Латинская транскрипция это как пишется

Латинский язык для медиков: конспект лекций

Представленный вашему вниманию конспект лекций предназначен для подготовки студентов медицинских вузов к сдаче экзамена. Книга включает в себя полный курс лекций по латинскому языку, написана доступным языком и будет незаменимым помощником для тех, кто желает быстро подготовиться к экзамену и успешно сдать его.

Оглавление

• Лекция № 1. Историческая справка
• Лекция № 2. Алфавит. Фонетика. Чтение гласных. Особенности чтения согласных. Произношение буквосочетаний. Правила постановки.
• Лекция № 3. Грамматика: Имя существительное; система склонений, словарная форма, род. Управление как вид подчинительной связи

Приведённый ознакомительный фрагмент книги Латинский язык для медиков: конспект лекций предоставлен нашим книжным партнёром — компанией ЛитРес.

Лекция № 2. Алфавит. Фонетика. Чтение гласных. Особенности чтения согласных. Произношение буквосочетаний. Правила постановки ударения

1. Запомните начертания и названия букв латинского алфавита.

2. Научитесь произносить звуки, которые обозначаются этими буквами.

3. Буква и звук — не одно и то же. Не подменяйте эти понятия.

Латинский алфавит, которым пользуются в современных учебниках, справочниках и словарях, состоит из 25 букв.

Ниже дается традиционное чтение латинских букв, принятое в русской учебной практике.

С прописной буквы в латинском языке пишутся собственные имена, названия месяцев, народов, географические названия и прилагательные, образованные от них. В фармацевтической терминологии с прописной буквы принято писать также названия растений и лекарственных веществ.

1. Большинство букв латинского алфавита произносятся так же, как в различных западноевропейских языках, однако некоторые буквы в этих языках называются иначе, чем в латинском; например буква h называется в немецком языке «ха», во французском — «аш», в английском — «эйч», а в латинском — «га». Буква j во французском языке называется «жи», в английском — «джей», а в латинском — «йот». Латинская буква «с» в английском называется «си» и т. п.

2. Нужно иметь в виду, что одна и та же буква может обозначать в этих языках неодинаковый звук. Например, звук, обозначенный буквой g, в латинском языке произносится как [г], а во французском и английском перед е, i — как [ж] или [джь]; в английском j читается как [дж].

3. Латинская орфография фонетическая, она воспроизводит действительное произношение звуков. Сравните: лат. latina [латина], англ. latin [laetin] — латинский.

Особенно заметна разница при сравнении гласных в латинском и английском языках. В латинском языке почти все гласные всегда произносятся так же, как соответствующие гласные в русском языке.

4. Как правило, наименования не из латинского языка, а из других языков (греческого, арабского, французского и др.) латинизируются, т. е. оформляются в соответствии с правилами фонетики и грамматики латинского языка.

2. Чтение гласных (и согласного j)

«Е е» читается как [э]: vertebra [вэ’ртэбра] — позвонок, medianus [мэдиа’нус] — срединный.

В отличие от русских никакие латинские согласные перед звуком [е] не смягчаются: anterior [антэ’риор] — передний, arteria [артэ’риа] — артерия.

«I i» читается как [и]: inferior [инфэ’риор] — нижний, internus [интэ’рнус] — внутренний.

В начале слова или слога перед гласными i читается как звонкий согласный [й]: iugularis [югуля’рис] — яремный, iunctura [юнкту’ра] — соединение, maior [ма’йор] — большой, iuga [ю’га] — возвышение.

В указанных позициях в современной медицинской терминологии вместо i используется буква J j — йот: jugularis [югуля’рис], juncture [юнкту’ра], major [ма’йор], juga [ю’га].

Буква j не пишется только в словах, заимствованных из греческого языка, так как в нем не было звука [й]: iatria [иа’трия] — врачевание, iodum [ио’дум] — йод.

Для передачи звуков [йа], [йо], [ие], [ йу] используются сочетания букв ja, jo, je, ju.

Y у (ипсилон), по-французски «игрек», читается как [и]: tympanum [ти’мпанум] — барабан; gyrus [ги’рус] — извилина мозга. Буква «ипсилон» употребляется только в словах греческого происхождения. Она введена римлянами для передачи буквы греческого алфавита ипсилон, которая читалась как немецкое [и]. Если греческое слово писалось через i (греч. йота), читаемое как [и], то на латинский язык оно транскрибировалось через i.

В целях грамотного написания медицинских терминов необходимо знать некоторые наиболее распространенные греческие приставки и корни, в которых пишется «ипсилон»:

dys[дис-] — приставка, придающая термину значение нарушения, расстройства функции: dysostosis (dys+ osteon — «кость») — дизостоз — расстройство образования кости;

hypo[гипо-] — «под», «ниже»: hypoderma (hypo + derma — «кожа») — гиподерма — подкожная клетчатка, hypogastrium (hypo-+ gaster — «живот», «желудок») — гипогастрий — подчревье;

hyper[гипер-] — «над», «сверх»: hyperostosis (hyper + osteon — «кость») — гиперостоз — патологическое разрастание неизмененной костной ткани;

syn-, sym[син-, сим-] — «с», «вместе», «совместно»: synostosis (syn + osteon — «кость») — синостоз — соединение костей посредством костной ткани;

mу(о)[мио-] — корень слова, указывающий на отношение к мышцам: myologia (myo + logos — «слово», «учение») — миология — учение о мышцах;

phys[физ-] — корень слова, указывающий в анатомических терминах на отношение к чему-то растущему в определенном месте: diaphysis — диафиз (в остеологии) — средняя часть трубчатой кости.

3. Дифтонги (диграфы)

Кроме простых гласных [а], [е], [i], [о], [и], в латинском языке существовали также двугласные звуки (дифтонги) ае, ое, аи, ей. В классическую эпоху все они произносились с неслоговым вторым элементом. Позднее дифтонги ае [из ai] и ое [из oi] стали произноситься как один звук, т. е. превратились в монофтонги, изображаемые двумя буквами, — так называемые диграфы.

Диграф ае читается как [э]: vertebrae [вэ’ртэбрэ] — позвонки, peritonaeum [пэритонэ’ум] — брюшина.

Диграф ое читается как [э], точнее, как немецкое o или французское ое: foetor [фэтор] — дурной запах.

В большинстве случаев дифтонги ае и ое, встречающиеся в медицинских терминах, служили для передачи на латинском языке греческих дифтонгов ai и oi. Например: oedema [эдэ’ма] — отек, oesophagus [эзо’фагус] — пищевод.

