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Latin: which pronunciation? | ||
Tags: Latin | Pronunciation | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| AlexTG Diglot Senior Member Australia Joined 4628 days ago 178 posts - 354 votes  Speaks: English*, French Studies: Latin, German, Spanish, Japanese | Message 9 of 13 17 September 2014 at 1:16pm | IP Logged |
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When reading Chaucer and other Middle English texts I generally use the old style vowel
sounds, not my modern Australian vowel sounds. But it can be easier to pick up the meaning when using modern pronunciation. For beginner Middle English readers I would recommend simply using their own modern pronunciation, and trying out different facets of the old style pronunciation later. With Shakespeare it's more difficult. Spelling was no longer purely phonetic and the great vowel shift had begun but not completed. His pronunciation was none the less probably not all that much different to mine than today's Cockney, Irish, or Texan. I think it is worse to pronounce classical Latin texts in medieval pronunciation than the other way round because the medieval writers were writing in an artificial tradition in a tongue they didn't really speak. But yeah, the ideal solution is classical for classical, medieval for medieval. It's not necessary to study in depth either classical Latin or Middle English pronunciation. Your pronunciation doesn't need to be authentic and in fact it never can be since we don't know the full details of either (in neither case for instance do we know what type of 'r' was used). But where we're able we might as well use something approaching the original sound. The same issue exists for contemporary poetry. To me "harm" and "calm" rhyme perfectly, to most American poets they don't. So in addition to my readings in my own accent I like to try international poems in accents closer to the poet's own. For Seamus Heaney I'll use an Irish sounding accent, for Kay Ryan a Standard American accent. If I did this in front of an Irishman or an American would they laugh at me? Probably. But it's a fun and nice way to explore the poem. Sometimes I realise my Australian accent has been obscuring a beautiful effect. Poems are thankfully made to be spoken many times, in many ways. Edited by AlexTG on 17 September 2014 at 1:39pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| lecavaleur Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4767 days ago 146 posts - 295 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Spanish | Message 10 of 13 17 September 2014 at 3:32pm | IP Logged |
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I must say I am delightfully surprised at the number of responses. I think, I'll go the nerdy route (my
usual) and just use both. Many thanks to you all. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| dmaddock1 Senior Member United States Joined 5423 days ago 174 posts - 426 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, Esperanto, Latin, Ancient Greek | Message 11 of 13 18 September 2014 at 6:15pm | IP Logged |
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FYI, the Italian wing of Assimil has recorded the older Clement Desessard version of the Latin course in both ecclesiastical and classical pronunciation.
Lingua Latina I is also available in both. (Ecclesiastical for sale here) Quite nice to have a course in both versions if you want to practice both. d. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| robarb Nonaglot Senior Member United States languagenpluson Joined 5049 days ago 361 posts - 921 votes Speaks: Portuguese, English*, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, French Studies: Mandarin, Danish, Russian, Norwegian, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Greek, Latin, Nepali, Modern Hebrew | Message 12 of 13 19 September 2014 at 7:09am | IP Logged |
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The two spoken Latin podcasts I listen to (the Finnish Nuntii Latini and the German Nuntii Latini) both use a sort of
watered-down classical pronunciation. They are in obvious Finnish/German accents and the pronunciation is rendered approximately, not with the full reconstruction of how it would've sounded at a particular time in history. I recommend people do the same: pronounce the consonants as in classical, don't worry so much about getting the very tricky vowel system right unless you really, really want to. After all, there's no such thing as a native accent in Latin any more, and it changed over the centuries when it was widely spoken. I would only bother with the vowel quantity system if you podcast in Latin or recite a lot of verse. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6572 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 13 of 13 19 September 2014 at 8:42am | IP Logged |
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For those interested in the original pronunciation of Shakespeare, here's a great video with some examples, from the Globe Theatre where some plays have been performed ion the OP:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPlpphT7n9s 1 person has voted this message useful |
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