Latin phonology and orthography

Template:Short description Template:IPA notice Latin phonology is the system of sounds used in Latin. Classical Latin was spoken from the late Roman Republic to the early Empire: evidence for its pronunciation is taken from comments by Roman grammarians, common spelling mistakes, transcriptions into other languages, and the outcomes of various sounds in the Romance languages.

Latin orthography is the writing system used to spell Latin from its archaic stages down to the present. Latin was nearly always spelt in the Latin alphabet, but further details varied from period to period. The alphabet developed from Old Italic script, which had developed from a variant of the Greek alphabet, which in turn had developed from a variant of the Phoenician alphabet. The Latin alphabet most resembles the Greek alphabet that can be seen on black-figure pottery dating to c. 540 BC, especially the Euboean regional variant.

As the language continued to be used as a classical language, lingua franca and liturgical language long after it ceased being a native language, pronunciation and – to a lesser extent – spelling diverged significantly from the classical standard with Latin words being pronounced differently by native speakers of different languages. While nowadays a reconstructed classical pronunciation aimed to be that of the 1st century AD is usually employed in the teaching of Latin, the Italian-influenced ecclesiastical pronunciation as used by the Catholic church is still in common use. The Traditional English pronunciation of Latin has all but disappeared from classics education but continues to be used for Latin-based loanwords and use of Latin e.g. for binominal names in taxonomy.

During most of the time written Latin was in widespread use, authors variously complained about language change or attempted to "restore" an earlier standard. Such sources are of great value in reconstructing various stages of the spoken language (the is an important source for the spoken variety in the 4th century CE, for example) and have in some cases indeed influenced the development of the language. The efforts of Renaissance Latin authors were to a large extent successful in removing innovations in grammar, spelling and vocabulary present in Medieval Latin but absent in both classical and contemporary Latin.

Letterforms

File:I littera in manuscripto.jpg

A papyrus fragment in Roman cursive with portions of speeches delivered in the Roman Senate

In Classical times there was no modern-like distinction between upper case and lower case. Inscriptions typically use square capitals, in letterforms largely corresponding to modern upper-case, and handwritten text was generally in the form of cursive, which includes letterforms corresponding to modern lowercase.

Letters and phonemes

In Classical spelling, individual letters mainly corresponded to individual phonemes (alphabetic principle). Exceptions include:

1. The letters Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr and Template:Angbr, each of which could represent either a short vowel or a long one. The long vowels were sometimes marked with apices, as in Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr and Template:Angbr, while long could be marked with long I Template:Angbr. Since the 19th century, long vowels have been marked with macrons, as in Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr and Template:Angbr; sometimes, breves may also be used to indicate short vowels, as in Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr, and Template:Angbr.
2. The letters Template:Angbr and Template:Angbr, which could either indicate vowels (as mentioned) or the consonants and , respectively. In modern times, the letters Template:Angbr and Template:Angbr began to be used as distinct spellings for these consonants (now often pronounced very differently).
3. Digraphs such as Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr and Template:Angbr, which represented the diphthongs , and . In a few words, these could also stand for sequences of two adjacent vowels, which is sometimes marked by the use of a diaeresis in modern transcriptions, as in Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr and Template:Angbr.
4. The digraphs Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr and Template:Angbr, standing for the aspirated consonants , and (initially written in loanwords from Greek, and subsequently in some native Latin words and loanwords from Italic languages which used the same sounds).Template:Sfn

Consonants

Below are the distinctive (i.e. phonemic) consonants that are assumed for Classical Latin.

		Labial	Coronal	Palatal	Velar		Glottal
					plain	labialized
Plosive	voiced	Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link		Template:IPA link	(Template:IPA link)
	voiceless	Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link		Template:IPA link	(Template:IPA link)
	aspirated	Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link		Template:IPA link
Fricative	voiced		Template:IPA link
	voiceless	Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link				Template:IPA link
Nasal		Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link
Rhotic			Template:IPA link
Approximant			Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link		Template:IPA link