Если в сочетаниях ае и ое гласные относятся к разным слогам, т. е. не составляют дифтонга, тогда над е ставится знак разделения («) и каждый гласный произносится раздельно: diploё [диплоэ] — диплоэ — губчатое вещество плоских костей черепа; аёr [аэр] — воздух.

Дифтонг au читается как [ay]: auris [ау’рис] — ухо. Дифтонг еu читается как [эу]: ple’ura [пле’ура] — плевра, neurocranium [нэурокра’ниум] — мозговой череп.

4. Особенности чтения согласных

Принято двоякое чтение буквы «С с»: как [к] или [ц].

Как [к] читается перед гласными а, о, и, перед всеми согласными и в конце слова: caput [ка’пут] — голова, головка костей и внутренних органов, cubitus [ку’битус] — локоть, clavicula [кляви’куля] — ключица, crista [кри’ста] — гребень.

Как [ц] читается перед гласными е, i, у и диграфами ае, ое: cervicalis [цервика’лис] — шейный, incisure [инцизу’ра] — вырезка, coccyngeus [кокцингэ’ус] — копчиковый, coelia [цэ’лиа] — брюшная полость.

«Н h» читается как украинский звук [г] или немецкий [h] (haben): homo [гомо] — человек, hnia’tus [гна’тус] — щель, расщелина, humerus [гуме’рус] — плечевая кость.

«К k» встречается очень редко, почти исключительно в словах нелатинского происхождения, в тех случаях, когда нужно сохранить звук [к] перед звуками [э] или [и]: kyphosis [кифо’зис] — кифоз, kinetocytus [кинэ’тоцитус] — кинетоцит — подвижная клетка (слова греч. происхождения). Исключение: kalium [ка’лиум] (арабское) — калий и некоторые другие слова.

«L l» принято читать всегда мягко, как во французском и немецком языках: labium [ля’биум] — губа, lumbalis [люмба’лис] — поясничный, pelvinus [пэльви’нус] — тазовый.

«S s» имеет двоякое чтение — [с] или [з]. Как [с] читается в большинстве случаев: sulcus [су’лькус] — борозда, os sacrum [ос са’крум] — крестец, крестцовая кость; dorsum [до’рсум] — спина, спинка, тыл. Как [з] читается в положении между гласными: incisura [инцизу’ра] — вырезка, vesica [вэзи’ка] — пузырь. Удвоенное s читается как [с]: fossa [фо’cса] — яма, ossa [о’сса] — кости, processus [процэ’ссус] — отросток. В положении между гласными и согласными m, n в словах греческого происхождения s читается как [з]: chiasma [хиа’зма] — перекрест, platysma [пляти’зма] — подкожная мышца шеи.

«X х» называется двойным согласным, так как он представляет звукосочетание [кс]: radix [ра’дикс] — корень, extremitas [экстрэ’митас] — конец.

«Z z» встречается в словах греческого происхождения и читается как [з]: zygomaticus [зигома’тикус] — скуловой, trapezius [трапэ’зиус] — трапециевидный.

5. Произношение буквосочетаний

Буква «Q q» встречается только в сочетании с u перед гласными, и это буквосочетание читается как [кв]: squama [сква’мэ] — чешуя, quadratus [квадра’тус] — квадратный.

Буквосочетание ngu читается двояко: перед гласными как [нгв], перед согласными — [нгу]: lingua [ли’нгва] — язык, lingula [ли’нгуля] — язычок, sanguis [са’нгвис] — кровь, angulus [ангу’люс] — угол.

Сочетание ti перед гласными читается как [ци]: rotatio [рота’цио] — вращение, articulatio [артикуля’цио] — сустав, eminentia [эминэ’нциа] — возвышение.

Однако ti перед гласными в сочетаниях sti, xti, tti читается как [ти]: ostium [о’стиум] — отверстие, вход, устье, mixtio [ми’кстио] — смесь.

6. Диграфы ch, ph, rh, th

В словах греческого происхождения встречаются диграфы ch, рh, rh, th, являющиеся графическими знаками для передачи соответствующих звуков греческого языка. Каждый диграф читается как один звук:

сh = [х]; рh = [ф]; rh = [p]; th = [т]: nucha [ну’ха] — выя, chorda [хорда] — хорда, струна, phalanx [фа’лянкс] — фаланга; apophysis [апофизис] — апофиз, отросток; thorax [то’ракс] — грудная летка, rhaphe [ра’фэ] — шов.

Буквосочетание sch читается как [сх]: os ischii [ос и’схии] — седалищная кость, ischiadicus [исхиа’дикус] — седалищный.

Латинская транскрипция слов греческого происхождения зависит от звукобуквенных соответствий в латинском и греческом языках.

7. Правила постановки ударения

1. Ударение никогда не ставится на последнем слоге. В двусложных словах оно ставится на первом слоге.

2. В трехсложных и многосложных словах ударение ставится на предпоследнем или третьем слоге от конца.

Постановка ударения зависит от длительности предпоследнего слога. Если предпоследний слог долгий, то ударение падает на него, а если краткий, то ударение падает на третий слог от конца.

Следовательно, для постановки ударения в словах, содержащих более двух слогов, необходимо знать правила долготы или краткости предпоследнего слога.

Долгота предпоследнего слога.

1. Слог долгий, если в его составе имеется дифтонг: peritona’eum — брюшина, perona’eus — малоберцовый (нерв), dia’eta — диета.

2. Слог долгий, если гласный стоит перед двумя или более согласными, а также перед двойными согласными х и z. Такая долгота называется долготой по положению. Например: colu’mna — колонна, столб, exte’rnus — внешний, labyri’nthus — лабиринт, medu’lla — мозг, мозговое вещество, maxi’lla — верхняя челюсть, metaca’rpus — пястье, circumfle’xus — огибающий.

Если гласный предпоследнего слога стоит перед сочетанием b, с, d, g, p, t с буквами l, r, то такой слог остается кратким: ve’rtebra — позвонок, pa’lpebra — веко, tri’quetrus — трехгранный. Сочетания ch, ph, rh, th считаются одним звуком и не создают долготы предпоследнего слога: chole’dochus — желчный.

8. Правило краткости

Гласный, стоящий перед гласным или буквой h, всегда краткий. Например: tro’chlea — блок, pa’ries — стенка, o’sseus — костный, acro’mion — акромиoн (плечевой отросток), xiphoi’deus — мечевидный, peritendi’neum — перитендиний, pericho’ndrium — надхрящница.

