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In article <joe-ya023580000301970619340001@news.tezcat.com>,
joe@sfbooks.com (Joe Bernstein) wrote:

> Posted and e-mailed.
> 
> In article <587ugn$o0u@nimble.mta.ca>, cprchrd@mailserv.mta.ca (Christian P
> Richard) wrote:
> 
> >How exactly is Latin supposed to be pronounced?
> >
> >The textbook I have describes thoroughly how to stress Latin words,
> >but it only explains pronunciation by comparing to words in English.
> 
> The short answer is, I think, that Latin vowels are the basis for the IPA
> vowels.  I'm not so sure about consonants (and a little befuddled that all
> these weeks later I don't see a much more detailed answer here...).  The
> long answer would undoubtedly have to take account of the fact that Latin
> lived for so very, very long, changing pronunciation over time.  (The most
> technically-correct early music groups are careful to sing their masses in
> e.g. French ecclesiastical Latin of the 16th century, as opposed to Polish
> ecclesiastical Latin of the 18th, or whatever!)
> 
> >It suggests the short "a" is like a schwa and the long "a" is the "a" of 
> >father.
> 
> If it says schwa, there you go, that's IPA.  The long a is the lowest of
> the back vowels, the one written a in IPA.
> 
> >It says the long "e" is like in "day," but I doubt it is really a diphtong! 
> >What about words such as "deinde"?  Don't they have that diphtong?
> 
> No, long e is the middle front vowel, the one written e in IPA.  I said it
> was easy!  In "deinde", yes, there's a diphthong.  The book you're looking
> at presumes typical English-speaking reader's unfamiliarity with the fact
> that most of our "vowels" are really diphthongs.

Hmmm... Classical Latin had few, if any, diphthongs.  With time, however
(by 100-200 A.D.), very few adjacent vowels (such as the ei in deinde)
were pronounced as separate syllables; that is, most had fused into
diphthongs.  In other words, the answer to your question is different
depending on the era of Latin you wish to consider.  De-in-de (3
syllables) at an early stage, dein-de (two syllables) at a later stage.
> 
> >What sort of "r" is used?
> >And is it true that the "gn" is pronounced like in French? Or is it 
> >separate "g" and "n" sounds?
> >Is "y" pronounced like the French "u"?
> 
> My guesses would be 1) no guess (but probably not the English retroflex
> "r"!), 2) separate sounds, 3) yes.  I could *very* easily be wrong here
> though and would appreciate help.

Guessing is unnecessary; many of these sounds have been described by
grammarians of the time.  The r sound was what is referred to in phonology
as a "tap", virtually identical to the Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian r
(the French r took a different route).

The combination gn was pronounced ngn (as in "wiNGNut") quite early on. 
The word "magnus" was pronounced something like "mang-nus."  This was the
pervasive pronunciation in the early centuries A.D.  So yes, two separate
sounds, but not quite g+n!  The "ny" (as in "oNIon") sound suggestive of
French is a later development associated with rapid pronunciation.

As for the "y", this involves a serious problem.  Classical Latin, and
even later Latin, did not have a symbol for "y".  The Latin for "he rests"
was written "iacet" (pronounced, roughly, yaket).  There is no reason to
believe that the first sound was anything but "y" as in "yahoo".  A vast
number of Latin words were borrowed from Greek (just as many English words
originate in French), and it was considered prestigious not just to use
these words but also to pronounce them as in Greek.  Greek had a vowel
pronounced like the modern French "u", and was transcribed into Latin
using the Greek symbol "y"!  So the Greek root "system" (pronounce it as
if it were French), was written SYSTEM in Latin, and imitated by Latin
speakers.

But this is an imitated pronunciation that was never truly a part of the
language, as evidenced by the fact that it is not found in any of Latin's
offspring languages: Spanish/Portuguese "sistema", French "syst�me", all
with an "i" (as in MEET) sound.  (NOTE: the French "u" is a recent
development which has nothing to do with the Latin pronunciation or the
Greek pronunciation, for that matter). 
> 
> >If anybody can help me find a mini-treaty on Latin pronunciation that is 
> >not biased to English accents?  Or can anybody explain the proper phonetics 
> >for all long/short vowels and consonants of Latin?

YES!  There are many primary grammar sources cited in Sidney Allen's VOX
LATINA (Cambridge U Press, 1992) and Edgar Sturtevant's THE PRONUNCIATION
OF GREEK AND LATIN (Ares, Chicago, 1965, 2nd ed.); i.e. early grammarians
describing how the letters are pronounced in their own (Latin!) words,
with incisive discussion of the data in English, without na�ve recourse to
English examples.

A piece of advice: be VERY WARY of Latin "TEXTBOOKS"; they tend to teach
Classical Latin, a prestigious form of the language used in literature and
very seldom spoken (except to impress) after the time of the Republic. 
That is probably why you found that Latin "u" was pronounced like the
French "u"; this is just CLASSICAL snootiness in the face of Greek
influence and a desire to sound Greek, and in only a smattering of words,
all borrowed and (more or less) imitated.

I highly recommend the books mentioned above; these are interested only
with how the language was ACTUALLY SPOKEN at various stages in its long
history.

Best wishes,

Ric Morris
Doctoral candidate in Hispano-Romance Phonology
Ohio State University
ricmor@bigfoot.com