Does anyone know how to pronounce Latin?

[tarchon]

You think so? I'm curious as to your reasoning there. I'd say the two are broadly similar in their historical impact, as well as their use (or the use of their daughter languages) today. And frankly, I think English is already turning out to be historically more important and widespread than either anyway.

I would guess he's under the erroneous impression that Sanskrit is the same thing as Proto-Indo-European, judging from the frequency with which I encounter people who tell me that Indo-European languages come from Sanskrit. Very common factoid.

 

[Arbiter of Wyrms]

I've studied both historical linguistics and Latin, and I'm pretty comfortable with the answer already given for Dius as "dee-oos." That's the way it should sound in neo-classical because we have every reason to believe that, and no reason to disbelieve, that that is the way an ancient Roman would have said it, and though I'm not super familiar with church-Latin, I think that's the way a Catholic priest would say it, too.

What's news to me is the Greek coinage of barbarian. I thought that I had read somewhere that it was a specific reference to the Barbars.

 

[The Amazing Dingo]

To settle this problem I think we only have one true reference to refer to and that would be Life of Brian. Let us just fast forward to the scene involving the "Go Home Romans" graffiti and see how they pronounce it. I'm sure everyone knows how historically accurate Monty Python is.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

What's news to me is the Greek coinage of barbarian. I thought that I had read somewhere that it was a specific reference to the Barbars.

Huh. That's a new one to me.

If, however, you do a quick search on the World's Bestest Dictionary EVAH!, you'll find:

Barbarian: http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=barbarian

From French barbarien, from Latin barbarus, see also barbarous

Searching Barbarous reveals: http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=barbarous

From Latin barbarus, from Greek barbaros

I'd need the OED to go back any farther...

 

[Perun]

Historically, there were two different pronunciations of Latin, classical (said to be the way the original Romans pronouced it) and traditional (or mediaeval) Latin. It appears that today we have the third way, the "ecclesiatic" Latin heavily influenced by the Italian pronunciation.

The diferences between the former two are relatively small, and effectively make the classical Latin sound more like anceint Greek.

For example, in classical Latin:
- c is always pronounced K;
- diphthongs ae and oe are pronounced "ai" and "oi" (or "ah-ee" and "oh-ee", only the composite sounds are short);
- "ti" is always pronounced at "ti" (tee);

But in traditional Latin:
- c is is prnonouced as K, except when it precedes vowels e, i, y, or diphthongs ae or oe in a word, when it's pronounced like a "ts" sound (like the german "z" in Zeit, for example, english doesn't have this sound);
- diphthongs ae and oe are always pronounced as a long "eh" sound;
- "ti" is pronounced as "ti", except when it precedes vowels, but is not following s or x, when it's pronounced "tsee"

Common to both pronunciations:
- i is pronounced as a consonant y at the beginning of a word (but in traditional Latin, diphthongs ae and oe can be pronounced as ay or oy as well);
- q is always followed by u, and is pronounced as "kv" (don't know how to describe this, I can't think of an equivalent in any language except Croatian, and I just wrtoe that)
- ph is f
- ch is h (a bit softer than that in Loch or german Ich)
- rh is just r (but not the english r)
- th in words of Greek origin is th, pronbounced so that both t and h sunds are heard
- ngu is pronounced ngv when preceding a vowel

What fusangite describes is the ecclesiatic pronunciation, except that I've never heard of the "w" sound used in Latin. The "c being english ch if followed by an e or i" is obviously heavily influenced by the pronunciation in Italian, since it's taken pretty much directly from that language.

Take for example the word "medicina" (strangely enough, it means medicine ). In classical Latin it's pronounced [me-dee-KEE-na], in traditional "medicina" [me-dee-TSEE-na], and in "ecclesiastic" [me-dee-CHEE-na]. It's really easy to see from which pronunciation the modern word "medicine" came.

As for the accuracy of pronunciation... well, we can't be a 100% certain for classical pronunciation, but it's very close to that. There's really no doubt regarding traditional pronunciation, really, as it has been actively used till very recently (as an interestng fact, Latin has been the official language in most of Croatia for a very long time, and in fact, the first speech in Croatian held in croatian parliament didn't happen till 1848, IIRC; also Latin has been the language of nobility in the Lands of the Crown of St. Stephen, or the Hungarian half of the Habsburg Monarchy).