Имеются слова, к которым нельзя применить приведенные правила долготы и краткости слога. Это случается, когда за гласным предпоследнего слога следует только один согласный. В одних словах предпоследний слог оказывается кратким, в других — долгим. В таких случаях необходимо обратиться к словарю, где долгота предпоследнего слога условно обозначается надстрочным знаком (-), а краткость — знаком («).

Кроме того, следует запомнить, что суффиксы прилагательных — al-, — ar-, — at-, — in-, — osвсегда долгие и, следовательно, ударные. Например: orbita’lis — глазничный, articula’ris — суставной, hama’tus — крючковатый, pelvi’nus — тазовый, spino’sus — остистый. Суффикс — ic — в прилагательных краткий и безударный: ga’stricus — желудочный, thora’cicus — грудной.

Транслитерация

Транслитерация (транскрипция) латинских слов онлайн

Для получения транслитерации (транскрипции) латинских слов онлайн введите/вставьте слово или текст на латыни (до 200 символов) и при необходимости нажмите кнопку Транслит .

Особенности транслитерации (транскрипции) слов/текста на латыни

1. Обрабатываются латинские символы любого регистра; результат выдается русскими буквами в нижнем регистре:

Пример	Результат
Lingua LATINA	[лингва лятина]

1. Обрабатываются следующие латинские символы с надстрочными знаками: ā ē ī ō ū; â ê î ô û; ă ĕ ĭ ŏ ŭ; ǎ ǐ ǒ ǔ ě; œ æ; ў ỹ ȳ; ё:

Пример	Результат
De poētā claro	[дэ поэта кляро]
aёr	[аэр]

1. Латинская буква j во всех позициях передается как [й]. Учитывается возможность использования буквы i вместо j.

Пример	Результат
jus и ius	[йус]
majoris и maioris	[майорис]
conjunx и coniunx	[конйункс]

1. В результатах транслитерации знак гˣ передает фрикативный звук [γ], знак ў — неслоговой звук [у]. Настройки позволяют использовать вместо знака гˣ знаки г или х, вместо знака ў — знак в. Для Android устройств вместо гˣ по умолчанию используется знак [h].

Пример	Результат
heu

1. Набор настроек Традиция позволяет транслитерировать латинские слова по традиционным правилам (с помощью настроек можно изменять любую опцию). В частности:

• учитываются позиционные варианты чтения букв s, c, сочетания ti;
• не учитываются позиционные варианты чтения сочетаний ns, sm, приставки ex-;
• сочетания qu, ngu перед всеми гласными транслитерируются как [кв], [нгв]:
• сочетания ae, oe транслитерируются как [э]:

Пример	Результат
cicatrīces	[цикатрицэс]
serōsus	[сэрозус]
justitia	[йустициа]
censor	[цэнсор]
plasma	[плясма]
exaltatio	[эксальтацио]
lingua	[лингва]
aqua	[аква]
poenae	[пэнэ]

1. Набор настроек Классика позволяет транслитерировать латинские слова по классическим правилам (с помощью настроек можно изменять любую опцию). В частности:

• не учитываются позиционные варианты чтения букв s, c, сочетаний ti, ns, sm, приставки ex-;
• сочетания qu, ngu перед u транслитерируются как [ку], [нгу], в остальных случаях — как [кв], [нгв];
• сочетание ae транслитерируется как [э], oe — как [ӭ]:

Пример	Результат
cicatrīces	[кикатрикэс]
serōsus	[сэросус]
justitia	[йуститиа]
censor	[кэнсор]
plasma	[плясма]
exaltatio	[эксальтатио]
lingua	[лингва]
unguuntur	[унгунтур]
aqua	[аква]
sequuntur	[сэкунтур]
poenae	[пӭнэ]

• употребление u вместо вместо v не поддерживается :

Не следует вводить	Следует вводить
uocaui	[уокаўи]	vocavi	[вокави]
uult	[уульт]	vult	[вульт]

1. Набор настроек Медицина позволяет транслитерировать латинские слова по правилам, принятым для чтения медицинских, биологических, химических латинских терминов (с помощью настроек можно изменять любую опцию). В частности:

• учитываются позиционные варианты чтения букв s, c, сочетаний ti, ns, sm, приставки ex-;
• сочетания qu, ngu перед всеми гласными транслитерируются как [кв], [нгв]:
• сочетания ae, oe транслитерируются как [э]:

Пример	Результат
cicatrīces	[цикатрицэс]
serōsus	[сэрозус]
justitia	[йустициа]
censor	[цэнзор]
plasma	[плязма]
exaltatio	[эгзальтацио]
lingua	[лингва]
aqua	[аква]
poenae	[пэнэ]

1. В режимах «Традиция», «Классика» в словах греческого происхождения s между гласными корректно обрабатывается только в случаях:

• если после нее в слове имеются сочетания th, ph, rh, ch, sm или буквы y, z;
• если слово содержит учтенные в скрипте греческие терминоэлементы:

Пример	Результат
philosophia	[филёсофиа]
haemopoēsis	[гˣэмопоэсис]

Воспользуйтесь правилом:

В словах греческого происхождения, формальными признаками которых являются буквы y, z и сочетания th, ph, rh, ch, sm буква s между гласными всегда читается как [с]: hypophy sis [гˣипофи сис].

1. Варианты чтения на стыке морфем учитываются в следующих случаях:

• в формах слова sua:

Пример	Результат
sua, suae, suam, suā	[суа, суэ, суам, суа]
suārum, suis, suas	[суарум, суис, суас]

• в формах на -nti-um:

Пример	Результат
dentium	[дэнтиум]
ornantium	[орнантиум]

• в формах сравнительной степени на -t-ior-:

Пример	Результат
sapientioris	[сапиэнтиорис]

• в сочетании eu в конце слова перед m, s:

Пример	Результат
meus	[мэус]
meum	[мэум]

1. в формах на -e-und-:

Пример	Результат
transeundo	[трансэундо]

1. если слово содержит учтенные в скрипте приставки, терминоэлементы, слова:

Пример	Результат
chromosoma	[хромосома]

1. Ударения не расставляются.

Воспользуйтесь правилами:

1. В словах из двух и более слогов ударение никогда не ставится на последний слог.
2. В словах из двух слогов ударение ставится на первый слог: ró-sa [ро́-за].
3. В словах из трех слогов место ударения определяется по предпоследнему слогу:

1. если в предпоследнем слоге долгий гласный или дифтонг, ударение ставится на предпоследний слог: oc-cī́-do [ок-ци́-до], the-sáu-rus [тэ-са́ў-рус];
2. если в предпоследнем слоге краткий гласный, ударение ставится на третий слог от конца: lí-quĭ-dus [ли́-кви-дус];
3. если в предпоследнем слоге гласный перед двумя и более согласными, ударение ставится на предпоследний слог: ma-gís—ter [ма-ги́с-тэр];
4. если в предпоследнем слоге гласный перед гласным, ударение ставится на третий слог от конца: ná-ti—o [на́-ци-о].