Phonetics

• Latin may have had the labialized velar stops and as opposed to the stop + semivowel sequences and (as in the English quick or penguin). The argument for is stronger than that for .Template:Efn
• The former could occur between vowels, where it always counted as a single consonant in Classical poetry, whereas the latter only occurred after , where it is impossible to tell whether it counted as one consonant or two. The labial element, whether or , appears to have been palatalised before a front vowel, resulting in or Voiced labial–palatal approximant (for instance would have sounded something like {{errorTemplate:Main other|Audio file "La-cls-qui.ogg" not found}}Template:Category handler). This palatalisation did not affect the independent consonant before front vowels.
• and before were not distinct from and , which were allophonically labialized to and by a following such that writing a double Template:Angbr was unnecessary. This is suggested by the fact that and (from Old Latin and ) are also found spelt as and .
• , and were less aspirated than the corresponding English consonants, as implied by their usually being transliterated into Ancient Greek as Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr and Template:Angbr, and their pronunciation in most Romance languages. In many cases, however, it was not the Latin and , but rather and , that were used to render Greek word-initial and in borrowings (as in , > , ), especially borrowings of a non-learned character. This might suggest that the Latin and had some degree of aspiration, making and more suitable to approximate the Greek sounds.
• , and were pronounced with notable aspiration, like the initial consonants of the English pot, top, and cot respectively. They are attested beginning c. 150 BC, in the spellings Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr and Template:Angbr, at first only used to render the Greek Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr and Template:Angbr in loanwords. (Previously these had been rendered in Latin as Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr and Template:Angbr.) From c. 100 BC onward Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr and Template:Angbr spread to a number of native Latin words as well, such as and . When this occurred it was nearly always in the vicinity of the consonant or , and the implication is that Latin , and had become aspirated in that context.
• was found as a rendering of the Greek Template:Angbr in borrowings starting around the first century BC. (In earlier borrowings, the Greek sound had been rendered in Latin as .) In initial position, appears to have been pronounced , and between vowels it appears to have been doubled to (counted as two consonants in poetry).
• was unvoiced in all positions in Classical Latin. Previously however Old Latin appears to have voiced to between vowels, ultimately turning to . Cicero reports the family-name being changed to in the fourth century BC, which may give some idea of the chronology. Afterward new instances of developed between vowels from sound-changes like the degemination of after long vowels and diphthongs (as in > ), which Quintilian reports to have happened a little after the time of Cicero and Virgil.
• In Old Latin, final after a short vowel was often lost, probably after first debuccalizing to , as in the inscriptional form for (Classical ). Often in the poetry of Plautus, Ennius, and Lucretius, final did not count as a consonant when followed by a word beginning with a consonant. By the Classical period this practice was described as characteristic of non-urban speech by Cicero.
• was labiodental in Classical Latin but may have been a bilabial in Old Latin, or perhaps in free variation with . Lloyd, Sturtevant, and Kent make this argument based on misspellings in early inscriptions, the fact that many instances of Latin descend from Proto-Indo-European , and the outcomes of the sound in Romance (particularly in Spain).
• In most cases was pronounced as a bilabial nasal. At the end of a word, however, it was generally lost beginning in Old Latin (except when another nasal or a plosive followed it), leaving compensatory lengthening and nasalization on the preceding vowel (such that may have sounded something like {{errorTemplate:Main other|Audio file "La-cls-decem.ogg" not found}}Template:Category handler, i.e. ). In Old Latin inscriptions, final Template:Angbr is often omitted, as in Template:Angbr for (Classical ). It was frequently elided before a following vowel in poetry and lost without a trace (apart from perhaps lengthening) in the Romance languages, except in a number of monosyllabic words, where it often survives as or a further development thereof.
• and merged via assimilation before a following consonant, with the following consonant determining the resulting pronunciation: bilabial before a bilabial consonant (e.g. and ), coronal before a coronal consonant (e.g. and ) and velar before a velar consonant (e.g. , and ). This occurred both within words (e.g. may have sounded something like {{errorTemplate:Main other|Audio file "La-cls-quinque.ogg" not found}}Template:Category handler) and across word-boundaries (for instance with , or ).
• assimilated to a velar nasal before . Allen and Greenough say that a vowel before is always long, but W. Sidney Allen says that is based on an interpolation in Priscian, and the vowel was actually long or short depending on the root, as for example from the root of but from the root of . probably did not assimilate to before . The cluster arose by syncope, as for example from . Original developed into in , from the root of . At the start of a word, original was reduced to , and this change was reflected in the orthography of later texts, as in , > , .
• In Classical Latin, the rhotic was most likely an alveolar trill , at least in some positions and when doubled. Gaius Lucilius likened it to the sound of a dog, and later writers described it as being produced by vibration. In Old Latin, intervocalic developed into (rhotacism), suggesting an approximant like the English Template:IPAblink, and was sometimes written as Template:Angbr, possibly suggesting a tap Template:IPAblink (like the single in Spanish).
• was strongly velarized in syllable coda and probably somewhat palatalized when geminated or followed by . In intervocalic position, it appears to have been velarized before all vowels except .
• generally appeared only at the beginning of words, before a vowel, as in , except in compound words such as (pronounced something like {{errorTemplate:Main other|Audio file "La-cls-iaceo, adiaceo.ogg" not found}}Template:Category handler). Between vowels, it was generally as a geminate , as in (pronounced something like {{errorTemplate:Main other|Audio file "La-cls-cuius.ogg" not found}}Template:Category handler) except in compound words such as . This is sometimes marked in modern editions by a circumflex on the preceding vowel, e.g. , , , etc. could also have varied with in the same morpheme, as in and , and in poetry one could be replaced with the other for metrical purpose.
• was pronounced as an approximant until the first century AD, when and intervocalic began to develop into fricatives. In poetry, and could be replaced with each other, as in ~ or ~. Unlike it remained a single consonant in most words, e.g. in , although it did represent a double in borrowings from Greek such as the name .
• was generally still pronounced in Classical Latin, at least by educated speakers, but in many cases it appears to have been lost early on between vowels, and sometimes in other contexts as well ( < * being a particularly early example). Where intervocalic survived, it was likely voiced (that is, ).

