Questions tagged [pronunciation]
Questions regarding the pronunciation of Latin words or syllables, or the history of Latin pronunciation. The desired time period for the pronunciation in question should be added.
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What's the difference between orthographically doubled vowels and long vowels ("uu" vs "ū")?
Some Latin words and declensions have an orthographic "uu", contrasting with orthographically single long u "ū" (-uus in mortuus vs -ūs in spīritūs for example). A similar ...
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Is it true that the letter I is pronounced as a consonant when it's the first letter of a syllable?
I am asking specifically for traditional central European pronunciation. I have only seen one source claiming this so I am not sure
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How do we we scan 'nunc tantum sinus et statio mala fidèle carinis'
It seems to have a syllable too many for a dactylic hexameter, but I sée no place for an élision.
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How is ϡ pronounced in modern times? [closed]
The Greek letter sampi is not used in modern times, but I saw a sentence saying that it is still used in modern times to represent law numbers or book chapters. When I look up the pronunciation, all I ...
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English pronunciation of Ancient Greek names
Are there any rules for converting Ancient Greek names into an English (borrowed) pronunciation? I'm imagining an algorithm of Ancient Greek letters → English IPA that would work in 90% or 80% of ...
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Precise pronunciation of b, d and g
I'm a native speaker of Catalan and Spanish, so for me it is way more natural to pronounce b, d and g as [β], [ð] and [ɣ] between vowels, instead of as [b], [d] and [g].
For example, is nobis ...
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How to indicate a diphthong?
In a previous question of mine, What diphthongs are available are Unicode ligatures?, Joonas Ilmavirta commented:
If you want to indicate a diphthong, there are other means than using ligatures. We ...
user14839
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When is ‘ae’ pronounced /ae/?
I like the idea of using ligatures like ‘æ’ and ‘œ’ for diphthongs in Latin, so that the spelling is closer to one letter/character per sound. However, it would not work to write ‘æ’ for everything, ...
user14839
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(Ancient and Modern Greek) Pronunciations of ‘epsilon’ and ‘eta’
I asked this question in an online forum, but did not get a response, so I thought I would try it here. It is about the proper pronunciation of the letters ‘epsilon’ and ‘eta’ in Archaic/Ancient Greek,...
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How to pronounce a syllable that is heavy by nature and heavy by position
There are several sources that stress the distinction between the a syllable and a vowel, saying that in the word arma, for example, in the syllable ar - which is heavy by nature - we should be not ...
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Which form of Latin pronunciation is most widely taught?
There are two popular versions of Latin pronunciation currently: the Ecclesiastical Pronunciation and the Classical Pronunciation. EP follows the rules of Italian pronunciation (has soft c and g) ...
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Are there any speakers that use the Classical Latin pronunciation for Romance languages in informal purposes? [closed]
From what I researched, in Classical Latin, there was a shift of pronounciation, called palatalization which happened during the fall of Rome. This led to the creation of Ecclesiastical Latin which ...
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Pronunciation of Ancient Greek sigma as voiced [z] before voiced consonants
Throughout the development of Ancient Greek, was σ ever pronounced as [z], perhaps when before a voiced consonant, as in ἄσβεστος?
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How to define a long or a short vowel in Latin words?
If there appears no macron on a vowel, which is part of a monophthong, then how can I define whether it is a long vowel or a short vowel？
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Was the "U" in Urbs pronounced as "ʊ" in classical pronunciation?
I noticed that on Wiktionary and on Wikipedia it says that the "U" in Urbs was pronounced as "ʊ". I thought that Latin didn't have these kinds of lax vowels? Wouldn't it be ...
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How are the sounds of E (ε) and H (η) different in classical Greek pronunciation?
In Athenaze, the pronunciations of E (ε) and H (η) are given as comparable to the English words get and bed, respectively. Other than H (η) being held longer, in my American English pronunciation ...