© Кафедра классической филологии БГУ, .

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Латинский алфавит и произношение

Латинский алфавит состоит из 24 букв. Произношение латинских слов с течением веков претерпело ряд изменений, отчасти связанных с фонетическими процессами, происходившими в новых западноевропейских языках. К тому же мы не знаем истинного произношения римлян, и разные народы произносят латинские слова по-разному. В настоящее время существует тенденция к тому, чтобы на основании научных исследований унифицировать латинское произношение, приблизив его по возможности к произношению древних римлян. Ниже приводится традиционное чтение латинских букв, принятое в русской учебной практике.

Латинский алфавит

1. Буква h передает придыхание; принятое ныне произношение соответствует произношению англ. или нем.h: horse, Herz.
2. Буква i произносится в латинском языке двояко: а) как гласный звук [и], напр.: imperator [импэра́тор] повелитель; б) как согласный [й] перед гласными: iuventus [ювэ́нтус] юность.
3. Буква k встречается только в нескольких словах: Kalendae [кале́ндэ] календы (первый день каждого месяца); Kaeso [кэ́зо] имя собств.; Karthago [карта́го] Карфаген. Эти слова пишутся также: Calendae, Caeso, Carthago.
4. Букву l принято произносить мягко (как в немецком или французском языках).

Гласные

Кроме гласных a, e, i, o, u, y, в латинском языке есть также дифтонги (двугласные), т. е. сочетания двух различных гласных, которые произносятся как один слог:

au —

соответствует русскому односложному [ау] с ударением на первом гласном (ср.: «па́у-за»): aurum [а́урум] золото;

eu —

соответствует русскому односложному [э́у]: Europa [эуро́па] Европа;

ae —

произносится как русское э: Aegyptus [эги́птус] Египет;

oe —

произносится как немецкое и французское [ø:] или английское [ǝ:]; условно обозначим его знаком [ö]: Poenus [пö́нус] пуниец.

Согласные

Буква c читается двояко: а) перед e, i, y, ae, oe — как русское ц; б) в остальных случаях, т. е. перед a, o, u, перед всеми согласными и на конце слова — как русское к.

В заимствованных словах, чаще всего греческого происхождения, встречаются сочетания согласных звуков с придыхательным h:

ch — читается как русское х: schola [схо́ла] школа, Gracchus [гра́кхус) Гракх (имя собств.);

ph — читается как ф: philosophus [фило́зофус] философ;

rh — читается как р: rhetorica [рэто́рика] риторика;

th — читается как т: Theodorus [тэодо́рус] Теодор (имя собств.).

Сочетание ti в положении перед гласными читается как ци: ratio (ра́цио) разум, initium [ини́циум] начало; однако в сочетаниях sti, xti, tti — читаем ти: bestia [бэ́стиа] зверь.

Буква q встречается только в сочетаниях с u перед гласными; это сочетание читается как русское кв: quadratus [квадра́тус] четырехугольный, quintus [кви́нтус] пятый.

Сочетание ngu перед гласными произносится как нгв: lingua [ли́нгва] язык.

Буква s между гласными произносится как з, а в остальных положениях как c: causa [ка́уза] причина, но servus [сэ́рвус] раб, statua [ста́туа] статуя.

Правила произношения иллюстрируются приведенными ниже примерами. Ударение обозначено знаком ́ :

Звук	Произносим	Пример	Произношение
y	и	syllaba	си́ллаба
lyra	ли́ра
mysterium	мистэ́риум
ae	э	Aegina	эги́на
Aegyptus	эги́птус
Maeander	мэа́ндэр
oe	как нем., франц. [ø:]; англ. [ǝ:]	Oedipus	ö́дипус
Poenus	пö́нус
foedus	фö́дус (союз)
au	а́у	Augustus	аугу́стус
auspicium	ауспи́циум (гадание)
aurum	а́урум
eu	э́у	Europa	эуро́па
Euboea	эубö́а
Eurydice	эури́дицэ
c	ц (перед гласными e, i, y, ае, ое)	Cerberus	цэ́рбэрус
censura	цэнсу́ра
cedrus	цэ́друс
Cicero	ци́цэро
medicina	мэдици́на
Cyprus	ци́прус
cymbalum	ци́мбалум
Caesar	цэ́зар
coemeterium	цöмэтэ́риум (кладбище)
к (перед a, o, u, также перед согласным и на конце слова)	Calabria	кала́бриа
columna	колу́мна
compactus	компа́ктус
cultura	культу́ра
medicus	мэ́дикус
doctor	до́ктор
ecce	э́кцэ (вот)
tunc	тунк (тогда)
ch	х	schola	схо́ла
chirurgia	хиру́ргиа
chorus	хо́рус
i (перед гласным)	й	Iulia	ю́лиа
Iuppiter	ю́ппитэр
ngu	нгв	lingua	ли́нгва
sanguis	са́нгвис (кровь)
bilinguis	били́нгвис (двуязычный)
ph	ф	philosophus	фило́зофус
Philippus	фили́ппус
phoca	фо́ка (тюлень)
q (всегда в сочетании с u)	кв	quaestor	квэ́стор
quintus	кви́нтус
rh	р	Rhodanus	ро́данус
Rhamses	ра́мсэс
s (между гласными)	з	Asiaticus	азиа́тикус
Aesopus	эзо́пус
rosa	ро́за
th	т	theatrum	тэа́трум
Theodorus	тэодо́рус
ti (перед гласным)	ци	Terentia	тэрэ́нциа
ratio	ра́цио
meditatio	мэдита́цио
ти	bestia	бэ́стиа
mixtio	ми́кстио (смешение)
Attius	а́ттиус (имя собств.)
x (= c + s)	кс	extra	э́кстра
rex	рэкс (царь)
excellentia	эксцэле́нциа (превосходство)
z	з в заимствованных словах	Zephyrus	зэ́фирус
gaza	га́за (казна)

Примечания:

1. В некоторых словах стоящие рядом гласные a + е, o + e не образуют дифтонга, а произносятся как два самостоятельных слога; в таких случаях для облегчения чтения над гласным e ставится знак разделения (две точки) или знак количества (долготы или краткости; см. ниже): poёta или poēta [по-э́-та] поэт, poёma или poēma [по-э́-ма] поэма, aёr или aēr [а́-эр] воздух, coёmo или coĕmo [ко́-э-мо] я скупаю.
2. Чтение латинской буквы c как русской ц является традиционным, принятым во многих странах, в том числе и у нас. Римляне произносили c во всех позициях как к: Cicero [ки́кэро], Cyprus [ки́прус], Eurydice [эури́дикэ]. Об этом свидетельствует греческая транскрипция латинских слов, а также слова латинского происхождения в новых языках, напр., нем. Kaiser из лат. Caesar (произносилось kaisar), нем. Keller из лат. cella. Точно так же сочетания типа -tia, -tio произносились как -тиа, -тио: ratio [ра́тио]; чтение -циа, -цио является традиционным. В настоящее время все чаще употребляется исконное произношение, особенно на международных конгрессах, где ученые делают сообщения на латинском языке. Поэтому можно, не придерживаясь традиции, во всех случаях произносить c как к, a -tia, -tio как -тиа, -тио.
3. Прилагательные, образующиеся от собственных имен, пишутся с заглавной буквы, напр.: lingua Latina, theatrum Graecum, philosophus Romanus, natio Polona, Universitas Varsoviensis.

Упражнение

Перепишите приведенные в таблице слова и определите их значение; найдите также, если это будет возможно, слова в русском языке, которые произошли от этих латинских.

Образец: theatrum — театр, театральный, театровед

Правила ударения

Festina lente.
Спеши медленно.

Чтобы правильно прочесть латинское слово, а затем и текст, необходимо знать правила ударения. Характерной особенностью древнегреческого и латинского языков является наличие долгих и кратких гласных, а ударение зависит от их положения в слове. Поскольку в русском языке долгота и краткость гласных не различаются, постановка ударения в латинском слове иногда вызывает затруднения.

В латыни различаются:

краткие гласные (знак краткости ̆ ): ă, ĕ, ĭ, ŏ, ŭ, y̆;
долгие гласные (знак долготы ̄ ): ā, ē, ī, ō, ū, ȳ;
дифтонги: au, eu, ае, ое.

Открытый слог, содержащий долгий гласный, является долгим; слог, содержащий краткий гласный, — кратким. Дифтонг всегда образует долгий слог. Напр., слово Eu-rō-pă состоит из двух долгих слогов Eu-rō- и одного краткого -pă.

Кроме того, количество слога (т. е. его относительная длительность — долгота или краткость) зависит от его положения в слове:

а) закрытый слог (т. е. оканчивающийся согласным звуком) долог;
б) открытый слог (т. е. оканчивающийся гласным или дифтонгом) перед другим гласным — краток.

Напр., в слове sĭl-vă лес первый слог — долгий, несмотря на краткость его гласного ĭ, потому что это закрытый слог; в слове vĭ-ă дорога слог vĭ — краткий, так как это слог открытый и стоит перед гласным.

Место ударения в слове зависит от количества второго слога от конца слова (т. е. от того, долгим или кратким он является):

1. Ударение не ставится на последнем слоге. Поэтому в двусложных словах ударение всегда падает на первый слог: dóc-tor, víl-la.
2. Ударение ставится на втором слоге от конца слова, если он долгий: me-di-cī́-na, Eu-rṓ-ра, lo-án-nes.
3. Если второй слог от конца краток, ударение переносится на третий слог от конца: Rhó-dă-nus, Vís-tŭ-la, mé-dĭ-cus, tá-bŭ-la, dó-mĭ-nus, vic-tó-ri-a.

Упражнение

Прочитайте приведенные ниже слова, используя правила чтения и ударения:

Récĭta! — Читай вслух!

Rector, decānus, professor, magister, Polonia, Cracovia, Vistŭla, Berolīnum, Hungaria, Francogallia, Leninopŏlis, Rhodănus, Rhenus, Danuvius, actor, scaena, circus, schola, Universĭtas, agricultūra, navigatio, medĭcus, medicamentum, aqua, fortūna, res publĭca, res publĭca Polōna, pro publĭco bono, lingua Graeca, veto, meditatio, recitatio, declamatio, iustitia, consul, quaestor, victoria, doctor honōris causa.

Основные сведения о частях речи

Замечания, касающиеся частей речи, представляют собой только общие основы того материала, который последовательно будет разбираться в каждом очередном уроке. Поэтому не нужно сразу запоминать приведенные здесь грамматические термины: они будут повторяться, а в соединении с текстами и объяснениями станут более понятными и легкими для усвоения.

1. Изменяемые части речи

Существительное, прилагательное, местоимение, числительное; глагол

Латинский язык относится к типу флективных языков. Это значит, что слова латинского языка состоят из основы и окончаний. Изменение существительных, прилагательных, местоимений, числительных по падежам, числам и родам называется склонением; изменение глаголов (по лицам, числам, временам, наклонениям и залогам) — спряжением. Латинский язык различает пять склонений и четыре спряжения.

Существительное — nomen substantīvum, прилагательное — nomen adiectīvum, местоимение — pronōmen, числительное — nomen numerāle. Эти части речи имеют:

а) три рода — genĕra:

мужской род — genus masculīnum (m)
женский род — genus feminīnum (f)
средний род — genus neutrum (n)

б) два числа — numĕri:

единственное число — numĕrus singulāris (sing.)
множественное число — numĕrus plurālis (plur.)

в) шесть падежей — casus:

Именительный кто? что? — casus nominatīvus (Nom.)
Родительный кого? чего? чей? чья? чье? — casus genetīvus (Gen.)
Дательный кому? чему? — casus datīvus (Dat.)
Винительный кого? что? — casus accusatīvus (Acc.)
Творительный кем? чем? — casus ablatīvus (Abl.)
Звательный (обращение) — casus vocatīvus (Voc.)

Примечание: Следует обратить внимание на то, что в латинском языке нет падежа, соответствующего русскому предложному. Его функции выполняет ablativus с различными предлогами.

Прилагательные образуют также три степени сравнения — gradus:

положительную степень — gradus positīvus
сравнительную степень — gradus comparatīvus
превосходную степень — gradus superlatīvus

Примечание: Определяя род, число, падеж, степень, мы пропускаем общий термин: genus, numĕrus, casus, gradus, — и употребляем только определение, напр.: schola — nominatīvus singulāris; Athēnae — nominatīvus plurālis и т. п.

Глагол — verbum — имеет следующие грамматические категории:

а) три лица — persōnae

б) два числа — numĕri:

единственное — numĕrus singulāris (sing.)
множественное — numĕrus plura lis (plur.)