Notes on spelling

• Doubled consonant letters represented genuinely doubled consonants, as in Template:Angbr for . In Old Latin, geminate consonants were written as if they were single until the middle of the second century BC, when orthographic doubling began to appear.Template:Efn Grammarians mention the marking of double consonants with the sicilicus, a diacritic in the shape of a sickle. It appears in a few inscriptions of the Augustan era.
• Template:Angbr and Template:Angbr both represented , whereas Template:Angbr represented . Template:Angbr and Template:Angbr distinguish minimal pairs such as and . In Classical Latin Template:Angbr appeared in only a few words like , - which could also be spelt , .
• Template:Angbr represented . It was borrowed from the Western Greek alphabet, where chi Template:Angbr stood for as well. This was unlike the usage of chi in the Ionic alphabet, where it stood for , with instead represented by the letter xi Template:Angbr.
• Template:Angbr Template:Angbr and Template:Angbr were also used to spell in Old Latin, but by the Classical period, Template:Angbr was reserved for words containing the prefix combined with a base starting with Template:Angbr (e.g. ).
• In Old Latin inscriptions, and were not distinguished. They were both represented by Template:Angbr before Template:Angbr and Template:Angbr, by Template:Angbr before Template:Angbr and Template:Angbr, and by Template:Angbr before consonants or Template:Angbr. The letterform Template:Angbr derives from the Greek gamma Template:Angbr, which represented . Its use for may come from Etruscan, which did not distinguish voiced plosives from voiceless ones. In Classical Latin, Template:Angbr represented only in the abbreviations and , for and respectively.
• Template:Angbr was created in the third century BC to distinguish from . Its letterform derived from Template:Angbr with the addition of a diacritic or stroke. Plutarch attributes this innovation to Spurius Carvilius Ruga around 230 BC, but it may have originated with Appius Claudius Caecus in the fourth century BC.
• The cluster Template:Angbr probably represented the consonant cluster , at least between vowels, as in {{errorTemplate:Main other|Audio file "La-cls-agnus2.ogg" not found}}Template:Category handler. Vowels before this cluster were sometimes long and sometimes short.
• The digraphs Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr, and Template:Angbr represented the aspirated plosives , and . They began to be used in writing around 150 BC, primarily as a transcription of Greek phi , theta , and chi , as in , , and . Some native words were later also written with these digraphs, such as , , , , probably representing aspirated allophones of the voiceless plosives near and . Aspirated plosives and the glottal fricative were also used hypercorrectively, an affectation satirized in Catullus 84.
• In Old Latin, Koine Greek initial and between vowels were represented by Template:Angbr and Template:Angbr, as in from and from . Around the second and first centuries B.C., the Greek letter zeta Template:Angbr was adopted to represent and . However, the Vulgar Latin spellings Template:Angbr or Template:Angbr for earlier Template:Angbr and Template:Angbr before Template:Angbr, and the spellings Template:Angbr and Template:Angbr for earlier Template:Angbr, suggest the pronunciation , as for example for , and for .
• In ancient times Template:Angbr and Template:Angbr represented the approximant consonants and , as well as the close vowels and .
• Template:Angbr representing the consonant was usually not doubled in writing, so a single Template:Angbr represented double or and the sequences and , as in for * , for * , and for * . Both the consonantal and vocalic pronunciations of Template:Angbr could occur in some of the same environments: compare with , and with . The vowel before a doubled is sometimes marked with a macron, as in . It indicates not that the vowel is long but that the first syllable is heavy from the double consonant.
• Template:Angbr between vowels represented single in native Latin words but double in Greek loanwords. Both the consonantal and vocalic pronunciations of Template:Angbr sometimes occurred in similar environments, as in and .

Vowels

Monophthongs

File:Latin vowel space.png

The Latin vowel-space per

Classical Latin had ten native phonemic monophthongs: the five short vowels , , , and , and their long counterparts , , , and . Two additional monophthongs, and , were sometimes used for Template:Angbr in loanwords from Greek by educated speakers, but most speakers would have approximated them with or .

	Front	Central	Back
Close	Template:IPA link Template:IPA link (Template:IPA link Template:IPA link)		Template:IPA link Template:IPA link
Mid	Template:IPA link Template:IPA link		Template:IPA link Template:IPA link
Open		Template:IPA link Template:IPA link

Long and short vowels

The short vowels , , and may have been pronounced with a relatively open quality, which may be approximated as Template:IPAblink Template:IPAblink Template:IPAblink Template:IPAblink, and the corresponding long vowels with a relatively close quality, approximately Template:IPAblink Template:IPAblink Template:IPAblink Template:IPAblink.Template:Efn That the short and were, as this implies, similar in quality to the long and is suggested by attested misspellings such as:

• Template:Angbr for
• Template:Angbr for
• Template:Angbr for
• Template:Angbr for

most likely had a more open allophone before .

and were probably pronounced closer when they occurred before another vowel, with e.g. written as Template:Angbr in some inscriptions. Short before another vowel is often written with the so-called long I, as in Template:Angbr for , indicating that its quality was similar to that of long ; it was almost never confused with Template:Angbr in this position.

Adoption of Greek upsilon

Template:Angbr was used in Greek loanwords with upsilon Template:Angbr. This letter represented the close front rounded vowel, both short and long: and . Latin did not have this sound as a native phoneme, and speakers tended to pronounce such loanwords with and in Old Latin and and in Classical and Late Latin if they were unable to produce and .

An intermediate vowel sound (likely a close central vowel Template:IPAblink or possibly its rounded counterpart Template:IPAblink, or even Template:IPAblink), called , can be reconstructed for the classical period. Such a vowel is found in , , (also spelled , , ) and other words. It developed out of any historical short vowel in a non-initial open syllable by vowel reduction, probably first to Template:IPAblink, later fronted to Template:IPAblink or Template:IPAblink. In the vicinity of labial consonants, this sound was not as fronted and may have retained some rounding, thus being more similar if not identical to the unreduced short Template:IPAblink. The Claudian letter Ⱶ ⱶ was possibly invented to represent this sound, but is never actually found used this way in the epigraphic record (it usually served as a replacement for the upsilon).

