The Classical Pronunication of Latin

This will not necessarily be a scholarly post on the Classical pronunciation of Latin, but rather a complaint with explanations of the Classical pronunciation.

I started the Latin course on Duolingo back when I still lived in Alaska. I've not gotten very far as I often just don't use the app or the website for long periods of time. One thing that stuck out to me, though, was the use of the Classical pronunciation. To me, the Classical pronunciation sounds like someone's best guess as to what the extreme opposite of the Ecclesiastical pronunciation would be and still be somewhat recognizable as the Latin language.

Classical Latin is what is most commonly taught in school and universities. From sources I've read, it seems that the Classical pronunciation was reproduced from some time during the Renaissance up to the 19th century. The claim is made that this pronunciation came about through poems, rhymes, euphemisms, and instructional books. I don't study etymology, so I can't really say as to how accurate this pronunciation may be. Also, I apologize if my written pronunciations are off - I'm going for a more general idea of what the pronunciation is for readers like me who do not know how to pronounce those fancy letters that the IPA (not the beer) uses.

What I can say, is that listening to the speakers on Duolingo almost makes my ears bleed. So perhaps my issue is with those speakers.

However, one thing I just can not fathom is that the letter "v" can be pronounced as "w". For an example, the Latin word for man is vir which I would pronounce "veer" while the Classical pronunciation would have us believe it is pronounced "weer" like "weary". Or veni, vidi, vici would be pronounced as "wenny, widdy, wicky".

One of the many reasons I see for this claim is that in Latin the "v" is also a "u".

So, universe would be vniverse and pronounced as oo-ni-worse.

I can maybe see the case being made when we have a double "v" or "vv" from where we get our letter "w" the Latin word for young men (or youths) is iuvenes from which we get the word "juvenile" would be spelled IVVENES (or ivvenes) and pronounced as you-when-es instead of you-ven-es.

That there are short vowels and long vowels doesn't bother me as much (though I wish Duolingo would differentiate between the two more accurately). I can definitely get behind such a thing. But, I still can't get behind "v" as "w" unless it is a double "vv" and only then as a hard maybe. 

On the short and long vowels. I was recently doing one of the lessons (another word I'll get to shortly) and it showed us the word Illa in a sentence. This was pronounced as "ill-uh", and means "her" or a specific her; so like, "You see that redheaded girl? Her father is ill," as opposed to being asked how Corinna's father is doing and responding that, "her father is ill."

Later we were showed the word Ille in a sentence (meaning that specific him/his). It too was pronounced "ill-uh", but in a different sentence it was pronounced as "ill-ay" (ay as in "hay").

And the name Corinna I have heard pronounced as with a short "i" like in Corinth - or "core-in-nuh" and a long "i" as in the name Tina (or Doreen) - or "core-ee-nuh".

If you're going to insist on a pronunciation, please have the speakers use the same pronunciation.

And then we get to the word lectio from which we get our word "lesson" from French leçon. Lectio also means, reading, perusal, gathering, picking, selecting. The term Lectio Divina means Divine Reading or Divine Lesson. We also get the English words "lectern" and "lecture" from "lectio". Yet Duolingo insists on translating "lectio" as "chapter" instead of capitulum from which we get the Old French chapitre from whence our English word "chapter" derives. And this is despite the fact that the forum was full of people pointing out the erroneous translation with sources such as Wheelock's Latin (apparently the textbook most often used to teach Latin) and Lewis and Short (a Latin dictionary, link goes to a searchable database made from the dictionary) showing that "lectio" did not have "chapter" as one of it's definitions. So the sentence "ego lectionem lego" Duolingo insists is "I read the chapters"

But enough about the issues I have with a learning app that started off free and now has a paid subscription plan and still closed down their forum for some reason (probably because they got tired of being told they were wrong all of the time). This post is supposed to be about the Classical pronunciation of Latin - it says so in the title.

There are other letters that these days have a different sound than in modern languages, such as gn which in Italian is pronounced the same as the ñ in Spanish (like cañon - canyon), the Italian word for "chestnut" is castagna and pronounced "cas-tahn-yuh". It is the same in Ecclesiastical Latin (from what I've heard of it). In English we often ignore the "g" before the "n" in words like "sign" and "reign" but not "signal" and "regnal". However, in Classical Latin the "g" is clearly pronounced before the "n" - so the Latin word for "kind" which is benignus from which we get our word "benign" would be pronounced as "bah-nig-nuss" as opposed to the Ecclesiastical pronunciation of "bay-nee-nyoos".

We can see that gn is pronounced as "ny" in Italian - as mentioned and shown above - in French (compagnon - companion), and evolved into the ñ of Spanish (apparently in Northern Spain the gn is pronounced individually, while in some parts of Southern Spain it has a slight h sound to be similar to Italian and French - source[second answer]). Romanian has a similar pronunciation to Classical Latin with the gn, at least from what I've read.

I'm willing to accept that gn was pronounced more like GNU than it was gnu and slowly evolved to what it is now in several different languages.

