Latin phonology and orthography

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: • The letters , , , , and , each of which could represent either a short vowel or a long one. The long vowels were sometimes marked with apices, as in , , , and , while long could be marked with long I . Since the 19th century, long vowels have been marked with macrons, as in , , , , and ; sometimes, breves may also be used to indicate short vowels, as in , , , , , and . • The letters and , which could either indicate vowels (as mentioned) or the consonants and , respectively. In modern times, the letters and began to be used as distinct spellings for these consonants (now often pronounced very differently). • Digraphs such as , and , 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 , and . • The digraphs , and , 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). Consonants Below are the distinctive (i.e. phonemic) consonants that are assumed for Classical Latin. 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 . • 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 ). 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 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 , and , 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 , and , at first only used to render the Greek , and in loanwords. (Previously these had been rendered in Latin as , and .) From c. 100 BC onward , and 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 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 written appears to have been voiced to between vowels (intervocalic), ultimately becoming written (rhotacism). 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. 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 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 ) 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 . • 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 ). Between vowels, it was generally as a geminate , as in (pronounced something like ) 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 ( It indicates not that the vowel is long but that the first syllable is heavy from the double consonant. Vowels Monophthongs 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 in loanwords from Greek by educated speakers, but most speakers would have approximated them with or . Long and short vowels The short vowels , , and may have been pronounced with a relatively open quality, which may be approximated as , and the corresponding long vowels with a relatively close quality, approximately . That the short and were, as this implies, similar in quality to the long and is suggested by attested misspellings such as: • for • for • for • 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 in some inscriptions. Short before another vowel is often written with the so-called long I, as in for , indicating that its quality was similar to that of long ; it was almost never confused with in this position. Adoption of Greek upsilon was used in Greek loanwords with upsilon . 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 or possibly its rounded counterpart , or even ), 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 , later fronted to or . 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 . 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 {{listen|header=Examples of nasalized vowels at ends of words and before -ns-, -nf- sequences|type=speech Vowels followed by a nasal consonant were allophonically realised as long nasal vowels in two environments: • Before word-final : When a final occurred before another 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, 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. 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: , , , , and , while the breve is sometimes used to indicate that a vowel is short: , , , , and . Long consonants were usually indicated through doubling, but ancient Latin orthography did not distinguish between the vocalic and consonantal uses of and . 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". A minimal set showing both long and short vowels and long and short consonants is ('anus'), ('year'), ('old woman'). Table of orthography The letters , , , , , are always pronounced as in English , , , , , respectively, and they do not usually cause any difficulties. The exceptions are mentioned below: ==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. • (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. 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 , , , and , and the diphthong ) 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 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 and . During the Renaissance, the printing convention was to use (upper case) and (lower case) for both vocalic and consonantal , to use in the upper case and in the lower case to use at the start of words and subsequently within the word regardless of whether and was represented. Many publishers (such as Oxford University Press) have adopted the convention of using (upper case) and (lower case) for both and , and (upper case) and (lower case) for both and . An alternative approach, less common today, is to use and only for the vowels, and and for the approximants. Most modern editions, however, adopt an intermediate position, distinguishing between and , but not between and . Usually, a non-vocalic after , or is still printed as rather than , likely because these did not change from to post-classically. 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 and (occasionally written with the ligatures: and , respectively), which both denote in English. The digraph or ligature 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 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 (Italian 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. 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 , , , , , and are pronounced as they are in English, they are not included in the table. • 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 and 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." • Traditional (19th-century) English orthography • Modern orthography with macrons • Modern orthography with macrons and without u and v distinction (capital u written V) • Modern orthography without macrons • [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." • Traditional orthography as in Roman Catholic service books (stressed syllable marked with an acute accent on words of three syllables or more). • Italianate ecclesiastical pronunciation: • : • : • : • : • : • : ==See also==