Vowel nasalization

Vowels followed by a nasal consonant were allophonically realised as long nasal vowels in two environments:

• Before word-final Template:Angbr:
  • >
  • >
• Before nasal consonants followed by a fricative:
  • > (in early inscriptions, often written as )
  • > (often written as and abbreviated as )
  • > Template:Cleanup inline (written as )

Those long nasal vowels had the same quality as ordinary long vowels. In Vulgar Latin, the vowels lost their nasalisation, and they merged with the long vowels (which were themselves shortened by that time). This is shown by many forms in the Romance languages, such as Spanish from Vulgar Latin (originally ) and Italian from Vulgar Latin (Classical Latin ). On the other hand, the short vowel and were restored, for example, in French and from and (Template:Angbr is the normal development of Latin short Template:Angbr), likely by analogy with other forms beginning in the prefix .

When a final Template:Angbr occurred before a plosive or nasal in the next word, however, it was pronounced as a nasal at the place of articulation of the following consonant. For instance, was written for in inscriptions, and was a double entendre, presumably for .

Diphthongs

Diphthongs classified by beginning sound

	Front	Back
Close		ui
Mid	ei eu	oe
Open	ae au

Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr and Template:Angbr could represent diphthongs: Template:Angbr represented , Template:Angbr represented , Template:Angbr represented , Template:Angbr represented , and Template:Angbr represented . Template:Angbr sometimes represented the diphthong , as in {{errorTemplate:Main other|Audio file "La-cls-cui.oga" not found}}Template:Category handler and . The diphthong Template:Angbr had mostly changed to Template:Angbr by the Classical epoch; Template:Angbr remained only in a few words, such as the interjection .

If there is a tréma above the second vowel, both vowels are pronounced separately: Template:Angbr , Template:Angbr , Template:Angbr and Template:Angbr . However, disyllabic Template:Angbr in morpheme borders is traditionally written without the tréma: 'my'.

In Old Latin, Template:Angbr and Template:Angbr were written as Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr and probably pronounced as and , with a fully closed second element, similar to the final syllable in French {{errorTemplate:Main other|Audio file "Fr-travail.ogg" not found}}Template:Category handler. In the late Old Latin period, the last element of the diphthongs was lowered to , so that the diphthongs were pronounced and in Classical Latin. They were then monophthongized to and respectively, starting in rural areas at the end of the Republican period.Template:Efn The process, however, does not seem to have been completed before the 3rd century AD, and some scholars say that it may have been regular by the 5th century.

Vowel and consonant length

Vowel and consonant length were more significant and more clearly defined in Latin than in modern English. Length is the duration of time that a particular sound is held before proceeding to the next sound in a word. In the modern spelling of Latin, especially in dictionaries and academic work, macrons are frequently used to mark long vowels: Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr and Template:Angbr, while the breve is sometimes used to indicate that a vowel is short: Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr and Template:Angbr.

Long consonants were usually indicated through doubling, but ancient Latin orthography did not distinguish between the vocalic and consonantal uses of Template:Angbr and Template:Angbr. Vowel length was indicated only intermittently in classical sources and even then through a variety of means. Later medieval and modern usage tended to omit vowel length altogether. A short-lived convention of spelling long vowels by doubling the vowel letter is associated with the poet Lucius Accius. Later spelling conventions marked long vowels with an apex (a diacritic similar to an acute accent) or, in the case of long i, by increasing the height of the letter (long i); in the second century AD, those were given apices as well. The Classical vowel length system faded in later Latin and ceased to be phonemic in Romance, having been replaced by contrasts in vowel quality. Consonant length, however, remains contrastive in much of Italo-Romance, cf. Italian "ninth" versus "grandfather".

File:La-cls-anus, annus, anus.ogg

Recording of

A minimal set showing both long and short vowels and long and short consonants is ('anus'), ('year'), ('old woman').

Table of orthography

The letters Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr are always pronounced as in English , , , , , respectively, and they do not usually cause any difficulties. The exceptions are mentioned below:

