Re: Quick Latin pronunciation question

Yes, the vowels involved have different length patterns. They are
simply not marked in Latin writing unless for pedagogic purposes. The
Latin pronunciation would have ['radi.i:] > English /reidi.ai/. The a
> ei shift can be explained by the Mediaeval tendency to lengthen
vowels in open syllables, which was probably not helped by the
similarity of <radius> with a short /a/ with <radix> (from which
derives radical etc.) with a long one.

Where two short vowels collide at the end of a word, IIRC, the trend
is to merge them when speaking into one long vowel, hence the long /i/
ending in the dative for i-stem third declension nouns or adjectives,
like "fortis". (Then again, the two books I have at home on Latin
differ on the length of the dative ending for non-i-stem third
declension nouns.)

In any case, I didn't get what you meant about <vacuum>. It rhymes
with <continuum> in my speech. Although I do hear people pronounce it
quick as [v{kju:m], and I think that might be what you are referring
to, but I believe it is due to syncope of the schwa from regular use.

Eugene

On Sun, May 25, 2008 at 4:01 PM, Benct Philip Jonsson <melroch@...> wrote:
> According to the school grammar second declension plurals
> in -ii should be /i.i:/, i.e. one short /i/ followed by a long one,
> and uacuum should have two short vowels in succession.
> At least by late ancient times the first vowel in such pairs
> had disappeared, and only the second vowel, long or short
> as appropriate, was written and probably spoken: radi, uacum.
> Maybe the classical spelling was a pedantic morphological
> spelling anyway; NB that the vocative of e.g. Lucius, filius
> was Luci, fili all along, not **Lucie **filie, so Latin wasn't
> above contraction of awkward vowel sequences!
>
> 2008/5/25 Tristan McLeay <conlang@...>:
>> In Latin, how were ii and uu pronounced? I think they usually occur
>> between a root and an affix, for instance "tuum" or "Patricii". "uu" in
>> English borrowings is of course pronounced as either /ju:@/ (continuum)
>> or /ju:/ (vacuum) with presumably no historical reason. I can't think
>> of any English words with "ii" in them from Latin though.
>>
>> --
>> Tristan.
>>
>
>
>
> --
> / BP
>

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