Latin phonology is the system of sounds used in various kinds of Latin. This article largely deals with what features can be deduced for Classical Latin as it was spoken by the educated from the late Roman Republic to the early Empire. Evidence comes in the form of comments from Roman grammarians, common spelling mistakes, transcriptions into other languages, and the outcomes of various sounds in the Romance languages. [1]
Latin orthography refers to the writing system used to spell Latin from its archaic stages down to the present. Latin was nearly always spelt in the Latin alphabet, but further details varied from period to period. The alphabet developed from Old Italic script, which had developed from a variant of the Greek alphabet, which had developed from a variant of the Phoenician alphabet. The Latin alphabet most resembles the Greek alphabet that can be seen on black-figure pottery dating to c. 540 BC.
As the language continued to be used as a classical language, lingua franca and liturgical language long after it ceased being a native language, pronunciation and – to a lesser extent – spelling diverged significantly from the classical standard with Latin words being pronounced differently by native speakers of different languages. While nowadays a reconstructed classical pronuncation aimed to be that of the 1st century AD [2] is usually employed in the teaching of Latin, the Italian-influenced ecclesiastical pronunciation as used by the Catholic church is still in common use. The Traditional English pronunciation of Latin has all but disappeared from classics education but continues to be used for Latin-based loanwords and use of Latin e.g. for binominal names in taxonomy.
During most of the time written Latin was in widespread use, authors variously complained about language change or attempted to "restore" an earlier standard. Such sources are of great value in reconstructing various stages of the spoken language (the Appendix Probi is an important source for the spoken variety in the 4th century CE, for example) and have in some cases indeed influenced the development of the language. The efforts of Renaissance Latin authors were to a large extent successful in removing innovations in grammar, spelling and vocabulary present in Medieval Latin but absent in both classical and contemporary Latin.
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In Classical times there was no modern-like distinction between upper case and lower case. Inscriptions typically use square capitals, in letterforms largely corresponding to modern upper-case, and handwritten text was generally in the form of cursive, which includes letterforms corresponding to modern lowercase.
In Classical spelling, individual letters mainly corresponded to individual phonemes (alphabetic principle). Exceptions include:
Below are the distinctive (i.e. phonemic) consonants that are assumed for Classical Latin. Those placed in brackets have a debated phonemic status, and those preceded by a dagger are found mainly or only in Greek loanwords.
| Labial | Coronal | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| plain | labialized | ||||||
| Plosive | voiced | b | d | ɡ | ( ɡʷ ) | ||
| voiceless | p | t | k | ( kʷ ) | |||
| aspirated | † pʰ | † tʰ | † kʰ | ||||
| Fricative | voiced | † z | |||||
| voiceless | f | s | h | ||||
| Nasal | m | n | |||||
| Rhotic | r | ||||||
| Approximant | l | j | w | ||||
Classical Latin had ten native phonemic monophthongs, five short /ieaou/ and five long /iːeːaːoːuː/. Some loanwords from Greek had ⟨y⟩, which would have been pronounced as /y(ː)/ by educated speakers but approximated with the native vowels /i(ː)/ or /u(ː)/ by the less-educated.
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | i iː (y yː) | u uː | |
| Mid | e eː | o oː | |
| Open | a aː |
The short vowels /ieou/ appear to have been pronounced with a relatively open quality, which may be approximated as [ ɪ ][ ɛ ][ ɔ ][ ʊ ], and the corresponding long vowels with a relatively close quality, approximately [ iː ][ eː ][ oː ][ uː ]. [lower-alpha 3] That the short /iu/ were, as this implies, similar in quality to the long /eːoː/ is suggested by attested misspellings such as: [36]
/e/ most likely had a more open allophone before /r/. [37]
/e/ and /i/ were probably pronounced closer when they occurred before another vowel, with e.g. mea written as ⟨mia⟩ in some inscriptions. Short /i/ before another vowel is often written with the so-called i longa, as in ⟨dꟾes⟩ for diēs, indicating that its quality was similar to that of long /iː/; it was almost never confused with e in this position. [38]
y was used in Greek loanwords with upsilon Υ. This letter represented the close front rounded vowel, both short and long: /yyː/. [39] Latin did not have this sound as a native phoneme, and speakers tended to pronounce such loanwords with /uuː/ in Old Latin and /iiː/ in Classical and Late Latin if they were unable to produce /yyː/.
An intermediate vowel sound (likely a close central vowel [ ɨ ] or possibly its rounded counterpart [ ʉ ]), called sonus medius, can be reconstructed for the classical period. [40] Such a vowel is found in documentum, optimus, lacrima (also spelled docimentum, optumus, lacruma) and other words. It developed out of a historical short /u/, later fronted by vowel reduction. In the vicinity of labial consonants, this sound was not as fronted and may have retained some rounding, thus being more similar if not identical to the unreduced short /u/[ ʊ ]. [41] The Claudian letter Ⱶ ⱶ was possibly invented to represent this sound, but is never actually found used this way in the epigraphic record (it usually served as a replacement for the upsilon).