Pronunciation of Latin consonants

Latin grapheme	Latin phoneme	English approximation
Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr		Always hard as k in sky, never soft as in cellar, cello, or social. Template:Angbr is a letter coming from Greek, but seldom used and generally replaced by Template:Angbr.
Template:Angbr		As ch in chemistry, and aspirated; never as in challenge or change and also never as in Bach or chutzpah. Transliteration of Greek Template:Angbr, mostly used in Greek loanwords.
Template:Angbr		Always hard as g in good, never soft as g in gem.
Template:Angbr		As ngn in wingnut.
Template:Angbr		SometimesTemplate:Clarify at the beginning of a syllable, as y in yard, never as j in just.
		Geminated between vowels, as y y in toy yacht.
Template:Angbr		When doubled Template:Angbr or before Template:Angbr, as clear l in link (known as ).
		In all other positions, as dark l in bowl (known as ).
Template:Angbr		As p in spy, unaspirated.
Template:Angbr		As p in party, always aspirated; never as in photo when being pronounced in English. Transliteration of Greek Template:Angbr, mostly used in Greek loanwords.
Template:Angbr		Similar to qu in quick, never as qu in antique. Before Template:Angbr, like cu in French .
Template:Angbr		There were two trends: the educated and popular pronunciation. Within educated circles it was pronounced , evoking the Old Latin pronunciation (, ); meanwhile, within popular circles it was pronounced (, ).
Template:Angbr		As r in Italian and several Romance languages.
Template:Angbr		As r in Italian and several Romance languages, but voiceless; e.g. Template:Angbr. (see Voiceless alveolar trill). Transcription of Greek Template:Angbr, mostly used in Greek loanwords.
Template:Angbr		As s in say, never as s in rise or measure.
Template:Angbr		As t in stay
Template:Angbr		As th in thyme, and aspirated; never as in thing, or that. Transliteration of Greek Template:Angbr, mostly used in Greek loanwords.
Template:Angbr		SometimesTemplate:Clarify at the beginning of a syllable, or after Template:Angbr and Template:Angbr, as w in wine, never as v in vine.
Template:Angbr		As one is pronounced in some English accents, but without the nasal sound: , . The spelling Template:Angbr is post-classical, made in order to become regular in spelling.
Template:Angbr		A letter representing Template:Angbr + Template:Angbr, as well as Template:Angbr + Template:Angbr: as x in English axe.
Template:Angbr		As in zoom, never as in pizza.Template:Clarify Transliteration of Greek Template:Angbr, mostly used in Greek loanwords.

Pronunciation of Latin vowels

Latin grapheme	Latin phone	English approximation
Template:Angbr		Similar to u in cut when short. Transliteration of Greek short Template:Angbr.
		Similar to a in father when long. Transliteration of Greek long Template:Angbr.
Template:Angbr		As e in pet when short. Transliteration of Greek Template:Angbr.
		Similar to ey in they when long. Transliteration of Greek Template:Angbr, and Template:Angbr in some cases.
Template:Angbr		As i in sit when short. Transliteration of short Greek Template:Angbr.
		Similar to i in machine when long. Transliteration of Greek long Template:Angbr, and Template:Angbr in some cases.
Template:Angbr		As o in sort when short. Transliteration of Greek Template:Angbr.
		Similar to o in holy when long. Transliteration of Greek Template:Angbr, and Template:Angbr in some cases.
Template:Angbr		Similar to u in put when short.
		Similar to u in true when long. Transliteration of Greek Template:Angbr.
Template:Angbr		As in German Stück when short (or as short u or i) (mostly used in Greek loanwords). Transliteration of Greek short Template:Angbr.
		As in German früh when long (or as long u or i) (mostly used in Greek loanwords). Transliteration of Greek long Template:Angbr.

Pronunciation of Latin diphthongs

Latin grapheme	Latin phone	English approximation
Template:Angbr		As in aisle. Transliteration of Greek Template:Angbr.
Template:Angbr		As in out. Transliteration of Greek Template:Angbr.
Template:Angbr		As in ey in they. Transliteration of Greek Template:Angbr in some cases.
Template:Angbr		As in Portuguese , similar to the British pronunciation of ow in low. Transliteration of Greek Template:Angbr.
Template:Angbr		As in boy. Transliteration of Greek Template:Angbr.
Template:Angbr		As in Spanish , similar to hooey.
Template:Angbr		Transliteration of the Greek diphthong Template:Angbr.

Syllables and stress

Nature of the accent

Although some French and Italian scholars believe that the classical Latin accent was purely a pitch accent, which had no effect on the placing of words in a line of poetry, the view of most scholars is that the accent was a stress accent. One argument for this is that unlike most languages with tonal accents, there are no minimal pairs like ancient Greek (falling accent) "light" vs. (rising accent) "man" where a change of accent on the same syllable changes the meaning. Among other arguments are the loss of vowels before or after the accent in words such as and ; and the shortening of post or pre-accentual syllables in Plautus and Terence by brevis brevians, for example, scansions such as and with the second syllable short.

Old Latin stress

In Old Latin, as in Proto-Italic, stress normally fell on the first syllable of a word. During this period, the word-initial stress triggered changes in the vowels of non-initial syllables, the effects of which are still visible in classical Latin. Compare for example:

• 'I do/make', 'made'; pronounced and in later Old Latin and Classical Latin.
• 'I affect', 'affected'; pronounced and in Old Latin following vowel reduction, and in Classical Latin.

In the earliest Latin writings, the original unreduced vowels are still visible. Study of this vowel reduction, as well as syncopation (dropping of short unaccented syllables) in Greek loan words, indicates that the stress remained word-initial until around the time of Plautus, in the 3rd century BC. The placement of the stress then shifted to become the pattern found in classical Latin.

Classical Latin syllables and stress

In Classical Latin, stress fell on one of the last three syllables, called the antepenult, the penult, and the ultima (short for 'before almost last', 'almost last', and 'last syllable'). Its position is determined by the syllable weight of the penult. If the penult is heavy, it is accented; if the penult is light and there are more than two syllables, the antepenult is accented. In a few words originally accented on the penult, accent is on the ultima because the two last syllables have been contracted, or the last syllable has been lost.

Syllable

To determine stress, syllable weight of the penult must be determined. To determine syllable weight, words must be broken up into syllables. In the following examples, syllable structure is represented using these symbols: C (a consonant), K (a stop), R (a liquid), and V (a short vowel), VV (a long vowel or diphthong).

