Re: Latin Pronunciation

[RSRICHMOND@xxxxxxx]

The old botany professor with his Weetis and Weetahkayigh for Vitis and 
Vitaceae isn't just pedantic, he's plain wrong. Scientific neo-Latin like 
this is correctly pronounced in the received pronunciation of the speaker's 
vernacular. The problem is a diglossia - a situation where there is a 
"correct" pronunciation and a vernacular pronunciation, and people find it 
necessary to be in denial about the whole thing. Arabic and Modern Greek are 
the classic examples of diglossia languages, but there are many more. I was 
amazed on a trip to Quintana Roo a few years ago to find diglossia alive and 
well in Yucatec Maya, and it's a serious problem in Hawaiian.

Alvaro Aguilera records >>vitis:  bee-tees [and] vitaceae : bee-ta-tche-aye<< 
in what must be the Spanish received pronunciation, which I've never 
encountered.

>>whether Julius Caesar, five centuries after Romulus and two centuries 
before Trajan, would have used the "vulgar" [tche], or the "classic" [ke].<< 
If the situation at the time was like modern Arabic, he said ke in the Roman 
Forum, and tche when he talked to his mother, all the while vehemently 
denying he did any such thing. - Actually, to judge by Suetonius, his mother 
tongue may have been Koine - his dying words were "kai su, teknon" (and thou, 
son) - I don't know where the familiar "Et tu, Brute" story originated.

The southern humorist Florence King tells an excruciatingly funny story about 
Latin pronunciation in one of her books - about her Uncle Carey who took his 
cat to the veterinarian because she had something wrong with her wah-GEE-na.

Medieval Latin speakers undoubtedly used the received pronunciation of their 
community, but no doubt understood each other without much difficulty, just 
as Arabic speakers from different parts of the Arab world do today.

Medieval Latin doesn't have phonemic vowel length. I don't know when it got 
lost, or whether the Vulgar Latin of the classical period retained it or not. 
The answer may be in Vox Latina, as Dennis mentions - I've read this book but 
don't have it at the moment. It doesn't bear much contrast load, and perhaps 
that's why it's omitted in most modern editions of Latin works, including the 
Loeb classics. Hawaiian, with very heavy contrast load on its phonemic vowel 
length, did not mark it in the 19th century, but does today - on O'ahu, as 
street signs are replaced the new ones mark vowel length for all place names 
whose Hawaiian etymology is known (alas, that isn't all of them).

The only person I've ever known who clearly understood the English received 
pronunciation was my mother (1906-1981, U of OR at Eugene '28) who taught 
Latin (with "Roman System" pronunciation) in rural Oregon around 1930. 
Classicists I've asked affect to be completely unfamiliar with it, probably 
an example of diglossia in action.

Bob Richmond
Knoxville TN