Questions tagged [consonants]
The consonants tag has no usage guidance.
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When did 'ph' start to be pronounced like 'f'?
I learned from Nathaniel's answer to my previous question that 'ch', 'th' and 'ph' were aspirated voiceless stops in classical Latin.
In my experience many contemporary speakers of Latin pronounce 'ph'...
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Were 'th' and 'ch' aspirated in classical Latin?
I have been taught that 'th' and 'ch' were pronounced just like 't' and 'c' in classical Latin, with no aspiration.
The answer to this earlier question confirms that 't' and 'c' had indeed little or ...
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Are vowels long before "gn"?
Allen and Greenough, §10d, provide a general rule:
A vowel before ns, nf, gn, is long: as in cōnstāns, īnferō, māgnus [emphasis modified]
This seems to agree with Priscian:
'gnus' quoque vel '...
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How do we know how gn was pronounced in Classical Latin?
As far as I am aware, the classical pronunciation of -gn- (as in magnus) is not [gn] but [ŋn]. How do we know that this is in fact how -gn- was pronounced?
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Was the final "-m" a "full-featured" consonant?
Is there any solid evidence supporting or denying the hypothesis that in Classical Latin the syllable-final vowel -m (especially at the end of the word) was only an orthographic convention, but in ...
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Variation between syllabic and non-syllabic V: in what contexts is it possible?
Allen's Vox Latina, 2nd edition (1988) metions that there is occasional "poetic interchange" in Latin of syllabic [u] and non-syllabic [w], mentioning trisyllabic silua and disyllabic genva ...
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What makes a syllable "heavy" or "light"?
The rules for positioning of syllable stress in Latin are relatively simple; they are as follows:
In two-syllable words, the stress always falls on the first syllable.
In three or more syllable ...
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-NL- and -LL- in Classical Latin
I just stumbled upon an old meta question about the name of our chat room, and a comment gave me the impression that the classical spelling would be conloquium rather than colloquium.
(Let me ignore ...
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How is Latium pronounced?
The Merriam Webster definition gives the following pronunciation: \ˈlā-sh(ē-)əm\.
But this doesn't sound right to me. I have never heard the consonant 't' pronounced this way in Latin. Which leads me ...
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Were voiceless stops (p, t, c, qu) aspirated in Classical Latin?
In English, the voiceless stops/plosives (p, t, k, "hard" c) are aspirated, particularly when beginning a word. That is, speakers release a burst of air when saying pop, tea, kaluha, or coffee (put ...
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How to pronounce the sequence "ti" when reading Latin
As Latin is a dead language, I imagine, people note pronounce it differently depending on in which county they are learning it. That said, I would like to know what IPA phoneme is commonly used to ...
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How many syllables are there in 'mortuus'?
I asked yesterday why the participle mortuus has two us.
When Rafael asked whether one of the us were consonantal, I had no other evidence than being taught that they are both vocalic.
Arguing by ...
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Loss of s before voiced consonants at word boundaries
I learned from the comment to the answer to this old question that Latin has lost the consonant S before voiced consonants.
In the linked post this was used to explain the observed pattern that the ...
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Does any Latin noun originally end in -r?
Many Latin nouns end -r, like honor.
However, this word seems to have been originally honos, which became honor- in oblique cases due to rhotacism and the -r made its way to nominative by analogy.
...
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Why is it thought that T resisted assibilation after another T?
It's well known that past a certain point, Latin "t" developed an assibilated pronunciation when followed by "i" and then a vowel, as in the word grātia. Sources agree that there are some exceptions, ...
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