Nucleus

Every short vowel, long vowel, or diphthong belongs to a single syllable. This vowel forms the syllable nucleus. Thus has four syllables, one for every vowel (a i ā u: V V VV V), has three (ae e u: VV V V), has two (u ō: V VV), and has one (ui: VV).

Onset and coda

A consonant before a vowel or a consonant cluster at the beginning of a word is placed in the same syllable as the following vowel. This consonant or consonant cluster forms the syllable onset.

• (CVV.CV.CVV)
• (CV.CVV.CV)
• (CV.V.CVV)
• (CV.VV.CVV)
• (CCV.CV.CVC)
• (CCCVV.CVC)

After this, if there is an additional consonant inside the word, it is placed at the end of the syllable. This consonant is the syllable coda. Thus if a consonant cluster of two consonants occurs between vowels, they are broken up between syllables: one goes with the syllable before, the other with the syllable after.

• (CV.VC.CV)
• (CV.CVC.CVC)
• (CV.VVC.CVC)
• (VC.CVC.CVVC.CVC)

There are two exceptions. A consonant cluster of a stop , , , , , or followed by a liquid or between vowels usually goes to the syllable after it, although it is also sometimes broken up like other consonant clusters.

• or (CV.CV.KRVC or CV.CVK.RVC)

Heavy and light syllables

As shown in the examples above, Latin syllables have a variety of possible structures. Here are some of them. The first four examples are light syllables, and the last six are heavy. All syllables have at least one V (vowel). A syllable is heavy if it has another V or C (or both) after the first V. In the table below, the extra V or VC is bolded, indicating that it makes the syllable heavy.

			V
		C	V
	C	C	V
C	C	C	V
		C	V	V
		C	V	C
		C	V	V	C
			V	V
			V	C
			V	V	C

Thus, a syllable is heavy if it ends in a long vowel or diphthong, a short vowel and a consonant, a long vowel and a consonant, or a diphthong and a consonant. Syllables ending in a diphthong and consonant are rare in Classical Latin.

The syllable onset has no relationship to syllable weight; both heavy and light syllables can have no onset or an onset of one, two, or three consonants.

In Latin a syllable that is heavy because it ends in a long vowel or diphthong is traditionally called (Template:Translation), and a syllable that is heavy because it ends in a consonant is called (Template:Translation). These terms are translations of Greek (Template:Transliteration) and (Template:Transliteration), respectively; therefore should not be mistaken for implying a syllable "is long because of its position/place in a word" but rather "is treated as 'long' by convention". This article uses the words heavy and light for syllables, and long and short for vowels since the two are not the same.

Stress rule

In a word of three or more syllables, the weight of the penult determines where the accent is placed. If the penult is light, accent is placed on the antepenult; if it is heavy, accent is placed on the penult. Below, stress is marked by placing the stress mark Template:Angbr IPA before the stressed syllable.

Words with stress on antepenult

CV.CV.CCVC	CVV.CV.CVV	CV.V.CVV

Words with stress on penult

CV.CVC.CVC	CV.CVV.CV	VC.CVC.CVVC.CVC	CV.VV.CVV	CV.VC.CV	CV.VVC.CVC

Iambic shortening

Iambic shortening or is vowel shortening that occurs in words of the type light–heavy, where the light syllable is stressed. By this sound change, words like , , , with long final vowel change to , , , with short final vowel.

The term also refers to shortening of closed syllables following a short syllable, for example and so on. This type of shortening is found in early Latin, for example in the comedies of Plautus and Terence, but not in poetry of the classical period.

Elision

Where one word ended with a vowel (including the nasalized vowels written Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr and Template:Angbr, and the diphthong Template:Angbr) and the next word began with a vowel, the former vowel, at least in verse, was regularly elided; that is, it was omitted altogether, or possibly (in the case of and ) pronounced like the corresponding semivowel. When the second word was or , and possibly when the second word was , a different form of elision sometimes occurred (prodelision): the vowel of the preceding word was retained, and the Template:Angbr was elided instead. Elision also occurred in Ancient Greek, but in that language, it is shown in writing by the vowel in question being replaced by an apostrophe, whereas in Latin elision is not indicated at all in the orthography, but can be deduced from the verse form. Only occasionally is it found in inscriptions, as in for .

Modern conventions

Spelling

Letters

Modern usage, even for classical Latin texts, varies in respect of Template:Angbr and Template:Angbr. During the Renaissance, the printing convention was to use Template:Angbr (upper case) and Template:Angbr (lower case) for both vocalic and consonantal , to use Template:Angbr in the upper case and in the lower case to use Template:Angbr at the start of words and Template:Angbr subsequently within the word regardless of whether and was represented.

Many publishers (such as Oxford University Press) have adopted the convention of using Template:Angbr (upper case) and Template:Angbr (lower case) for both and , and Template:Angbr (upper case) and Template:Angbr (lower case) for both and .

An alternative approach, less common today, is to use Template:Angbr and Template:Angbr only for the vowels, and Template:Angbr and Template:Angbr for the approximants.

Most modern editions, however, adopt an intermediate position, distinguishing between Template:Angbr and Template:Angbr, but not between Template:Angbr and Template:Angbr. Usually, a non-vocalic Template:Angbr after Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr or Template:Angbr is still printed as Template:Angbr rather than Template:Angbr, likely because these did not change from to post-classically.Template:Efn

Diacritics

Textbooks and dictionaries usually indicate the length of vowels by putting a macron or horizontal bar above the long vowel, but it is not generally done in regular texts. Occasionally, mainly in early printed texts up to the 18th century, one may see a circumflex used to indicate a long vowel where this makes a difference to the sense, for instance, ('from Rome' ablative) compared to ('Rome' nominative).