Vowels followed by a nasal consonant were allophonically realised as long nasal vowels in two environments: [42]
Those long nasal vowels had the same quality as ordinary long vowels. In Vulgar Latin, the vowels lost their nasalisation, and they merged with the long vowels (which were themselves shortened by that time). This is shown by many forms in the Romance languages, such as Spanish costar from Vulgar Latin cōstāre (originally constāre) and Italian mese from Vulgar Latin mēse (Classical Latin mensem). On the other hand, the short vowel and /n/ were restored, for example, in French enseigne and enfant from insignia and infantem (e is the normal development of Latin short i), likely by analogy with other forms beginning in the prefix in-. [43]
When a final -m occurred before a plosive or nasal in the next word, however, it was pronounced as a nasal at the place of articulation of the following consonant. For instance, tan dūrum[tanˈduː.rũː] was written for tam dūrum in inscriptions, and cum nōbīs[kʊnˈnoː.biːs] was a double entendre, [16] presumably for cunnō bis[ˈkʊnnoːbɪs].
| Front | Back | |
|---|---|---|
| Close | ui ui̯ | |
| Mid | ei ei̯ eu eu̯ | oe oe̯~eː |
| Open | ae ae̯~ɛː au au̯ | |
ae, oe, au, ei, eu could represent diphthongs: ae represented /ae̯/, oe represented /oe̯/, au represented /au̯/, ei represented /ei̯/, and eu represented /eu̯/. ui sometimes represented the diphthong /ui̯/, as in cui and huic. [27] The diphthong ei mostly had changed to ī by the classical epoch; ei remained only in a few words such as the interjection hei.
If there is a tréma above the second vowel, both vowels are pronounced separately: aë[ä.ɛ], aü[a.ʊ], eü[e.ʊ] and oë[ɔ.ɛ]. However, disyllabic eu in morpheme borders is traditionally written without the tréma: meus[ˈme.ʊs] 'my'.
In Old Latin, ae, oe were written as ai, oi and probably pronounced as [äi̯,oi̯], with a fully closed second element, similar to the final syllable in French . In the late Old Latin period, the last element of the diphthongs was lowered to [e], [44] so that the diphthongs were pronounced [äe̯] and [oe̯] in Classical Latin. They were then monophthongized to [ɛː] and [eː] respectively, starting in rural areas at the end of the Republican period. [lower-alpha 4] The process, however, does not seem to have been completed before the 3rd century AD, and some scholars say that it may have been regular by the 5th century. [45]
Vowel and consonant length were more significant and more clearly defined in Latin than in modern English. Length is the duration of time that a particular sound is held before proceeding to the next sound in a word. In the modern spelling of Latin, especially in dictionaries and academic work, macrons are frequently used to mark long vowels: ⟨ā ē ī ō ū ȳ⟩, while the breve is sometimes used to indicate that a vowel is short: ⟨ă ĕ ĭ ŏ ŭ y̆⟩.
Long consonants were usually indicated through doubling, but ancient Latin orthography did not distinguish between the vocalic and consonantal uses of i and v. Vowel length was indicated only intermittently in classical sources and even then through a variety of means. Later medieval and modern usage tended to omit vowel length altogether. A short-lived convention of spelling long vowels by doubling the vowel letter is associated with the poet Lucius Accius. Later spelling conventions marked long vowels with an apex (a diacritic similar to an acute accent) or, in the case of long i, by increasing the height of the letter (long i); in the second century AD, those were given apices as well. [46] The Classical vowel length system faded in later Latin and ceased to be phonemic in Romance, having been replaced by contrasts in vowel quality. Consonant length, however, remains contrastive in much of Italo-Romance, cf. Italian nono "ninth" versus nonno "grandfather". [47]
A minimal set showing both long and short vowels and long and short consonants is ānus/ˈaː.nus/ ('anus'), annus/ˈan.nus/ ('year'), anus/ˈa.nus/ ('old woman').
