Re: Quick Latin pronunciation question

Not being at home, I don't get to my mail each day, so I missed the start
of this thread. But I'm catching up. The restrictions of webmail make it
cumbersome to reply to all mails (I'll be back home on wednesday). But..

> On Sun, 25 May 2008 16:31:03 +1000, Tristan McLeay
> <conlang@...> wrote:
>>
>>On 25/05/08 16:13:27, Eugene Oh wrote:
>>>
>>> "Radius, radii" is an example. And "-ii-" words I presume should be
>>> more or less plural-only in English.
Not sure what is meant by 'more or less' plural - it IS plural, the
singular being 'radius'.

[snip]

>>But how did it interact with length? Was one element or the other
>>invariable long? (and if so, was it consistently one or the other --- I
>>notice that English treats the first vowel of "continuum" as long, but
>>the second of "radii"). Were they necessarily distinct from a long
>>vowel?
The first vowel was always _short_ in Classical Latin (with a few
exceptions with _i_ as Jeff notes below). There was no rule for the second
vowel; it could be long or short.

>(if not, that could explain "vacuum"). Was length completely
>>independent of this issue?
Yes, with the second vowel; no, as regards the first vowel.

_vacuum_ (or more strictly _uaccum_) was three syllables in Classical
Latin (see below) and still is in some varieties of English.
[snip]

>
> 1. I assume you're asking about classical Latin pronounced the way the
> ancients are thought to have done, at least when giving speeches or
> reciting
> poetry.
A good point - the way these things are pronounced when used in modern
languages is a good deal different   :)

> 2. By "long" WRT English, I assume you're referring to historical length,
> not the
> phonetic length occurring in the various kinds of modern English.
> 3. I also assume length in Latin is used in a strictly quantitative sense.
>
> First, length in English has little to do with length in Latin.
>
> As a rule, a vowel is short before another vowel is short. Exceptions
> include
> forms of FIO, pronominal genitive singulars (such as UNIUS), and a few
> other
> things. Final I is long, except in a few words. Except in diphthongs, two
> consecutive vowels were in separate syllables, so: /"ra.di.i:/ and
> /"wa.ku.um/.
> I'm not sure how hiatus was handled -- differences in vowel quality may
> have
> helped in some cases -- but I think that if the vowels were combined into
> a
> single long vowel that the Romans would have written one letter.
>
> Probably Ray will come along with a better answer.
>
> Jeff
I don't think I could better this - it's spot on. As for how the Romans
handled hiatus, we simply can't tell (unless someone comes up with time
travel). The metrics of Latin make it quite clear that they were not
combined into a single vowel or diphthong.

Ray.