19.02.04: Notes on the pronunciation of Latin [3] consonants

19.02.04: Notes on the pronunciation of Latin [3] consonants

The pronunciation of Latin consonants is very similar to English, with only a few differences to note.

Sounds that are the same as in English:

b ¦ bibo (I drink)

d ¦ domus (house)

f ¦ forum (market place)

h ¦ pronounced softly: hīc (here)

k ¦ (rare; pronounced the same way as C [see below]: Kalendae (the calends, the first day of the month)

l ¦ liber (book)

m ¦ manus (hand)

p ¦ poculum (wine cup)

r ¦ trilled as in Spanish ‘perro’ or in Scots pronunciation of /r/: rosa (rose)

s ¦ always as /s/, never as /z/: spēs (hope)

t ¦ always as /t/, never as /sh/ as in Engl. nation: nātiō [/ˈnaː.Ti.oː/] (birth; nation)

x ¦ /ks/: ex (out of)

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Points to note:

[1] c ¦ /c/ in Classical Latin is always pronounced as a hard c [= /k/]: circus [/ˈkir.kus] (racecourse); over the centuries the pronunciation changed which is evident in Ecclesiastical / Mediaeval Latin, but for the purposes of studying CL, /c/ = /k/

[2] g ¦ always pronounced as a hard /g/ as in good, never as in Engl. ‘age’: gladius (sword)

[3] m ¦ is essentially the same as in English. However, after a vowel at the end of a word, it was pronounced as a nasal sound as in French main or bain. But this is only for information because most students of Latin simply pronounce the /m/ without a nasal sound.

[4] q ¦ is always followed by /u/, the pronunciation being /kw/: quid? (what?)

[5] z ¦ appears only in Greek loanwords as a rendering of zeta (ζ); pronounced like English z or dz

The following needs careful study:

[6] i ¦ this letter has a double function [i] as a vowel (see previous post) and [ii] equivalent to English /y/ before another vowel e.g. Iūlius [/ˈi̯uː.li.us/] Caesar (Julius Caesar); note: some Latin textbooks differentiate between [i] /i/ as a vowel and [ii] /i/ as /y/ by using /j/ for the latter, but that was not the practice in CL. Both /i/ and /y/ were written as /i/: Iūlius [YoolIoos]; there was no letter /j/ in CL, nor was there a sound equivalent to Engl. /j/ as in ‘jump’

[7] u / v: the original Latin alphabet had no separate letter U which is why in inscriptions you will only see V e.g. GAIVS IVLIVS CAESAR (Gaius Iulius Caesar). However, there was a difference in pronunciation: sometimes the letter V represented /w/, and sometimes /u/, and those pronunciations stayed distinct in the Romance languages derived from Latin, leading to the difference between modern V and U. Therefore, modern editors of, for example, dictionaries, course books and editions of the Ancient Roman authors often show this distinction by writing the consonant sound /w/ as V, and the vowel sound as U. Therefore, if you are reading a modern edition of a CL work and you see /v/ it is pronounced as a /w/. The pronunciation of Latin /v/ as Modern English /v/ is only a convention of Ecclesiastical Latin (the Latin of the church).