Latin Pronunciation

Latin Pronunciation • Before we get started, let’s go over a couple of important rules. • Latin is no longer a spoken language, so I don’t make correct pronunciation a big issue. Don’t feel shy or embarrassed, please. You are all in the same boat so no one except for me has an advantage over anyone else! I expect everyone to respect everyone else. NO pointing fingers or laughing at a person who tries or doing anything to make someone feel bad! • No one really knows what authentic Latin sounded like any more! Latin evolved into the modern Romance languages which developed their own unique styles and there is no one left who knows what it actually sounded like. We think we know because of how documents were copied into other languages like Greek where we know for certain how things sounded. • There are actually 2 different kinds of Latin taught in schools today: Classic Latin and Ecclesiastic Latin. Classic Latin is the older form of Latin. It is what I teach. Ecclesiastic Latin is the “modern” version that is used in the Catholic Church. If you are catholic, the sounds I teach will be different from what you hear in church. I’ll point those differences out along the way. Ecclesiastic Latin sounds more like modern day Italian.

The Roman Alphabet Part I:consonant sounds • Latin is probably the easiest language for native English speakers to pronounce. • Except for one, it does not use sounds that we don’t normally use in English, so you won’t have to try to make your tongue and teeth do strange things to get the sounds correct. Also, we actually have more letters in English than there are in Latin! • What about the one sound that’s different? • No big deal! No one speaks Latin any more except for fun, so who’s going to worry about it?! If you can make the sound, terrific! If you can’t, I promise that NO ONE will care!

Let’s get started! • B says “b” as in the word boy. • C says “k” as in the word cake. • D says “d” as in the word dog. • F says “f” as in the word fog. • G says “g” as in the word go. • H is sometimes silent as in the word houror says “h” as in the word home.

I • I did not make a mistake! I know that in English, the letter I is a vowel and we are learning consonants. • But in Latin, sometimes the I actually makes the sound of a consonant. • When that happens it is called the consonantal I. • The sound of the consonantal I is “y” as in yes. • As Latin evolved, the Catholic Church made changes to the language in an effort to make it easier to teach to the tribal peoples who were finding it difficult. • So they took the I and added a hook ˘ to the bottom of it and it looked like this: J! In earlier Latin documents there are no J letters at all. They don’t come in until much later, after the language had been around for about 1000 years already. • So how do you know if the I is a vowel or a consonant? Just look to the next letter. If that letter is a vowel, then the I is a consonant. If that letter is a consonant, then the I is a vowel.

J exists only in later Latin. Our text book does not use it at all, but the AP texts and more “modern” original documents use the J. If you see it, it says “y” as in yes. • L says “l” as in the word leg. • M says “m” as in the word mom. • N says “n” as in the word no. • P says “p” as in the word pin. • Q(u) says “kw” as in the word quick. The q will always have a u with it, just like in English.

R says “r” as in the word red. • This is the one sound that we believe was truly different in authentic Latin. The real sound (we believe) was rolled like the same sound in Spanish. If you can make that happen, terrific! If you can’t, don’t worry about it. I won’t tell! • S says “s” as in the word say. • Don’t get lazy on this one, please. English likes to do strange things with this letter like in the word rose. How did it start sounding like a “z”? I don’t know, but let’s not do that here! • T says “t” as in the word toast. • Notice how crisply we say both of the “t” sounds here. Don’t make it lazy like in the word hospital.

V says “w” as in the word water. Strange, isn’t it! • X says “ks” as in x-ray. Never the “z” sound like the first x in Xerox. • Y says “oo” as in the word soon. That’s another strange one. This letter is not actually Latin, it is Greek. Its real name in Greek is Upsilon and it is more like our letter u. I have included it in this list because the Romans took many Greek words and used them as their own. It will matter more to you when you get to the AP level where pronunciation is more important.

Last things: • What about the K, W, and Z? • These letters don’t exist in Latin so you don’t have to worry about them. • Also, let’s take another look at the letters “c” and “g”. In English these letters can have both a soft sound and a hard sound: • Soft = circus and giraffe • Hard = can and give. • In Latin you will never use the soft sound, always the hard one.

The Roman Alphabet Part II:vowel sounds • Vowel sounds in many languages can be the most confusing sounds to deal with because there are so many variations. • For example, take the vowel a in English. • hat • about • hay • father • Four different sounds for just one letter!

In Latin? • Vowel sounds in Latin are much easier to deal with because each vowel has only two sounds. • Each vowel can be short or long. • Short vowels have no markings on them – that’s how you know they are short! • Long vowels have a mark called a macron or long mark above them which looks like this: ¯ • Sometimes there is a noticeable difference in pronunciation and sometimes the difference is very subtle, but they are all easy.

Let’s get started! • a says “a” as in the word ago. • ā says “a” as in the word father. • e says “e” as in the word beg. • ē says “e” as in the word hey. • i says “i” as in the word big. • ī says “i” as in the word brief. • o says “o” as in the word goat. • ō says “o” as in the word hope. • u says “u” as in the word put. • ū says “u” as in the word soon.

Let’s put them to work! • Now that you can pronounce the vowel sounds and the consonant sounds you can put them together to make whole words. Let’s try them and see how it goes. Mārs nox iam lēge hīc pār post fit sociīs quī dat digitī certē nārrat mōns malā cūr quid iūstus vīs

The Roman Alphabet Part III:Diphthongs • All right, so now we can do consonants and vowels. But what in the world are diphthongs? • Diphthongs are combinations of letters that make one sound. • In English we have diphthongs made up of both consonants and vowels. In Latin only vowels work as diphthongs.

Examples in English • Whenever we see the combination “ch” we know to pronounce the sound of a “k” for words like character. But it can make a unique sound in words like chicken. • The combination of “th” also makes a unique sound not represented by any one letter. It simply says “th” • Other examples include things like rh,ph, kn, qu, and gu. • Examples of vowel diphthongs include things like au, ie, ou, ough, augh, etc.

Now for Latin • There are only a few diphthongs in Latin, but they are very common and should be learned thoroughly. • ae says “ai” like in the word high. • au says “ow” like in the word how. • oe says “oy” like in the word boy. • ui says “whee” like in the word whee! • Note that the ui diphthong occurs only when the i is a vowel, not a consonant. • eu says “eeyoo”. We don’t have this sound in English.

Let’s practice! • Try pronouncing these Latin words that contain diphthongs. audio puellae clausae huius moenia

Latin Pronunciation