The letters b, d, f, h, m, n are always pronounced as in English [b], [d], [f], [h], [m], [n] respectively, and they do not usually cause any difficulties. The exceptions are mentioned below:
| Latin grapheme | Latin phoneme | English approximation |
|---|---|---|
| ⟨c⟩, ⟨k⟩ | [k] | Always hard as k in sky, never soft as in cellar, cello, or social. ⟨k⟩ is a letter coming from Greek, but seldom used and generally replaced by c. |
| ⟨ch⟩ | [kʰ] | As ch in chemistry, and aspirated; never as in challenge or change and also never as in Bach or chutzpa. Transliteration of Greek ⟨χ⟩, mostly used in Greek loanwords. |
| ⟨g⟩ | [ɡ] | Always hard as g in good, never soft as g in gem. |
| ⟨gn⟩ | [ɡn~ŋn] | As ngn in wingnut. |
| ⟨i⟩ | [j] | Sometimes at the beginning of a syllable, as y in yard, never as j in just. |
| [jː] | Doubled between vowels, as y y in toy yacht. | |
| ⟨l⟩ | [l] | When doubled ⟨ll⟩ or before ⟨i⟩, as clear l in link (known as L exilis). [48] [49] |
| [ɫ] | In all other positions,[ dubious – discuss ][ citation needed ] as dark l in bowl (known as L pinguis). | |
| ⟨p⟩ | [p] | As p in spy, unaspirated. |
| ⟨ph⟩ | [pʰ] | As p in party, always aspirated; never as in photo when being pronounced in English. Transliteration of Greek ⟨φ⟩, mostly used in Greek loanwords. |
| ⟨qu⟩ | [kʷ] | Similar to qu in quick, never as qu in antique. Before ⟨i⟩, like cu in French cuir. |
| ⟨quu⟩ | [kʷɔ~kʷu~ku] | There were two trends: the educated and popular pronunciation. Within educated circles it was pronounced [kʷɔ], evoking the Old Latin pronunciation (equos, sequontur); meanwhile, within popular circles it was pronounced [ku] (ecus, secuntur). [50] [51] |
| ⟨r⟩ | [r] | As r in Italian and several Romance languages. |
| ⟨rh⟩ | [r̥] | As r in Italian and several Romance languages, but voiceless; e.g. diarrhoea ⟨διάῤῥοια⟩. (see Voiceless alveolar trill). Transcription of Greek ῥ, mostly used in Greek loanwords. |
| ⟨s⟩ | [s] | As s in say, never as s in rise or measure. |
| ⟨t⟩ | [t] | As t in stay |
| ⟨th⟩ | [tʰ] | As th in thyme, and aspirated; never as in thing, or that. Transliteration of Greek ⟨θ⟩, mostly used in Greek loanwords. |
| ⟨v⟩ | [w] | Sometimes at the beginning of a syllable, or after ⟨g⟩ and ⟨s⟩, as w in wine, never as v in vine. |
| ⟨vu⟩ | [wɔ~wu] | As one is pronounced in some English accents, but without the nasal sound: parvus[ˈpɐr.wɔs], vivunt[ˈwiː.wɔnt]. The spelling vu is post-classical (in order to become regular in spelling). [50] [51] |
| ⟨x⟩ | [k͡s] | A letter representing ⟨c⟩ + ⟨s⟩, as well as ⟨g⟩ + ⟨s⟩: as x in English axe. |
| ⟨z⟩ | [d͡z~zː] | As in zoom, never as in pizza (mostly used in Greek loanwords). Transliteration of Greek ⟨ζ⟩. |
| Latin grapheme | Latin phone | English approximation |
|---|---|---|
| ⟨a⟩ | [ä] | Similar to u in cut when short. Transliteration of Greek short ⟨α⟩. |
| [äː] | Similar to a in father when long. Transliteration of Greek long ⟨α⟩. | |
| ⟨e⟩ | [ɛ] | As e in pet when short. Transliteration of Greek ⟨ε⟩. |
| [eː] | Similar to ey in they when long. Transliteration of Greek ⟨η⟩, and ⟨ει⟩ in some cases. | |
| ⟨i⟩ | [ɪ] | As i in sit when short. Transliteration of short Greek ⟨ι⟩. |
| [iː] | Similar to i in machine when long. Transliteration of Greek long ⟨ι⟩, and ⟨ει⟩ in some cases. | |
| ⟨o⟩ | [ɔ] | As o in sort when short. Transliteration of Greek ⟨ο⟩. |
| [oː] | Similar to o in holy when long. Transliteration of Greek ⟨ω⟩, and ⟨ου⟩ in some cases. | |
| ⟨u⟩ | [ʊ] | Similar to u in put when short. |
| [uː] | Similar to u in true when long. Transliteration of Greek ⟨ου⟩. | |
| ⟨y⟩ | [ʏ] | As in German Stück when short (or as short u or i) (mostly used in Greek loanwords). Transliteration of Greek short ⟨υ⟩. |
| [yː] | As in German früh when long (or as long u or i) (mostly used in Greek loanwords). Transliteration of Greek long ⟨υ⟩. |
| Latin grapheme | Latin phone | English approximation |
|---|---|---|
| ⟨ae⟩ | [ae̯] | As in aisle. Transliteration of Greek ⟨αι⟩. |
| ⟨au⟩ | [au̯] | As in out. Transliteration of Greek ⟨αυ⟩. |
| ⟨ei⟩ | [ei̯] | As to ey in they. Transliteration of Greek ⟨ει⟩ in some cases. |
| ⟨eu⟩ | [eu̯] | As in Portuguese eu. Transliteration of Greek ⟨ευ⟩. |
| ⟨oe⟩ | [oe̯] | As in boy. Transliteration of Greek ⟨οι⟩. |
| ⟨ui⟩ | [ui̯] | As in Spanish muy, approximately to hooey. |
| ⟨yi⟩ | [ʏɪ̯] | Transliteration of the Greek diphthong ⟨υι⟩. |
