🚀 go-pugleaf

John Cowan wrote:

[Interesting and acurate explanation of US pronunciation of Latin
snipped]

> This pronunciation descends from that used in English monasteries before
> the Protestant Reformation.  When English underwent the Great Vowel
> Shift
> of the 1400's, English Latin changed along with it.  Lawyers still use
> it:
> [ultra wires] would be utterly unrecognizable to a lawyer.
> 
> "Vice versa" is now usually pronounced as English (three syllables),
> and "per se", oddly enough, most often has the second word pronounced
> more or less in Classical fashion: [p@r sej].
[snip]

>  Latin is
> little taught in English-speaking countries nowadays, even to the
> educated.  However, when it *is* taught as a language, the
> (reconstructed) Classical pronunciation is taught, though no
> attention is given to double consonants.
> 
> I used to enjoy reading Virgil aloud, emphasizing the quantitative
> rhythms --- making the "long by nature" and "long by position"
> syllables literally more prolonged, and the short syllables short.
> It gives the _Aeneid_ the feeling of actually having been chanted
> to the lyre!  (Of course, that's anachronistic, but the rhythm
> is founded on Homer's rhythm and isn't native to Latin at all.)

You neglect to mention the only English speakers who do NOT pronounce
Latin this way: musicians and Catholics -- both of whom use the Vatican
pronunciation, which is almost exactly the same as the pronuncation of
Italian.  (Minus the Italian distinction between [e] and [E], [O] and
[o], which gives the paradoxical Latin ['krE dO] vs. Italian [kre: dO].)
Palato-alveolar affrication of <c> and <g> before high vowels is
observed as in Italian, double consonants are pronounced, diphthongs ar
reduced to [E], <h> is silent.  Though no Catholic, I am enchanted by
this pronunciation.  But I am not objective, as I am a singer.

-- 
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