в) шесть времен — tempŏra:

настоящее время — tempus praesens

прошедшие времена	прошедшее время несовершенного вида — tempus imperfectum (imperf.) прошедшее время совершенного вида — tempus perfectum (perf.) предпрошедшее время — tempus plusquamperfectum (plusquamperf.)
будущие времена	будущее первое — tempus futūrum primum (fut. I) будущее второе — tempus futūrum exactum или secundum (fut. II)

г) два залога — genĕra:

действительный залог — genus actīvum (act.)
страдательный залог — genus passīvum (pass.)

д) три наклонения — modi:

изъявительное наклонение — modus indicatīvus (ind.)
повелительное наклонение — modus imperatīvus (imper.)
сослагательное наклонение — modus coniunctīvus (con.)

Примечание: Определяя форму глагола, мы не употребляем терминов tempus, modus, genus, ограничиваясь только названием формы; напр., legĭmus достаточно определить так: первое лицо pluralis, praesens indicativi activi — первое лицо множественного (числа), настоящее (время) изъявительного (наклонения) действительного (залога).

Глаголы имеют также несколько именных форм, функции и употребление которых будут подробно объяснены позднее:

неопределенная форма — infinitivus (inf.)
причастие — participium (part.)
отглагольное существительное — gerundium
отглагольное прилагательное — gerundīvum
отглагольное существительное со значением цели (употребляется при глаголах движения) — supīnum.

В латыни гораздо больше форм инфинитива, чем в новых языках; существуют инфинитивы настоящего, прошедшего и будущего времени. Gerundium, gerundivum и supinum представляют собой специфические латинские формы, которым не всегда можно найти соответствие в новых языках.

2. Неизменяемые части речи

наречие — adverbium
союз — coniunctio
предлог — praepositio
междометие — interiectio

Транслитерация Транслитерация (транскрипция) латинских слов онлайн Для получения транслитерации (транскрипции) латинских слов онлайн введите/вставьте слово или текст на латыни (до 200 символов) и при необходимости нажмите кнопку Транслит. 2100+ латинских пословиц и крылатых выражений с переводом на русский язык, транскрипцией (транслитерацией) и ударениями здесь. учитывать позицию s: [с]/[з] учитывать позицию ti: [ти]/[ци] учитывать позицию c: [к]/[ц] не учитывать позицию ns: всегда [нс] не учитывать позицию sm: всегда [см] не учитывать позицию ex: всегда [экс] au, eu как [аў], [эў] au, eu как [ав], [эв] oe как [э] oe как [ӭ] h как [гх] как [h] как [х] как [г] Особенности транслитерации (транскрипции) слов/текста на латыни Обрабатываются латинские символы любого регистра; результат выдается русскими буквами в нижнем регистре: Пример Результат Lingua LATINA [лингва лятина] Обрабатываются следующие латинские символы с надстрочными знаками: ā ē ī ō ū; â ê î ô û; ă ĕ ĭ ŏ ŭ; ǎ ǐ ǒ ǔ ě; œ æ; ў ỹ ȳ; ё: Пример Результат De poētā claro [дэ поэта кляро] aёr [аэр] Латинская буква j во всех позициях передается как [й]. Учитывается возможность использования буквы i вместо j. Пример Результат jus и ius [йус] majoris и maioris [майорис] conjunx и coniunx [конйункс] В результатах транслитерации знак гˣ передает фрикативный звук [γ], знак ў — неслоговой звук [у]. Настройки позволяют использовать вместо знака гˣ знаки г или х, вместо знака ў — знак в. Для Android устройств вместо гˣ по умолчанию используется знак [h]. Пример Результат heu [гˣэў] / [хэў] / [гэў] / [гˣэв] / [хэв] / [гэв] Набор настроек Традиция позволяет транслитерировать латинские слова по традиционным правилам (с помощью настроек можно изменять любую опцию). В частности: учитываются позиционные варианты чтения букв s, c, сочетания ti; не учитываются позиционные варианты чтения сочетаний ns, sm, приставки ex-; сочетания qu, ngu перед всеми гласными транслитерируются как [кв], [нгв]: сочетания ae, oe транслитерируются как [э]: Пример Результат cicatrīces [цикатрицэс] serōsus [сэрозус] justitia [йустициа] censor [цэнсор] plasma [плясма] exaltatio [эксальтацио] lingua [лингва] aqua [аква] poenae [пэнэ] Набор настроек Классика позволяет транслитерировать латинские слова по классическим правилам (с помощью настроек можно изменять любую опцию). В частности: не учитываются позиционные варианты чтения букв s, c, сочетаний ti, ns, sm, приставки ex-; сочетания qu, ngu перед u транслитерируются как [ку], [нгу], в остальных случаях — как [кв], [нгв]; сочетание ae транслитерируется как [э], oe — как [ӭ]: Пример Результат cicatrīces [кикатрикэс] serōsus [сэросус] justitia [йуститиа] censor [кэнсор] plasma [плясма] exaltatio [эксальтатио] lingua [лингва] unguuntur [унгунтур] aqua [аква] sequuntur [сэкунтур] poenae [пӭнэ] употребление u вместо вместо v не поддерживается : Не следует вводить Следует вводить uocaui [уокаўи] vocavi [вокави] uult [уульт] vult [вульт] Набор настроек Медицина позволяет транслитерировать латинские слова по правилам, принятым для чтения медицинских, биологических, химических латинских терминов (с помощью настроек можно изменять любую опцию). В частности: учитываются позиционные варианты чтения букв s, c, сочетаний ti, ns, sm, приставки ex-; сочетания qu, ngu перед всеми гласными транслитерируются как [кв], [нгв]: сочетания ae, oe транслитерируются как [э]: Пример Результат cicatrīces [цикатрицэс] serōsus [сэрозус] justitia [йустициа] censor [цэнзор] plasma [плязма] exaltatio [эгзальтацио] lingua [лингва] aqua [аква] poenae [пэнэ] В режимах «Традиция», «Классика» в словах греческого происхождения s между гласными корректно обрабатывается только в случаях: если после нее в слове имеются сочетания th, ph, rh, ch, sm или буквы y, z; если слово содержит учтенные в скрипте греческие терминоэлементы: Пример Результат philosophia [филёсофиа] haemopoēsis [гˣэмопоэсис] Воспользуйтесь правилом: В словах греческого происхождения, формальными признаками которых являются буквы y, z и сочетания th, ph, rh, ch, sm буква s между гласными всегда читается как [с]: hypophysis [гˣипофисис]. Варианты чтения на стыке морфем учитываются в следующих случаях: в формах слова sua: Пример Результат sua, suae, suam, suā [суа, суэ, суам, суа] suārum, suis, suas [суарум, суис, суас] в формах на -nti-um: Пример Результат dentium [дэнтиум] ornantium [орнантиум] в формах сравнительной степени на -t-ior-: Пример Результат sapientioris [сапиэнтиорис] в сочетании eu в конце слова перед m, s: Пример Результат meus [мэус] meum [мэум] в формах на -e-und-: Пример Результат transeundo [трансэундо] если слово содержит учтенные в скрипте приставки, терминоэлементы, слова: Пример Результат chromosoma [хромосома] Ударения не расставляются. Воспользуйтесь правилами: В словах из двух и более слогов ударение никогда не ставится на последний слог. В словах из двух слогов ударение ставится на первый слог: ró-sa [ро́-за]. В словах из трех слогов место ударения определяется по предпоследнему слогу: если в предпоследнем слоге долгий гласный или дифтонг, ударение ставится на предпоследний слог: oc-cī́-do [ок-ци́-до], the-sáu-rus [тэ-са́ў-рус]; если в предпоследнем слоге краткий гласный, ударение ставится на третий слог от конца: lí-quĭ-dus [ли́-кви-дус]; если в предпоследнем слоге гласный перед двумя и более согласными, ударение ставится на предпоследний слог: ma-gís—ter [ма-ги́с-тэр]; если в предпоследнем слоге гласный перед гласным, ударение ставится на третий слог от конца: ná-ti—o [на́-ци-о]. Подготовил К. Тананушко, graecolatini.bsu.by