Although some French and Italian scholars believe that the classical Latin accent was purely a pitch accent, which had no effect on the placing of words in a line of poetry, the view of most scholars is that the accent was a stress accent. One argument for this is that unlike most languages with tonal accents, there are no minimal pairs like ancient Greek φῶς (falling accent) "light" vs. φώς (rising accent) "man" where a change of accent on the same syllable changes the meaning. [52] Among other arguments are the loss of vowels before or after the accent in words such as discip(u)līna and sinist(e)ra; and the shortening of post or pre-accentual syllables in Plautus and Terence by brevis brevians, for example, scansions such as senex and voluptātem with the second syllable short. [53]
In Old Latin, as in Proto-Italic, stress normally fell on the first syllable of a word. [54] During this period, the word-initial stress triggered changes in the vowels of non-initial syllables, the effects of which are still visible in classical Latin. Compare for example:
In the earliest Latin writings, the original unreduced vowels are still visible. Study of this vowel reduction, as well as syncopation (dropping of short unaccented syllables) in Greek loan words, indicates that the stress remained word-initial until around the time of Plautus, in the 3rd century BC. [55] The placement of the stress then shifted to become the pattern found in classical Latin.
In Classical Latin, stress changed. It moved from the first syllable to one of the last three syllables, called the antepenult, the penult, and the ultima (short for antepaenultima 'before almost last', paenultima 'almost last', and ultima syllaba 'last syllable'). Its position is determined by the syllable weight of the penult. If the penult is heavy, it is accented; if the penult is light and there are more than two syllables, the antepenult is accented. [56] In a few words originally accented on the penult, accent is on the ultima because the two last syllables have been contracted, or the last syllable has been lost. [57]
To determine stress, syllable weight of the penult must be determined. To determine syllable weight, words must be broken up into syllables. [58] In the following examples, syllable structure is represented using these symbols: C (a consonant), K (a stop), R (a liquid), and V (a short vowel), VV (a long vowel or diphthong).
Every short vowel, long vowel, or diphthong belongs to a single syllable. This vowel forms the syllable nucleus. Thus magistrārum has four syllables, one for every vowel (a i ā u: V V VV V), aereus has three (ae e u: VV V V), tuō has two (u ō: V VV), and cui has one (ui: VV). [59]
A consonant before a vowel or a consonant cluster at the beginning of a word is placed in the same syllable as the following vowel. This consonant or consonant cluster forms the syllable onset. [59]
After this, if there is an additional consonant inside the word, it is placed at the end of the syllable. This consonant is the syllable coda. Thus if a consonant cluster of two consonants occurs between vowels, they are broken up between syllables: one goes with the syllable before, the other with the syllable after. [60]
There are two exceptions. A consonant cluster of a stop p t c b d g followed by a liquid l r between vowels usually goes to the syllable after it, although it is also sometimes broken up like other consonant clusters. [60]
As shown in the examples above, Latin syllables have a variety of possible structures. Here are some of them. The first four examples are light syllables, and the last six are heavy. All syllables have at least one V (vowel). A syllable is heavy if it has another V or C (or both) after the first V. In the table below, the extra V or VC is bolded, indicating that it makes the syllable heavy.
| V | |||||
| C | V | ||||
| C | C | V | |||
| C | C | C | V | ||
| C | V | V | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| C | V | C | |||
| C | V | V | C | ||
| V | V | ||||
| V | C | ||||
| V | V | C |
Thus, a syllable is heavy if it ends in a long vowel or diphthong, a short vowel and a consonant, a long vowel and a consonant, or a diphthong and a consonant. Syllables ending in a diphthong and consonant are rare in Classical Latin.
The syllable onset has no relationship to syllable weight; both heavy and light syllables can have no onset or an onset of one, two, or three consonants.