Sometimes, for instance in Roman Catholic service books, an acute accent over a vowel is used to indicate the stressed syllable. It would be redundant for one who knew the classical rules of accentuation and made the correct distinction between long and short vowels, but most Latin speakers since the 3rd century have not made any distinction between long and short vowels, but they have kept the accents in the same places; thus, the use of accent marks allows speakers to read a word aloud correctly even if they have never heard it spoken aloud.

Pronunciation

Post-Medieval Latin

Since around the beginning of the Renaissance period onwards, with the language being used as an international language among intellectuals, pronunciation of Latin in Europe came to be dominated by the phonology of local languages, resulting in a variety of different pronunciation systems. See the article Latin regional pronunciation for more details on those (with the exception of the Italian one, which is described in the section on Ecclesiastical pronunciation below).

Loan words and formal study

When Latin words are used as loanwords in a modern language, there is ordinarily little or no attempt to pronounce them as the Romans did; in most cases, a pronunciation suiting the phonology of the receiving language is employed.

Latin words in common use in English are generally fully assimilated into the English sound system, with little to mark them as foreign; for example, cranium, saliva. Other words have a stronger Latin feel to them, usually because of spelling features such as the digraphs Template:Angbr and Template:Angbr (occasionally written with the ligatures: Template:Angbr and Template:Angbr, respectively), which both denote in English. The digraph Template:Angbr or ligature Template:Angbr in some words tend to be given an pronunciation; for example, curriculum vitae.

However, using loanwords in the context of the language borrowing them is a markedly different situation from the study of Latin itself. In this classroom setting, instructors and students attempt to recreate at least some sense of the original pronunciation. What is taught to native anglophones is suggested by the sounds of today's Romance languages, the direct descendants of Latin. Instructors who take this approach rationalize that Romance vowels probably come closer to the original pronunciation than those of any other modern language (see also the section Template:Slink below).

However, other languages—including Romance family members—all have their own interpretations of the Latin phonological system, applied both to loan words and formal study of Latin. But English, Romance, or other teachers do not always point out that the particular accent their students learn is not actually the way ancient Romans spoke.

Ecclesiastical pronunciation

Since the late 19th and early 20th centuries, an Italianate pronunciation of Latin has grown to be accepted as a universal standard in the Catholic Church. Before then, the pronunciation of Latin in church was the same as the pronunciation of Latin in other fields and tended to reflect the sound values associated with the nationality and native language of the speaker.Template:Sfn Other ecclesiastical pronunciations are still in use, especially outside the Catholic Church.

A guide to this Italianate pronunciation is provided below. Since the letters or letter-combinations Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr, and Template:Angbr are pronounced as they are in English, they are not included in the table.

Consonants

Grapheme	Pronunciation	Context	Example	English approximation
Template:Angbr		Before Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr	procella	change
		Before Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr	carnem	sky (never aspirated as in kill)
Template:Angbr		Always	Antiochia
Template:Angbr		Before Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr	agere	gem
		Before Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr	plaga	gate
Template:Angbr		Beginning of a word or after a consonant	gnatus	canyon (roughly); precisely Italian
		Between vowels	signum	Doubled, as in long gnocchi
Template:Angbr		Between Template:Angbr and vowels	lingua	linguistics (never as in guide)
Template:Angbr	∅	In nearly all cases	hora	(silent)
		Between vowels in a few words	mihi	sky (never aspirated as in kill)
⟨i⟩		Beginning of a word and before a vowel	ianua	yard
		Between vowels	Gaius	Doubled, as in toy yacht
Template:Angbr		Always	Karthago	sky (never aspirated as in kill)
Template:Angbr			paulum	slip (never 'dark' as in pools)
Template:Angbr			praeda	spy (never aspirated as in pill)
Template:Angbr			Christophorus	feminine
Template:Angbr			atque	quick (never as in antique)
Template:Angbr			regina	(rolled like Italian or Spanish )
Template:Angbr			rhythmus
Template:Angbr			terra	Same as above, but long
Template:Angbr			haemorrhagia
Template:Angbr			esse	Doubled, as in as songs
Template:Angbr		Always (formally)	sanctum	sing
		Between vowels (informally)	miser	tease
Template:Angbr		Before Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr; at the beginning of a word or after a consonant	scio	shade
		Same as above, but intervocalic	ascendit	Doubled, as in ash shadow
		Before Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr	pascunt	scare
Template:Angbr		In a fewer words (poetic)	suavis	Swiss
		Always (non poetic)	suus	Superman
Template:Angbr		Before unstressed Template:Angbr and not after Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr; at the beginning of a word or after a consonant	silentium	pizza
		Same as above, but intervocalic	nationem	Doubled, as in at tsunami
		Generally	tironibus	stay (never aspirated as in table nor soft as in nation)
Template:Angbr		Always	theca
Template:Angbr			conservare	preserve
Template:Angbr			wardo	way
Template:Angbr			heu wardam	Doubled, as in saw way
Template:Angbr		Word internally before a stressed vowel	exaudi	examine
		Generally	dextro	fox
Template:Angbr			exclamavit	exclaim
		Before Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr	excelsis	thick shell
Template:Angbr		Always	exstans	Doubled, as in ex-sacristan
Template:Angbr		Generally	exsculpo	Doubled, as in ex-skatist
		Before Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr	exscindo	Doubled, as in ex-shaman
Template:Angbr		Beginning of a word or after a consonant	zona	lads
		Intervocalic	Horomazes	Doubled, as in linked dzungar