But I still can not accept that "v" was "w". Quite literally someone could show me in full detail how they came to the conclusion the v=w and I would never believe them. Someone could build a time machine and take me back to when Classical Latin was spoken, and I could hear someone pronounce v as w and I still wouldn't accept it. For whatever reason, my mind simply refuses.

A reason for this is because in all of the other Romance languages that I have studied ever so slightly (I am not a linguist) nowhere do we see evidence of "v" having a "w" sound. In some - such as Spanish and Sardinian - the "v" is similar to a "b" sound (in Sardinian - the closest language to Latin - there are many words that have a "b" where in Latin there would be a "v").

And since I mentioned Sardinian, let's take a look at a section of the Our Father in English, Sardinian, and Latin. First in English, "Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done," Now Sardinian, "Bèngiat a nois su rennu tuo, Siat fata sa voluntade tua," and finally Latin, "adveniat regnum tuum, fiat voluntas tua," (Source)

We can see that Bèngiat is similar to the Latin adveniat, it just has the "ad" dropped off and the "v" turned into a "b". We also see rennu is similar to regnum and from what I've seen, a lot of the Romance languages dropped the -um type endings for single vowels. But notice that in Sardinian the gn is dropped in favor of the nn which has that ñ sound.

I know that I said that Sardinian is the closest language to Latin (about 8% different, as opposed to Italian at 12% or even French at 44%! That's right, Portuguese [31%] which has a significant amount of Arabic loan words and roots and such is closer to Latin than French is! Let us laugh at the French!), however, according to the Wikipedia link above for the Our Father, Latin was introduced in around the 7th century AD when Late or Medieval Latin was already being spoken. Up to that time, apparently the Sardinians spoke Punic. So I guess it is the closest to the Latin that was spoken then and written Latin, but not closest to how Classical Latin is supposed to be pronounced.

Also, I apologize to the French - they were our first allies and gave us a lot of help as we grew as a country. They have also kept the graves for our fallen American servicemen who died in the World Wars on their shores. They really did us a solid. So thank you, France. Even though I cannot pronounce half of the letters that you don't use anyway, your language is still very beautiful.

Where was I? Oh yes. "V" never ever equaled "w". No "change my mind" meme inserted here, it simply cannot be done.

OK, all of that mess aside, I do not like the Classical pronunciation because I do not think that it was really spoken outside of Rome - as in the city. And even then it was probably only spoken by the wealthy and the rich. Everywhere else in the Empire (I still miss you) would have had a lot of different variations specific to those regions. As far as I can tell, outside of Rome - the city - there really was no standardization like there is for American English, or British English, or Australian English. And to me, trying to tell me that I have to learn Classical Latin so I can better understand some author from long ago is like telling me that I have to learn British English because that is what was spoken in the Colonies way back when the French first became our allies.

Basically, Classical Latin is the flowery prose of the poets and rhetoricians from their time - it is not what was really spoken by the populace. It is like reading modern English poems and academic works which use a lot of words that do not really see everyday use, but is still comprehensible to the populace (unlike most of my writings which even I have to guess at what I meant on later readings). 

And the pronunciation which the academics have chosen for Classical Latin is - to me - similar to the Transatlantic accent of English that only the upperclass, radio broadcasters, and Hollywood stars used because they thought it sounded prestigious. I believe that the Classical pronunciation is just as made up, and made up for the same reason - to sound prestigious.

I also see no reason that we can not be taught Ecclesiastical pronunciation since the one entity in the world that still officially uses Latin uses said pronunciation. And of course, I am talking about the Vatican, and not solely the Roman Catholic Church since Latin is used by some other churches. 

Ecclesiastical Latin was standardized by Charlemagne in the 8th century AD and the pronunciation was pretty much just to pronounce the Latin as it is written. It too has evolved as a language as far as pronunciation is concerned - and is now pronounced more like Italian.

And, since I love the Italian language, I guess the Ecclesiastical pronunciation just sounds better to my ears, and doesn't cause my brain to bleed.

Now, all of that being said, I think Luke from polýMATHY at YouTube probably does the best Classical pronunciation that I have heard. One of my favorite videos of his is where he talks to Roman Catholic priests at the Vatican in Latin - in that video he uses the Ecclesiastical pronunciation. But he has another video where he speaks Latin to Italian people on the streets to see if they can understand him, and he uses the Classical pronunciation.

He also has other videos that explore the Latin language, and listening to him speak is rather lovely, at least to me and possibly others who love to learn about other languages. I think that he nails the pronunciation of Classical Latin, much better than other speakers, and especially the speakers from DuoLingo. He would probably be the one to convince me that the pronunciation used is correct.

But, as I mentioned above, I don't really think that the Classical pronunciation was used all that much outside of the city of Rome, and that the populace of the Roman Empire had a lot of varying pronunciations.

I also think that we are doing a disservice to Latin students to force them to learn the Classical pronunciation when the only place that still officially uses Latin - the Vatican - uses the Ecclesiastical pronunciation. Even Luke Ranieri used the Ecclesiastical pronunciation to talk to Roman Catholic priests.

Again, I am no linguist, nor an etymologist, so what do I know? But for me, I think I am going to try to find a course that teaches Ecclesiastical pronunciation.

Pray for me, a sinner.