In Latin a syllable that is heavy because it ends in a long vowel or diphthong is traditionally called syllaba nātūrā longa ('syllable long by nature'), and a syllable that is heavy because it ends in a consonant is called positiōne longa ('long by position'). These terms are translations of Greek συλλαβὴ μακρά φύσει (syllabḕ makrá phýsei = 'syllable long by nature') and μακρὰ θέσει (makrà thései = 'long by proposition'), respectively; therefore positiōne should not be mistaken for implying a syllable "is long because of its position/place in a word" but rather "is treated as 'long' by convention". This article uses the words heavy and light for syllables, and long and short for vowels since the two are not the same. [60]
In a word of three or more syllables, the weight of the penult determines where the accent is placed. If the penult is light, accent is placed on the antepenult; if it is heavy, accent is placed on the penult. [60] Below, stress is marked by placing the stress mark ⟨ˈ⟩ before the stressed syllable.
| volucris | fēminae | puerō |
| /ˈwo.lu.kris/ | /ˈfeː.mi.nae̯/ | /ˈpu.e.roː/ |
| CV.CV.CCVC | CVV.CV.CVV | CV.V.CVV |
| volucris | vidēre | intellēxit | beātae | puella | coāctus |
| CV.CVC.CVC | CV.CVV.CV | VC.CVC.CVVC.CVC | CV.VV.CVV | CV.VC.CV | CV.VVC.CVC |
| /woˈluk.ris/ | /wiˈdeː.re/ | /in.telˈleːk.sit/ | /beˈaː.tae̯/ | /puˈel.la/ | /koˈaːk.tus/ |
Iambic shortening or brevis brevians is vowel shortening that occurs in words of the type light–heavy, where the light syllable is stressed. By this sound change, words like egō, modō, benē, amā with long final vowel change to ego, modo, bene, ama with short final vowel. [61]
The term also refers to shortening of closed syllables following a short syllable, for example quid ĕst, volŭptātem, apŭd iudicem and so on. This type of shortening is found in early Latin, for example in the comedies of Plautus and Terence, but not in poetry of the classical period.
Where one word ended with a vowel (including the nasalized vowels written am em im um~(om) and the diphthong ae) and the next word began with a vowel, the former vowel, at least in verse, was regularly elided; that is, it was omitted altogether, or possibly (in the case of /i/ and /u/) pronounced like the corresponding semivowel. When the second word was est or es, and possibly when the second word was et, a different form of elision sometimes occurred (prodelision): the vowel of the preceding word was retained, and the e was elided instead. Elision also occurred in Ancient Greek, but in that language, it is shown in writing by the vowel in question being replaced by an apostrophe, whereas in Latin elision is not indicated at all in the orthography, but can be deduced from the verse form. Only occasionally is it found in inscriptions, as in scriptust for scriptum est. [62]
Modern usage, even for classical Latin texts, varies in respect of I and V. During the Renaissance, the printing convention was to use I (upper case) and i (lower case) for both vocalic /i/ and consonantal /j/, to use V in the upper case and in the lower case to use v at the start of words and u subsequently within the word regardless of whether /u/ and /w/ was represented. [63]
Many publishers (such as Oxford University Press) have adopted the convention of using I (upper case) and i (lower case) for both /i/ and /j/, and V (upper case) and u (lower case) for both /u/ and /w/.
An alternative approach, less common today, is to use i and u only for the vowels and j and v for the approximants.
Most modern editions, however, adopt an intermediate position, distinguishing between u and v but not between i and j. Usually, the non-vocalic v after q or g is still printed as u rather than v, probably because in this position it did not change from /w/ to /v/ in post-classical times. [lower-alpha 5]
Textbooks and dictionaries usually indicate the length of vowels by putting a macron or horizontal bar above the long vowel, but it is not generally done in regular texts. Occasionally, mainly in early printed texts up to the 18th century, one may see a circumflex used to indicate a long vowel where this makes a difference to the sense, for instance, Româ/ˈroːmaː/ ('from Rome' ablative) compared to Roma/ˈroːma/ ('Rome' nominative). [64]
Sometimes, for instance in Roman Catholic service books, an acute accent over a vowel is used to indicate the stressed syllable. It would be redundant for one who knew the classical rules of accentuation and made the correct distinction between long and short vowels, but most Latin speakers since the 3rd century have not made any distinction between long and short vowels, but they have kept the accents in the same places; thus, the use of accent marks allows speakers to read a word aloud correctly even if they have never heard it spoken aloud.
Since around the beginning of the Renaissance period onwards, with the language being used as an international language among intellectuals, pronunciation of Latin in Europe came to be dominated by the phonology of local languages, resulting in a variety of different pronunciation systems. See the article Latin regional pronunciation for more details on those (with the exception of the Italian one, which is described in the section on Ecclesiastical pronunciation below).
When Latin words are used as loanwords in a modern language, there is ordinarily little or no attempt to pronounce them as the Romans did; in most cases, a pronunciation suiting the phonology of the receiving language is employed.
