Re: Latin vowel inventory

On Tue, Jul 29, 2003 at 09:39:52PM -0400, Christopher Wright wrote:
> Hello.
>
> 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/
Note that there are several ways to pronounce Latin, all of them
accepted for various purposes.  In modern times most instructors
teach the reconstructed classical pronunciation, which represents
our best estimate of how the Romans pronounced Classical Latin
during the time of Cicero (I recommend W. Sidney Allen's excellent
book _Vox_Latina_ for discussion of the reconstruction and
pronunciation guidelines).   However, for centuries it was customary
to pronounce Latin as if it were the local dominant language,
so in England Latin was pronounced as if it were English,
in Italy as if it were Italian, etc.    The English pronunciation
survives in many borrowings, and is used for almost all Latin
in the legal and medical professions.  The Italian pronunciation
was adopted by the Roman Catholic Church and is today often called
the Ecclesiastical Pronunciation.  In it, the short/long vowel
distinction is not made at all.

In the reconstructed classical pronunciation, your list above is
mostly correct.  The long <e> is definitely /e/ and not /ej/, just
as long <o> is /o/ and not /ow/,  which right there is a noticeable
difference from English.    The long vowels were actually quantitatively
longer as well, probably by a factor of 1.5 or so.

The qualitative difference between short and long <a> is a matter
of some debate, with some folks arguing that there was none at all.
But most agree that there was, giving the short <a> one of the
values /@/, /V/, or /6/.

Also note that (going back to the Classical pronunciation) <c> is always /k/;
<ch> is /k_h/; <g> is always /g/; <th> and <ph> are /t_h/ and /p_h/, not
/T/ and /f/.  The <r> is always rolled /r/, not just a tap /4/.  And <z>
is /dz/.

Other than some devoicing clusters (e.g. <urbs> sounds like <urps>), I
think that's about it for differences from English consonants.

-Mark

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