Re: Latin Pronunciation

["Scott Hersey" <shersey@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

If I understand correctly, mediaeval Latin tended neither to mark nor to pronounce the long vowels.  However, the distinction was probably understood, if not observed in writing or pronunciation--the copious amounts of Latin poetry in the Middle Ages observe Latin metrical rules that can only be followed if one knows the difference between short and long vowels.

Even if the distinction HAD been utterly lost, however, it would have been perfectly possible (however tedious) to reconstruct the long and short vowels by going through the massive corpus of classical Latin poetry and comparing the words against the metre.

For example: the Aeneid's long-short-short, long-short-short metre indicates that the "o" in "Arma virumque cano..." must be long; and so forth.

-Scott Hersey

P.S.  I seem to remember a couple of late mediaeval MSS where an occasional length distinction was marked with an acute accent--"cauda" (by the tail) to distinguish it from plain "cauda" (tail).  Wish I could remember where.
--

On Mon, 05 Feb 2001 23:41:56  
 Dennis wrote:
>
>
>Jim Gillogly wrote:
>> 
>> > I have heard stories about an old botany professor at Cornell (long
>> > before my short lifetime) who was so scrupulous in his Latin
>> > pronunciation that his colleagues and students couldn't understand what
>> > he was saying much the time. When speaking of grapes, for example, he
>> > would say "wee-tis" (Vitis) and "wee-ta-kee-aye" (Vitaceae)instead of
>> > the common but incorrect "vy-tis" and "vy-tay-see-ee".
>> 
>> For what it's worth, my Latin teacher (UCLA) said "wee-tees" was the
>> correct pronunciation for classical Latin.  A Dutch friend was taught
>> the same pronunciation in her classical Latin class.  Interestingly,
>> she and her husband were both good in Latin but couldn't understand
>> each other, since he was strong in church Latin (vee-tah-che-aye)
>> and she was nearly fluent in classical (wee-tah-kay-aye).
>
>	I had 2 years of high school Latin, and we learned the
>ancient pronunciation, where Vitis is pronounced
>"WEE-tees" and Vitaceae is "Wee-tah-KAY-aye".  I never
>learned the church pronunciation, which is  like
>Italian.
>
>	Here's a classic book on how Latin in the time of the
>Roman empire was pronounced:
>
>Vox Latina : A Guide to the Pronunciation of
>Classical Latin by William Sidney Allen.  Our Price:
>$17.95
>Paperback Reprint edition (June 1989) 
>Cambridge Univ Pr (Pap Txt); ISBN: 0521379369 ;
>Dimensions (in inches): 0.46 x 8.45 x 5.50 
>
>	NOW - I have a question of my own.  One of the
>nuisances with Latin is that vowel length is phonemic,
>a contrasting distinction, but vowel length is only
>marked in textbooks.  What happened in medieval Latin? 
>Were vowel lengths forgotten?
>
>Dennis
>


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