Latin words in common use in English are generally fully assimilated into the English sound system, with little to mark them as foreign, for example, cranium, saliva. Other words have a stronger Latin feel to them, usually because of spelling features such as the digraphs ae and oe (occasionally written as ligatures: æ and œ, respectively), which both denote /iː/ in English. The digraph ae or ligature æ in some words tend to be given an /aɪ/ pronunciation, for example, curriculum vitae.
However, using loanwords in the context of the language borrowing them is a markedly different situation from the study of Latin itself. In this classroom setting, instructors and students attempt to recreate at least some sense of the original pronunciation. What is taught to native anglophones is suggested by the sounds of today's Romance languages,[ citation needed ] the direct descendants of Latin. Instructors who take this approach rationalize that Romance vowels probably come closer to the original pronunciation than those of any other modern language (see also the section § Pronunciation shared by Vulgar Latin and Romance languages below).
However, other languages—including Romance family members—all have their own interpretations of the Latin phonological system, applied both to loan words and formal study of Latin. But English, Romance, or other teachers do not always point out that the particular accent their students learn is not actually the way ancient Romans spoke.
Since the late 19th and early 20th centuries, an Italianate pronunciation of Latin has grown to be accepted as a universal standard in the Catholic Church. Before then, the pronunciation of Latin in church was the same as the pronunciation of Latin in other fields and tended to reflect the sound values associated with the nationality and native language of the speaker. [65] Other ecclesiastical pronunciations are still in use, especially outside the Catholic Church.
A guide to this Italianate pronunciation is provided below. Since the letters or letter-combinations b, d, f, m, n, ph, and v are pronounced as they are in English, they are not included in the table.
| Grapheme | Pronunciation | Context | Example | English approximation |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ⟨c⟩ | [t͡ʃ] | Before ae, e, i, oe, y | procella | change |
| [k] | Before a, o, u | carnem | sky (never aspirated as in kill) | |
| ⟨ch⟩ | [k] | Always | Antiochia | |
| ⟨g⟩ | [d͡ʒ] | Before ae, e, i, oe, y | agere | gem |
| [ɡ] | Before a, o, u | plaga | gate | |
| ⟨gn⟩ | [ɲ(ː)] | Always | signum | canyon (roughly); precisely Italian gnocchi |
| ⟨h⟩ | ∅ | In nearly all cases | hora | (silent) |
| [k] | Between vowels in a few words | mihi | sky (never aspirated as in kill) | |
| ⟨i⟩ | [j] | Beginning of a word and before a vowel | ianua | yard |
| [jː] | Between vowels | Gaius | Doubled, as in toy yacht | |
| ⟨k⟩ | [k] | Always | kalendae | sky (never aspirated as in kill) |
| ⟨l⟩ | [l] | Always | paulum | slip (never 'dark' as in pools) |
| ⟨p⟩ | [p] | Always | praeda | spy (never aspirated as in pill) |
| ⟨qu⟩ | [kʷ] | Always | atque | quick (never as in antique) |
| ⟨r⟩ | [r] | Always | regina | (rolled like Italian or Spanish rana) |
| ⟨rh⟩ | ||||
| ⟨s⟩ | [s] | Always (formally) | sanctum | sing |
| [z] | Between vowels (informally) | miser | tease | |
| ⟨sc⟩ | [ʃ] | Before ae, e, i, oe, y | ascendit | shade |
| [sk] | Before a, o, u | pascunt | scare | |
| ⟨t⟩ | [t] | Generally | tironibus | stay (never aspirated as in table nor soft as in nation) |
| [t͡s] | Before unstressed i and not after s/t/x | nationem | pizza | |
| ⟨v⟩ | [v] | Always | conservare | preserve |
| ⟨x⟩ | [ks] | Generally | dextro | fox |
| [ɡz] | Word internally before a stressed vowel | exaudi | examine | |
| ⟨xc⟩ | [ksk] | Generally | exclamavit | exclaim |
| [kʃ] | Before ae, e, i, oe, y | excelsis | thick shell | |
| ⟨z⟩ | [d͡z] | Always | zona | lads |
| Grapheme | Pronunciation | English approximation |
|---|---|---|
| ⟨a⟩ | [ä] | father (roughly) precisely Spanish ramo |
| ⟨ae⟩ | [ɛ]/[e] | pet |
| ⟨oe⟩ | ||
| ⟨e⟩ | ||
| ⟨i⟩ | [i] | seek |
| ⟨o⟩ | [ɔ]/[o] | sort |
| ⟨u⟩ | [u] | cool |
| ⟨y⟩ | [i] | seek |
| Grapheme | Pronunciation | English approximation |
|---|---|---|
| ⟨au⟩ | [au̯] | out |
| ⟨ei⟩ | [ɛi̯] | they |
| ⟨eu⟩ | [ɛu̯] | no obvious example; roughly EH-oo |
| ⟨ui⟩ | [ui̯] | screwy |
In his Vox Latina: A guide to the Pronunciation of Classical Latin, William Sidney Allen remarked that this pronunciation, used by the Catholic Church in Rome and elsewhere, and whose adoption Pope Pius X recommended in a 1912 letter to the Archbishop of Bourges, "is probably less far removed from classical Latin than any other 'national' pronunciation"; but, as can be seen from the table above, there are, nevertheless, very significant differences. [66] The introduction to the Liber Usualis indicates that Ecclesiastical Latin pronunciation should be used at Church liturgies. [67] The Pontifical Academy for Latin is the pontifical academy in the Vatican that is charged with the dissemination and education of Catholics in the Latin language.