Онлайн сервис транслитерации фамилий с русского языка на английский

Онлайн сервис транслитерации фамилии заменяет символы русского алфавита символами латинского алфавита. С помощью нашего транслитератора из букв кириллического алфавита получаются созвучная фамилия на латинице. Этот транслитератор задумывался как сервис для перевода фамилий на английский язык, при подготовки различных документов. Транслитератор фамилии является инструментом, строго следующим различным официально принятым правилам транслитерации (ГОСТ Р 52535.1-2006, Приказ МИД № 4271, Приказ МВД № 995, международные телеграммы) и полагается на собственные решения, которые исходя из опыта их использования обеспечивают определенный комфорт и удобство для сценария транслитерации «из кириллицу в латиницу».

Лекция № 2. Алфавит. Фонетика. Чтение гласных. Особенности чтения согласных. Произношение буквосочетаний. Правила постановки ударения

Latin phonology continually evolved over the centuries, making it difficult for speakers in one era to know how Latin was spoken before then. A given phoneme may be represented by different letters in different periods. This article deals primarily with modern scholarship’s best reconstruction of Classical Latin’s phonemes (phonology) and the pronunciation and spelling used by educated people in the late Roman Republic. This article then touches upon later changes and other variants. Knowledge of how Latin was pronounced comes from Roman grammar books, common misspellings by Romans, transcriptions into other ancient languages, and from how pronunciation has evolved in derived Romance languages.^[1]

Latin orthography is the spelling of Latin words written in the scripts of all historical phases of Latin from Old Latin to the present. All scripts use the Latin alphabet, but conventional spellings may vary from phase to phase. The Latin alphabet was adapted from the Old Italic script to represent the phonemes of the Latin language. The Old Italic script had in turn been borrowed from the Greek alphabet, itself adapted from the Phoenician alphabet. The Latin alphabet most resembles the Greek alphabet around 540 BC, as it appears on the black-figure pottery of the time.

Letterforms[edit]

The forms of the Latin alphabet used during the Classical period did not distinguish between upper case and lower case. Roman inscriptions typically use Roman square capitals, which resemble modern capitals, and handwritten text often uses old Roman cursive, which includes letterforms similar to modern lowercase.

Letters and phonemes[edit]

In ancient Latin spelling, individual letters mostly corresponded to individual phonemes, with three main exceptions:

1. The vowel letters a, e, i, o, u, y represented both short and long vowels. The long vowels were often marked by apices during the Classical period ⟨Á É Ó V́ Ý⟩, and long i was written using a taller version ⟨I⟩, called i longa «long I»: ⟨ꟾ⟩;^[2] but now long vowels are sometimes written with a macron in modern editions (ā), while short vowels are marked with a breve (ă) in dictionaries when necessary.
2. Some pairs of vowel letters, such as ae, represented either a diphthong in one syllable or two vowels in adjacent syllables.
3. The letters i and u (v) represented either the close vowels /i/ and /u/ or the semivowels /j/ and /w/.

In the tables below, Latin letters and digraphs are paired with the phonemes that they usually represent in the International Phonetic Alphabet.

Consonants[edit]

This is a table of the consonant phonemes of Classical Latin. Those in parentheses have a debatable status as phonemes, and those marked with an asterisk are only found in Greek loanwords in educated pronunciation, except for some instances of /kʰ/. See below for further details.

	Labial	Coronal	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
plain	labialized
Plosive	voiced	b	d		ɡ	(ɡʷ)
voiceless	p	t		k	(kʷ)
aspirated	pʰ*	tʰ*		kʰ*
Fricative	voiced		z*
voiceless	f	s				h
Nasal	m	n
Rhotic		r
Approximant		l	j		w

Notes on phonetics[edit]

