Re: Latin vowel inventory

On Tue, 29 Jul 2003, Christopher Wright wrote:

> I was reading a TY (Teach Yourself) Latin book and looked at the
> pronunciation section. This is what it said, converted to SAMPA, of course:
>
> (left indicates "long" vowel, right indicates "short" vowel)
> a /A/, /@/
> e /e/ (or /ej/), /E/
> i /i/, /I/
> o /o/, /A/
> u /u/, /U/
> y /y/
>
> Needless to say, I was dismayed that Latin might be so similar to English.
> I think rather that the writer of the book, namely one Gavin Betts, is an
> idiot who has no idea how it was pronounced. It's good for my sanity.
I'm guessing what happened is that discriptions of the sounds were used.
And he described it in terms of his own dialect. And your dialect is
substantially different (I'm guessing American). So what he said was
probably pretty correct for himself and his intended audience, but
horribly wrong for you. I'm just wondering how 'y' was described?

Walter Ripman's _Handbook of the Latin Language_ gives the following
(using his old-fashioned IPA translated into Modern IPA and then
X-Sampa, and converting macrons to colons):

a:  is the sound of a in 'father'; not that in 'lady'.   [A:]
a   is the same sound shortened; not that in 'bat'.      [A]
e:  is a long close e, that is to say the French         [e:]
    [e acute] lengthened, the sound of ee in German
    'Schnee'. This sound is not found in southern
    [British] English, but occurs in some dialects. The
    vowelpart of 'day' is a diphthong [eI] in South. English.
e   is a short open e, lik the French [e grave]. It is   [E]
    the first sound of 'air'.
i:  is the sound of i in French 'arrive', and of ea in   [i:]
    'beat' (thoug hthe latter is sometimes diphthongal).
    It is never pronounced like i in Eng. 'arrive'.
i   is not the same sound shortened, as in Fr. 'fini',   [I]
    but is the loosely articulated i in English 'finish'.
    (The letter i may also represent a consonant ...)
o:  is a long close o, as in Fr. 'rose' or German        [o]
    'Rose'. This sound is not found in southern English
    but occurs in some dialects. Our o is 'rose' is a
    diphthong [oU], not a pure long vowel.
o   is a short open o, as in French 'robe'. Our o in     [O]
    'rob' is often---and best---pronounced like this;
    but there is a common variety in southern [Br]
    English, with mouth more open and tounge drawn
    far back, that should be avoided.
u:  is the sound of ou in French 'rouge', and of u in    [u:]
    'truth' (though the latter is sometimes dipthongal).
    It is never pronounced [as [ju:]].
u   is not the same sound shortened, as in French        [U]
    'toute', but is the loosely articulated u in English
    'put'. It is never pronounced like u in English
    'cut'. (The letter u may also represent a consonant ...)
y:, y are the sounds of u in French 'pure' and 'pu'.     [y:, y]
    The ending -imus (e.g. in 'optimus', 'ma:ximus')
    was sometimes written -umus. The vowel thus variously
    represented by i or u was probably a laxly articulated
    [y] sound, like [u umlaut] of German 'Huette'.       [Y]

ae  which is pronounced like ai in aisle or in German    [AI]
    'Kaiser'; never like ae in English 'Caesar'.
au  which is pronouncde like ou in 'loud' or au in       [AU]
    German 'laut'; never like au in 'haul'.
ei  does not occur frequently (e.g. in 'ei!' and in      [eI]
    'Pompe:ii:'); it was a diphthong; 'deinde' is a
    word of two syllables.

    The less common diphthongs oe and eu are best pronounced as they are
written (o+e, e+u). In 'cui', 'hui' the ui is to be pronounced as a
dipthong, somewhat as in 'ruinous'; but 'qui:' is [kwi:].

So your pronounciations aren't bad, but your interpretation of the TY book
was awful:)

--
Tristan                  <kesuari@...>

Yesterday I was a dog. Today I'm a dog. Tomorrow I'll probably still
be a dog. Sigh! There's so little hope for advancement.
                -- Snoopy

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