Outside of Austria, Germany, Czechia and Slovakia, it is the most widely used standard in choral singing which, with a few exceptions like Stravinsky's Oedipus rex , is concerned with liturgical texts.[ citation needed ] Anglican choirs adopted it when classicists abandoned traditional English pronunciation after World War II. The rise of historically informed performance and the availability of guides such as Copeman's Singing in Latin has led to the recent revival of regional pronunciations.
As Classical Latin developed to Late Latin, and eventually into the modern Romance languages, it experienced several phonological changes. Notable changes include the following (the precise order of which is uncertain):
The following examples are both in verse, which demonstrates several features more clearly than prose.
Virgil's Aeneid , Book 1, verses 1–4. Quantitative metre (dactylic hexameter). Translation: "I sing of arms and the man, who, driven by fate, came first from the borders of Troy to Italy and the Lavinian shores; he [was] much afflicted both on lands and on the deep by the power of the gods, because of fierce Juno's vindictive wrath."
Note the elisions in mult(um) and ill(e) in the third line. For a fuller discussion of the prosodic features of this passage, see Dactylic hexameter.
Some manuscripts have "Lāvīna" rather than "Lāvīnia" in the second line.
Beginning of Pange Lingua Gloriosi Corporis Mysterium by Thomas Aquinas (13th century). Rhymed accentual metre. Translation: "Extol, [my] tongue, the mystery of the glorious body and the precious blood, which the fruit of a noble womb, the king of nations, poured out as the price of the world."
Y, or y, is the twenty-fifth and penultimate letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. According to some authorities, it is the sixth vowel letter of the English alphabet. Its name in English is wye, plural wyes.
The circumflex is a diacritic in the Latin and Greek scripts that is also used in the written forms of many languages and in various romanization and transcription schemes. It received its English name from Latin: circumflexus "bent around"—a translation of the Greek: περισπωμένη.
Œ is a Latin alphabet grapheme, a ligature of o and e. In medieval and early modern Latin, it was used in borrowings from Greek that originally contained the diphthong οι, and in a few non-Greek words. These usages continue in English and French. In French, the words that were borrowed from Latin and contained the Latin diphthong written as œ now generally have é or è; but œ is still used in some non-learned French words, representing open-mid front rounded vowels, such as œil ("eye") and sœur ("sister").
Welsh orthography uses 29 letters of the Latin script to write native Welsh words as well as established loanwords.
In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived length of a vowel sound: the corresponding physical measurement is duration. In some languages vowel length is an important phonemic factor, meaning vowel length can change the meaning of the word, for example in Arabic, Czech, Dravidian languages, some Finno-Ugric languages, Japanese, Kyrgyz, Samoan, and Xhosa. Some languages in the past likely had the distinction even though their descendants do not, with an example being Latin and its descendent Romance languages.
Dutch orthography uses the Latin alphabet. The spelling system is issued by government decree and is compulsory for all government documentation and educational establishments.
French orthography encompasses the spelling and punctuation of the French language. It is based on a combination of phonemic and historical principles. The spelling of words is largely based on the pronunciation of Old French c. 1100–1200 AD, and has stayed more or less the same since then, despite enormous changes to the pronunciation of the language in the intervening years. Even in the late 17th century, with the publication of the first French dictionary by the Académie française, there were attempts to reform French orthography.
The phonology of the Persian language varies between regional dialects, standard varieties, and even from older varieties of Persian. Persian is a pluricentric language and countries that have Persian as an official language have separate standard varieties, namely: Standard Dari (Afghanistan), Standard Iranian Persian (Iran) and Standard Tajik (Tajikistan). The most significant differences between standard varieties of Persian are their vowel systems. Standard varieties of Persian have anywhere from 6 to 8 vowel distinctions, and similar vowels may be pronounced differently between standards. However, there are not many notable differences when comparing consonants, as all standard varieties have a similar number of consonant sounds. Though, colloquial varieties generally have more differences than their standard counterparts. Most dialects feature contrastive stress and syllable-final consonant clusters. Linguists tend to focus on Iranian Persian, so this article may contain less adequate information regarding other varieties.
