [ʏ] long: [aː], [eː], [iː], [oː], [uː], [iː] / [yː]

- Short e in unstressed syllables becomes [ə] - Short i (and maybe y) is articulated closed at the end of a word (e.g. "Romani" = [ʁo.ˈmaː.ni]) […]"

This would mean that the first u in sumus would be [uː], while the second u in sumus would be [ʊ], as the u in sum and both u in summus would as well. --Reisbär (talk) 08:49, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

Added reference to Copeman book
I added the Harold Copeman book "Singing in Latin" to the Further Reading list. It's an exhaustive, book-length, scholarly treatment of Latin pronunciation through the centuries and throughout the Western world.

Here's the Amazon page: https://www.amazon.com/Singing-Latin-Harold-Copeman/dp/0951579827/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1534268589&sr=8-1&keywords=singing+in+latin+copeman

And a review of the book. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1082&context=ppr

Omc (talk) 17:52, 14 August 2018 (UTC)

Missed: r and rh
I think it's quite important because of significant variations of pronunciation of r in regional languages. It would be reasonable to show here whether the regional Latin pronunciations of r (and rh as well) follow the "native" local pronunciations or, contrary, the Latin teachers attempt to reproduce the Classical or at least Ecclesiastical pronunciation. --2A00:1370:8149:1285:71D9:CC9D:6BA5:4611 (talk) 21:40, 22 April 2020 (UTC)