Vowels

Grapheme	Pronunciation	English approximation
Template:Angbr		father (roughly) precisely Spanish
Template:Angbr	/	pet
Template:Angbr
Template:Angbr
Template:Angbr		seek
Template:Angbr
Template:Angbr
Template:Angbr	/	sort
Template:Angbr		cool

Diphthongs

Grapheme	Pronunciation	English approximation
Template:Angbr		out
Template:Angbr		buy
Template:Angbr		they
Template:Angbr		hello as pronounced by Elmer Fudd: hewwo
Template:Angbr		Gruyère

• Vowel length is not phonemic. As a result, the automatic stress accent of Classical Latin, which was dependent on vowel length, becomes a phonemic one in Ecclesiastical Latin. (Some Ecclesiastical texts mark the stress with an acute accent in words of three or more syllables.)
• Word-final Template:Angbr and Template:Angbr are pronounced fully, with no nasalization of the preceding vowel.

In his : A guide to the Pronunciation of Classical Latin, William Sidney Allen remarked that this pronunciation, used by the Catholic Church in Rome and elsewhere, was recommended by Pope Pius X in a 1912 letter to the Archbishop of Bourges. However, as can be seen from the table above, there are very significant differences. The introduction to the indicates that Ecclesiastical Latin pronunciation should be used at Church liturgies. The Pontifical Academy for Latin is the pontifical academy in the Vatican that is charged with the dissemination and education of Catholics in the Latin language.

Outside of Austria, Germany, Poland, Hungary, Czechia and Slovakia, it is the most widely used standard in choral singing which, with a few exceptions like Stravinsky's , is concerned with liturgical texts. Anglican choirs adopted it when classicists abandoned traditional English pronunciation after World War II. The rise of historically informed performance and the availability of guides such as Copeman's Singing in Latin has led to the recent revival of regional pronunciations.

Pronunciation shared by Vulgar Latin and Romance languages

As Classical Latin developed to Late Latin, and eventually into the modern Romance languages, it experienced several phonological changes. Notable changes include the following (the precise order of which is uncertain):

• Loss of , in all contexts, and loss of final , in polysyllabic words.
• Monophthongization of to respectively.
• Fortition of to , then lenition of intervocalic to . (Later developing to in many areas.)
• Phonemic (no longer allophonic) loss of before and of final in polysyllabic words.
• Phonemic (no longer allophonic) development of to when unstressed and in hiatus.
• Palatalization of the consonants by a following .
• Loss of phonemic vowel length, with vowel quality becoming the distinctive factor instead. A number of vowel mergers followed as a result.
• Palatalization of various other consonants by a following .
• Palatalization of before front vowels (not everywhere).

Examples

The following examples are both in verse, which demonstrates several features more clearly than prose.

From Classical Latin

Virgil's , Book 1, verses 1–4. Quantitative metre (dactylic hexameter). Translation: "I sing of arms and the man, who, driven by fate, came first from the borders of Troy to Italy and the Lavinian shores; he [was] much afflicted both on lands and on the deep by the power of the gods, because of fierce Juno's vindictive wrath."

File:La-cls-arma virumque cano.ogg

Recording of first four lines of the Aeneid in reconstructed Classical Latin pronunciation

1. Traditional (19th-century) English orthography
2. Modern orthography with macrons
3. Modern orthography with macrons and without u and v distinction
4. Modern orthography without macrons
5. [Reconstructed] Classical Roman pronunciation

Note the elisions in and in the third line. For a fuller discussion of the prosodic features of this passage, see Dactylic hexameter.

Some manuscripts have "" rather than "" in the second line.

From Medieval Latin

Beginning of by Thomas Aquinas (13th century). Rhymed accentual metre. Translation: "Extol, [my] tongue, the mystery of the glorious body and the precious blood, which the fruit of a noble womb, the king of nations, poured out as the price of the world."

1. Traditional orthography as in Roman Catholic service books (stressed syllable marked with an acute accent on words of three syllables or more).
2. Italianate ecclesiastical pronunciation:Template:Fact

See also

• Latin alphabet
• Latin grammar
• Latin regional pronunciation
• Traditional English pronunciation of Latin
• Deutsche Aussprache des Lateinischen Template:In lang – traditional German pronunciation
• Schulaussprache des Lateinischen Template:In lang – revised "school" pronunciation
• Traditional French pronunciation Template:In lang

Further reading

• Hall, William Dawson, and Michael De Angelis. 1971. Latin Pronunciation According to Roman Usage. Anaheim, CA: National Music Publishers.
• Trame, Richard H. 1983. "A Note On Latin Pronunciation." The Choral Journal 23, no. 5: 29.

External links

• Template:Sqc: Classical and ecclesiastical Latin pronunciation with audio examples
• glottothèque - Ancient Indo-European Grammars online, an online collection of video lectures on Ancient Indo-European languages, including lectures about the phonology and writing systems of Early Latin