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Hypothesis for Umbrian letter ers pronunciation
Umbrian epichoric alphabet (that is, locally adapted from Etruscan alphabet) has a consonant 𐌛, called ers in Unicode Old Italic scripts references. You can see an example of usage of such letter in ...
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What would the general pronunciation of Latin be like in the 600s CE?
In other words what changes from Classical Latin definitely were mainstream by that time: vowels, consonants, regional divergences? I'm aware of certain changes, but not exactly timewise when these ...
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What is the correct Italian Latin pronunciation of "projicias" and "sacrificium"?
When singing Italian music of the 17th century that sets Latin texts, we use an Italian Latin pronunciation. If "projicias" and "sacrificium" were Italian words, then we would not ...
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In Latin, is there a difference between C and Q? [duplicate]
In Latin, what is the difference of sounds made by C and Q? The almost sound the same to me. Is there something, I'm missing here
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How am I supposed to pronounce the "ct" in Church's latin
for example, the word "fructus": should I say fruCTus or just fruTus?
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Any scholarly views about how someone like Ovidius might have pronounced Greek words?
Μετᾰμορφώσεις
In this word, as can be seen, there is a pitch accent on ω, and also it is generally accepted (per Allen, Vox Graeca) that φ was an aspirated P (pʰ), not a fricative (f).
Are there any ...
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Carmina Burana pronunciation?
How do you pronounce the first syllable of the title?
My IPA is sketchy. I have seen both on the inter webs and the last time I performed it the majority opinion was accept on the first syllable.
...
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Traditional English pronunciation of "dives"?
In the traditional English pronunciation of Latin—the one that gave us Caesar /siːzɚ/, Jupiter /dʒuːpɪtɚ/, epitome /əpɪtəmiː/, felix /fiːlɪks/, and virus /vaɪɹəs/—what should be the pronunciation of ...
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Ancient Greek: how worried do I need to be about "long" and "short" accents?
I've been learning for a couple of months now, from a rather ancient book, which blissfully ignores all questions of accents.
But I recently found out about them (with help from Luke Ranieri among ...
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Short vs long i in inest vs īnsunt
Why is the i in inest short, while the i in īnsunt is long?
As far as I know (see for example https://glosbe.com/la/en/insum, or LLPSI), the conjugation of this verb in the present tense goes like ...
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Recitation of the Iliad
I'm a beginner in Ancient Greek trying to learn about pronouciation. I'm particularly interested in Homer's Iliad.
I'm aware that this is a controversial topic, to put it mildly, so I don't expect ...
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Pronunciation of sedes
I typically pronounce sedes as SED-ays. However, I recently noticed that the "Holy See," meaning the bishopric of the Vatican, comes from Sancta Sedes (the Holy Seat), so if this is being ...
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Which letters of celebrētur are trilled in this Bervoets recording
Which letters of celebrētur are trilled in this recording? https://www.stilus.nl/ce-geluid/PlinMinEp-VI-16.htm? Bervoets doesn't just trills both R's but the letters near the two R's too! I've noticed ...
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Knowing the two quantities of 'est'
There are several forms of ĕsse and ēsse (= edere) that only differ by the quantity of the initial vowel, perhaps the most common one being ĕst/ēst.
How do we know this difference in quantities?
...
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S at the end of Present Active Participle Pronunciation
I've noticed that we tend to pronounce the "s" at the end of present active participles (e.g. navigans) as /z/. But in ancient Roman times, would it really have been pronounced this way, /...
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Minimal pair for hidden quantity
Is there an example where the quantity of a vowel makes a difference in a syllable that is heavy by position?
For a concrete example, this does happen in Finnish (where long vowels are written as ...
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When pronouncing latin taxonomy names is there a rule when the letter p is voiced?
Pterodactyl -- Is the p voiced? tero- dactyl
Pteridology -- Is the p voiced? teri- dology
Dyropteris (genus name) - Is the p voiced? Dryo- pteris
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Why are some sounds differently pronounced to how they are written?
