Does anyone know how to pronounce Latin?

[Gez]

Latin's pronounciation is kinda easy -- contrarily to, say, English, or French, there's only one way a letter can be pronounced (exception: I, which may be a vowel or a consonant).

A: same as how it's pronounced in French, German, Italian, etc. A
C: always the solid K sound. (In French and English, 'c' is pronounced differently depending on the following letter, if it's 'e,' 'i' or 'y' then it's pronounced like a 's', like in "mercy", otherwise it's pronounced like a 'k', like in "camera", and it may make diphtongs if followed by a 'h,' like in "charm". No such things in Latin.)
E: Always pronounced "ay"
I/J: Actually it's only one letter. Pronounce it like a short "ee" when it's in a position to be a vowel, or like "y" (as in "yes" or "you") otherwise.
U: Always pronounced "oo".
W: If this letter actually appears somewhere, it'll in fact be a double V. Like in the word "savvy".

Y: doesn't exist, actually. Imported latter from the Greek, it corresponds to the u sound of French, or ü of German. Native English speakers are notorious for having trouble pronouncing it right. But for the record, the Roman did, too, since they categorized it as the "greek I"...


For the other letters, do as in English, it should work. No diphtongs. H is for aspiration only, so things like "ph" or "ch" do not sounds like "f" or "tsh". Actually, all the classical words with "ph" or "ch" are derived from Greek roots, rather than latin.

 

[ephemeron]

This is probably a silly question - but how would anyone know? All we have are written records; no recordings of genuine Roman citizens speaking their native language. I mean, it could be pronounced "cantaloupe" for all we know!

Besides Church Latin, we have information about how the language was pronounced from the ways Greek authors transliterated Roman names and Latin words (and vice versa), and -- better yet -- from misspellings. A number of personal letters and bits of graffiti have survived in which people spell words the way they said them, which isn't the way Cicero would have spelled them.

 

[Desdichado]

But Morrus is right; although we can reconstruct the pronunciation of Latin from back when it was a current, daily language, at best that's an educated triangulation; at worst no more than speculation.

Was the pronounced long, for instance, or did it slip into a schwa type of sound? We simply don't know.

I'd agree with the folks here, though, and say you'd probably not go wrong with DEE-oos.

 

[Doug McCrae]

My Latin teacher at school told me no one knows how it was pronounced 2000 years ago.

 

[fusangite]

We can never know 100% how Latin was pronounced but today, the best academic knowledge can offer quite a bit of certainty. But one is then faced with another of whether one uses medieval ecclesiastical Latin pronunciations or classical Latin.

I would recommend that gamers use ecclesiastical Latin -- most campaigns tend to have a medieval rather than classical feel. So, to supplement Gez's list of pronunciations in classical Latin, here are the pronunciations in ecclesiastical Latin:

A: As in classical Latin.
C: pronounced like "K" except if followed by an "i" or "e," in which case it is pronounced "CH" as in "charm."
E: sometimes pronounced "ay," sometimes pronounced "e" as in "bet"
I/J: sometimes pronounced like "i" as in "it," sometimes pronounced "ee" as in "beet." When preceeding a set of vowels, pronounced "y" as in "yellow"
U/V: Always pronounced "oo" -- sometimes as in "wood" sometimes as in "cool." When preceeding a set vowels, pronounced "v."

A couple of corrections to Gez:
In classical Latin, "u" and "v" function interchangeably like "i" and "j"; in classical Latin, a consonental "u/v" is always pronounced "w."

So, just to be clear, in classical Latin, "Veni, Vidi, Vicci" is pronounced "Waynee, Weedee, Weekee"; in ecclesiastical Latin, it is pronounced "Vaynee, Veedee, Veechee."

 

[hong]

So, just to be clear, in classical Latin, "Veni, Vidi, Vicci" is pronounced "Waynee, Weedee, Weekee"

D00d, it's spelled veni, vidi, vici. You must be thinking impure thoughts about Christina Vicci, the hawt, hawt Latino* actress.


* Latino == one who speaks Latin

 

[johnsemlak]

One thing to bear in mind. Latin was a living langauge for a period of several hundred hears if not more, and was spoken over a very large geographical area comparable in size the the US. Consider how much a modern language varies in pronunciation over time and place. Words are stressed differently, vowels are pronounced differently, letters/sounds silent among some speakers are pronounced among others.

Also, Latin didn't have things like TV/radio to standardize pronunciation.

 

[The Amazing Dingo]

Latin was spoken for well more then just a few hundred years. It was nearly 700 years from the founding of Rome to its "collapse" (scholars argue over this date since there are several possible events to point at for the collapse). Nonetheless, it was spoken by every citizen (if you couldn't speak it you were considered to just say ba-ba (like a baby)...hence, our word babarian) and you could only be considered a citizen if you spoke it.

(All of that concerns the Roman Republic and a good amount of the Empire, however during the collapse, that drastically changed as those barbarians were given "citizenship" in order to join the army and protect the empire.)

There were also several different version of latin. You had the common/vulgar latin along with what I'll call the Upper Class latin. At the same time, this language was spoken for thousands of years across the Mediteranean. Look at how diverse English is between the United State and Great Britian. And then let that time expand over hundreds and years they begin to differentiate even more.

 

[Turjan]

Latin is kinda of an undead language. It was and still is widely used by the catholic church, it is still taught to millions of people, and throughout the middle ages it was the language of choice for writers. The exact pronounce has changed somewhat in the last 2000 years, but not much and the most prominent changes are rather well-known.

The only problem I see is that most priests pronounce Latin like their own mother tongue. I've heard latin spoken in England a few times, and it always sounded like common English to me . At home it was the same with latin and my mother tongue, although I wouldn't notice, because I learnt it the same way at school .

Btw, back when I learnt Latin, we still used the change in the pronunciation of C between 'k' and 'tss' depending on the following vowel, like in modern Romanic languages. Of course, the full 'k' variant was already discussed .

 

[Desdichado]

One thing to bear in mind. Latin was a living langauge for a period of several hundred hears if not more, and was spoken over a very large geographical area comparable in size the the US. Consider how much a modern language varies in pronunciation over time and place. Words are stressed differently, vowels are pronounced differently, letters/sounds silent among some speakers are pronounced among others.

And if you consider that modern Romance languages are simply variations on local vulgar Latin that have diverged over time, you could make an argument that French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Rumanian, Catalan, Provençal, Occitan, etc. are all Latin. The dividing point between them is somewhat arbitrary, after all.