Old English phonology is the pronunciation system of Old English, the Germanic language spoken on Great Britain from around 450 to 1150 and attested in a body of written texts from the 7th–12th centuries. Although its reconstruction is necessarily somewhat speculative, features of Old English pronunciation have been inferred partly from the sounds used in modern varieties of English, partly from the spellings used in Old English literature, partly from analysis of Old English poetry, and partly from comparison with other Germanic languages.
Ancient Greek phonology is the reconstructed phonology or pronunciation of Ancient Greek. This article mostly deals with the pronunciation of the standard Attic dialect of the fifth century BC, used by Plato and other Classical Greek writers, and touches on other dialects spoken at the same time or earlier. The pronunciation of Ancient Greek is not known from direct observation, but determined from other types of evidence. Some details regarding the pronunciation of Attic Greek and other Ancient Greek dialects are unknown, but it is generally agreed that Attic Greek had certain features not present in English or Modern Greek, such as a three-way distinction between voiced, voiceless, and aspirated stops ; a distinction between single and double consonants and short and long vowels in most positions in a word; and a word accent that involved pitch.
Ancient Greek has been pronounced in various ways by those studying Ancient Greek literature in various times and places. This article covers those pronunciations; the modern scholarly reconstruction of its ancient pronunciation is covered in Ancient Greek phonology.
Like many other languages, English has wide variation in pronunciation, both historically and from dialect to dialect. In general, however, the regional dialects of English share a largely similar phonological system. Among other things, most dialects have vowel reduction in unstressed syllables and a complex set of phonological features that distinguish fortis and lenis consonants.
Portuguese orthography is based on the Latin alphabet and makes use of the acute accent, the circumflex accent, the grave accent, the tilde, and the cedilla to denote stress, vowel height, nasalization, and other sound changes. The diaeresis was abolished by the last Orthography Agreement. Accented letters and digraphs are not counted as separate characters for collation purposes.
The classical Milanese orthography is the orthography used for the Western Lombard language, in particular for the Milanese dialect, by the major poets and writers of this literature, such as Carlo Porta, Carlo Maria Maggi, Delio Tessa, etc. It was first used in the seventeenth century by Carlo Maria Maggi; Maggi first introduced the trigram oeu, while previous authors, like Bonvesin de la Riva, used Latinizing orthographies. In 1606 G. A. Biffi with his Prissian de Milan de la parnonzia milanesa began the first codification, incorporating vowel length and the use of ou to represent the sound. The classical orthography came as a compromise between the old Tuscan system and the French one; the characteristic that considerably differentiates this orthography from the effective pronunciation is the method for the distinction of long and short vowels. As of today, because it has become more archaic, it is often replaced by simpler methods that use signs ö, ü for front rounded vowels and the redoubling of vowels for long vowels. The classical orthography was regularized in the 1990s by the Circolo Filologico Milanese for modern use.
Syllable stress of botanical names varies with the language spoken by the person using the botanical name. In English-speaking countries, the Botanical Latin places syllable stress for botanical names derived from ancient Greek and Latin broadly according to two systems, either the Reformed academic pronunciation, or the pronunciation developed initially in some large part by British gardeners, horticulturists, naturalists, and botanists of the 19th century. The two systems of pronunciation are sometimes referred to as the "classical method" and the "ecclesiastical method". The two systems differ significantly in pronunciation,α but little in syllable stress.
The traditional English pronunciation of Latin, and Classical Greek words borrowed through Latin, is the way the Latin language was traditionally pronounced by speakers of English until the early 20th century. Although this pronunciation is no longer taught in Latin classes, it is still broadly used in the fields of biology, law, and medicine.
Middle English phonology is necessarily somewhat speculative since it is preserved only as a written language. Nevertheless, there is a very large text corpus of Middle English. The dialects of Middle English vary greatly over both time and place, and in contrast with Old English and Modern English, spelling was usually phonetic rather than conventional. Words were generally spelled according to how they sounded to the person writing a text, rather than according to a formalised system that might not accurately represent the way the writer's dialect was pronounced, as Modern English is today.
French exhibits perhaps the most extensive phonetic changes of any of the Romance languages. Similar changes are seen in some of the northern Italian regional languages, such as Lombard or Ligurian. Most other Romance languages are significantly more conservative phonetically, with Spanish, Italian, and especially Sardinian showing the most conservatism, and Portuguese, Romanian, Catalan, and Occitan showing moderate conservatism.
ISO 11940-2 is an ISO standard for a simplified transcription of the Thai language into Latin characters.
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