As an additional point of interest, in Croatia, coastal areas primarily use traditional pronunciation, whereas inland areas use classical (at least it was so during my high school days).

And, finally, to concur with the answers given to the original poster, dius is indeed pronounced "DEE-oos".

 

[johnsemlak]

as an interestng fact, Latin has been the official language in most of Croatia for a very long time, and in fact, the first speech in Croatian held in croatian parliament didn't happen till 1848, IIRC; also Latin has been the language of nobility in the Lands of the Crown of St. Stephen, or the Hungarian half of the Habsburg Monarchy).

As an additional point of interest, in Croatia, coastal areas primarily use traditional pronunciation, whereas inland areas use classical (at least it was so during my high school days).

.

Hmm, that's curious. Ironically Croatia is one of the few traditionally Catholic countries whose church did not use Latin as a Church langauge; their services and versions of the Bible were always in Croation, IIRC (though I"m no expert on the matter).

 

[Perun]

Hmm, that's curious. Ironically Croatia is one of the few traditionally Catholic countries whose church did not use Latin as a Church langauge; their services and versions of the Bible were always in Croation, IIRC (though I"m no expert on the matter).

Partly correct, if I recall my history lessons well Parts of Croatia (coastal areas mainly, especially around the town of Nin (Nona)) used Old Church Slavonic as lythurgical language (along with the glagollitic script), even if it was officially illegal (as declared on the First Split (Spalato) Council, in 1060 -- or was it 932?). It's mostly because the Dalmatian coastal cities were originally under the Byzantine rule, and, before the church schism in 1054, followed the eastern (greek) ritual. After the split, they became part of the western church. The Dalmatian bishops wanted to re-establish the ancient Bishopric, with the seat in Split (as Split was seen as an heir to the ancient Salonae [modern-day Solin]), while the Croatian bishops, led by Grgur (George) of Nin (Nona), who used the OCS lythurgy, wanted to leave the situation as is. The Pope ruled in the Dalmatian bishops' favour, outlawing the OCS lythurgy. However, the OCS lythurgy remained in use till this day.

Mind you, this is an extremely abbreviated version, so take it with a grain of salt. To make it *really* short, certain parts of the Croatian coast used OCS in lythurgy. For awhile, it was "legal" (till about the 11th century), but afterwards it was outlawed. It might be that at some point in time the Pope again "legalised" it, but I'm not certain (I'd have to dig out some books to check it out, and I *really* don't feel like it )

 

[Desdichado]

For now at least. I think Mandarin could soon take over. It's already poised to overtake english in volume on the web. Obviously you never know quite what the future holds, but it wouldn't suprise me. The world of Firefly today? Well, maybe tomorrow, anyway.

The only reason I'm sceptical is that Mandarin isn't really expanding the same way English has. For whatever suite of reasons that have driven it to become so, English is very much the lingua franca of the world; even in China to some extent. I don't know that native speakers of English are moving up, but people who do speak it certainly are.

 

[CRGreathouse]

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).

Edit: Perun actually covered everything I wanted to say... I'll leave this here, I suppose, but there's really no point.

Well, this is true for the most part... but Latin does have dipthongs ("ae", pronounced as in "sky" for example; this is unlike, for example, "uu" which is pronounced like two "u"s in a row) and a few irregular rules. Try saying "urbs" without a special rule and you'll see what I mean.

 

[The Other Librarian]

The only reason I'm sceptical is that Mandarin isn't really expanding the same way English has. For whatever suite of reasons that have driven it to become so, English is very much the lingua franca of the world; even in China to some extent. I don't know that native speakers of English are moving up, but people who do speak it certainly are.

Well, my post was halfway tongue-in-cheek, but perhaps with some basis in truth. I don't think Mandarin will become the lingua franca in the way English has in my lifetime. But it might in the generations following. China in particular is poised to become a technological and economic powerhouse, and it may not be too long before Mandarin starts throwing it's linguistic weight around. As more and more of our daily business and living will be done through the 'net, in some form or another, our language will change to accomodate a polyglot world.

In the end, if you look at things in a historical context, English's couple hundred years (at best) dominance as a lingua franca will have maybe a similar impact as Latin or French had on the formation of English. That of an "imperialist" language that leaves its mark in vocabulary.