I am trying to start learning Latin because it sounds like a fun language to learn. It will also help me with English words and prefixes, among other things. This means that I know literally nothing ...
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Does the pronunciation of 'gn' depend on the environment?
I have heard different pronunciations of 'gn': [ŋn], [gn], [ɲ:].
Given a fixed era and dialect, is 'gn' always pronounced the same way or does the pronunciation depend on the environment?
My ...
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When did "ae" become [e]?
I know about the differences between Reconstructed and Church pronunciation. I have wondered when they arose. I have already researched it on StackExchange where "V" had already become [v] ...
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Littera Canina in Classical Latin and Old Latin
Ancient Romans called the letter R littera canina as the R in Classical Latin was trilled to sound like a growling dog! Was the letter R trilled to sound like a growling dog when the ancient Romans ...
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Resources for pronouncing Greek
Similar to our question about the pronunciation of Latin, I believe it would be very useful for users to have a single question to reference for resources for pronouncing Greek. Greek, as with Latin, ...
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how would Caeser say "hodiē iānuae domuum sunt ātrae"?
this post has been editted to use macrons, using html eg ā is & amacr ; without the spaces as html, similarly the other vowels. But this trick cannot be used in comments. I suppose what you can do ...
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How did Caesar pronounce Latin overlined vowels?
I am a beginner with Latin and am confused about the overlined vowels.
The textbook I have explains these via vowels of English words, but I think that is unsatisfactory, because when learning other ...
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What is the name of the thing that the tongue does on the trī part in the word patrī?
What is the name of the thing that the tongue does on the trī part in the word patrī? The word is at the 5:06 mark of this video! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdQawsU2RFg&t=308s
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Pronunciation of aspiration in ἔδεισεν δ᾽ ὁ γέρων
This example occurs in Iliad 1.33. In running speech, when there are no pauses between words, I'm able to articulate this as "edeisend ho." However, I would imagine (possibly just because I'...
user3597
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Pronunciation in medical terminology
I have been arguing about this with quite a number of people and it seems we all cannot find the answer (med students, duh😅)
My question is: Where should the stress on words like mastoideus and ...
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What was the most common pronunciation of the interjection "io" in Classical Latin?
Wiktionary lists two pronunciations for io:
/ˈi.oː/, [ˈioː]
Was one more common than the other? And just so I'm clear, the first would sound something like ee-oh in English, and the second yo?
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Frequency of conventions regarding whether to pronounce ω more open than ο, more closed, or the same
<boring background> I've been doing some recordings of language drill in Homeric Greek (1, 2, 3), in which my pronunciation has been chosen based on a certain set of criteria: (1) They're meant ...
user3597
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How has the pronunciation of the letter "c" developed?
I'd like to know how the pronunciation of the letter 'C' has developed in Latin. All I know so far is that it has changed through the centuries, but I'm interested in specifically what those changes ...
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When does the diphthong υι occur in Greek, and when it is pronounced as [yː]?
I'm a bit confused by the information I've seen online about ancient Greek υι: it seems an original diphthongal pronunciation was replaced at some point in Attic Greek by a monophthongal pronunciation ...
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Arnold and Conway, earlier change of pronunciation of aspirates?
Describing the pronunciation of Greek in schools in the UK, Allen says that a pamphlet by Arnold and Conway, "The Restored Pronunciation of Greek and Latin," pretty much set the standard ...
user3597
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Why do I find it hard not to palatalize the /g/ in digitus?
In latin words such as digitus, I found it hard to pronounce correctly the consonants /k/ or /g/ followed by /i/. I think that this happens especially if these sounds are in the same syllabe.
Is it ...
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Is it possible to make sense of the classical words and pronunciation in Dune, by Frank Herbert?
Dune is a classic science fiction novel by Frank Herbert. There have been attempts to film it, including an upcoming movie version covering the first half of the book. A lot of the names and ...
user3597