• The labialized velar stops /kʷ/ and /ɡʷ/ may both have been single phonemes rather than clusters like the /kw/ and /ɡw/ in English quick and penguin. /kʷ/ is more likely to have been a phoneme than /ɡʷ/. /kʷ/ occurs between vowels and counts as a single consonant in Classical Latin poetry, but /ɡʷ/ occurs only after [ŋ], where it cannot be identified as a single or double consonant.^[3] /kʷ/ and [ɡʷ] were palatalized before a front vowel, becoming [kᶣ] and [ɡᶣ], as in quī [kᶣiː] listen (help·info) compared with quod [kʷɔd], and lingua [ˈlɪŋ.ɡʷa] compared with pinguis [ˈpɪŋ.ɡᶣɪs]. This sound change did not apply to /w/ in the same position: uī — vī [wiː].^[4]
• /kʷ ɡʷ/ before /u/ may have become [k ɡ] by dissimilation. This is suggested by the fact that equus [ˈɛ.kʷʊs] and unguunt [ˈʊŋ.ɡʷʊnt] (Old Latin equos and unguont) are spelled ecus and ungunt, which may have indicated the pronunciations [ˈɛ.kʊs] and [ˈʊŋ.ɡʊnt]. These spellings may, however, simply indicate that c g before u were labialized like /kʷ ɡʷ/, so that writing a double uu was redundant.^[5]
• The voiceless plosives /p t k kʷ/ in Latin were likely less aspirated than voiceless plosives at the beginning of words in English; for example, Latin /k/ was not as strongly aspirated as k in kind but more like k in English sky or look. However, there was no phonemic contrast between voiceless and aspirated plosives in native Latin words, and the voiceless plosives were probably somewhat aspirated at the beginnings of words and near /r/ and /l/.^[6][7] Some Greek words beginning with the voiceless plosives /p t k/, when they were borrowed into colloquial Latin, were spelled with the graphemes used to represent voiced plosives b d g /b d ɡ/, e.g., Latin gubernator besides West Greek κυβερνάτας [kʉbernaːtaːs] (cybernatas) (helmsman). That suggests that Latin speakers felt the Greek voiceless plosives to sound less aspirated than their own native equivalents.^[8]
• The aspirated consonants /pʰ tʰ kʰ/ as distinctive phonemes were originally foreign to Latin, appearing in educated loanwords and names from Greek. In such cases, the aspiration was likely produced only by educated speakers.^[6][7]
• /z/ was also not native to Classical Latin. It appeared in Greek loanwords starting around the first century BC, when it was probably pronounced [z] initially and doubled [zz] between vowels, in contrast to Classical Greek [dz] or [zd]. In Classical Latin poetry, the letter ⟨z⟩ between vowels always counts as two consonants for metrical purposes.^[9][10]
• In Classical Latin, the coronal sibilant /s/ was likely unvoiced in all positions. In Old Latin, single /s/ between vowels was pronounced as voiced [z] but had changed to /r/ by rhotacism by the time of Classical Latin, as in gerō /ˈɡe.roː/ as compared with gestus /ˈɡes.tus/. Single intervocalic /s/ in Classical Latin usually derives from an earlier double /ss/ after a long vowel or diphthong, as in causa, cāsus from earlier caussa, cāssus;^[11] or is found in loanwords, such as pausa from Greek παῦσις (pausis).^{[citation needed]}
• In Old Latin, final /s/ after a short vowel was often lost, probably after first changing to [h] (debuccalization), as in the inscriptional form Cornelio for Cornelios (Classical Latin Cornelius). Often in the poetry of Plautus, Ennius, and Lucretius, final /s/ before a word beginning in a consonant did not make the preceding syllable heavy. By the Classical period this was felt to be somewhat of a marker of non-urban speech by Cicero.^[11]
• /f/ was labiodental in Classical Latin, but it may have been bilabial [ɸ] in Old Latin,^[12] or perhaps [ɸ] in free variation with [f]. Lloyd, Sturtevant, and Kent make this argument based on certain misspellings in inscriptions, the Proto-Indo-European phoneme *bʰ from which many instances of the Latin f descended (others are from *dʰ and *gʷʰ) and the way the sound appears to have behaved in Vulgar Latin, particularly in Spain.^[13]
• In most cases /m/ 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), causing the preceding vowel to be lengthened and nasalized,^[14] as in decem [ˈdɛ.kẽː] listen (help·info). In Old Latin inscriptions, final m is often omitted, as in uiro (viro) for uirom (virom) (Classical virum). It was frequently elided before a following vowel in Latin poetry, and it was lost without a trace (apart from lengthening, possibly) in the Romance languages,^[15] except in monosyllabic words, where it’s reflected as /n/ or its further developments.
• /n/ assimilated to /m/ before labial consonants as in impār, inpār [ˈɪm.paːr], to [ɱ] before /f/ (when present at all as opposed to representing nasalisation) and to [ŋ] before velar consonants, as in quīnque [ˈkᶣiːŋ.kᶣɛ] listen (help·info).^[16] This assimilation, like most other Latin contact processes, occurred regardless of word boundaries, for instance between the preposition in and a following word: in causā [ɪŋ ˈkau̯.saː], in pāce [ɪm ˈpaː.kɛ],^[17] as well as between two lexical words: nōmen mātris [ˈnoːmɛmˈmaːtrɪs].
• /ɡ/ assimilated to a velar nasal [ŋ] before /n/.^[18] Allen and Greenough say that a vowel before [ŋn] is always long,^[19] 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 rēgnum [ˈreːŋ.nũː] from the root of rēx [reːks], but magnus [ˈmaŋ.nʊs] from the root of magis [ˈma.ɡɪs].^[20] /ɡ/ probably did not assimilate to [ŋ] before /m/. The cluster /ɡm/ arose by syncope, as for example tegmen [ˈtɛɡ.mɛn] from tegimen. Original /ɡm/ developed into /mm/ in flamma, from the root of flagrō.^[3] At the start of a word, original /gn/ was reduced to [n], and this change was reflected in the orthography in later texts: gnātus [ˈnaː.tʊs] became nātus, gnōscō [ˈnoː.skoː] became nōscō.
• In Classical Latin, the rhotic /r/ was most likely an alveolar trill [r]. Gaius Lucilius likens it to the sound of a dog, and later writers describe it as being produced by vibration. In Old Latin, intervocalic /z/ developed into /r/ (rhotacism), suggesting an approximant like the English [ɹ], and /d/ was sometimes written as /r/, suggesting a tap [ɾ] like Spanish single r.^[21]
• /l/ was strongly velarized in syllable coda and probably somewhat palatalized when geminated or followed by /i(ː)/. In intervocalic position, it appears to have been velarized before all vowels except /i(ː)/.^[22]
• /j/ generally appeared only at the beginning of words, before a vowel, as in iaceō /ˈja.kɛ.oː/, except in compound words such as adiaceō (adjaceō) /adˈja.kɛ.oː/ listen (help·info). Between vowels, this sound was generally not found as a single consonant, only as doubled /jː/, as in cuius /ˈkuj.jus/ listen (help·info), except in compound words such as trāiectus (trājectus) /traːˈjek.tus/. /j/ varied with /i/ in the same morpheme in iam /jãː/ and etiam /ˈe.ti.ãː/, and in poetry, one could be replaced with the other for the purposes of meter.^[23]
• /w/ was pronounced as an approximant until the first century AD, when /w/ and /b/ began to develop into fricatives. In poetry, /w/ and /u/ could be replaced with each other, as in /ˈsi.lu.a/ for silua (silva) /ˈsil.wa/ and /ˈɡen.wa/ for genua /ˈɡe.nu.a/. Unlike /j/, it was not doubled as /wː/ or /ww/ between vowels, except in Greek loanwords: caué (cavē) /ˈka.weː/, but Euander (Evander) /ewˈwan.der/ from Εὔανδρος.^[24]
• /h/ was apparently still pronounced in Classical Latin, but was probably voiced to [ɦ] between vowels and prone to loss in this environment already at an early stage (compare especially diribeō with rhotacism from *disibeō and earlier *dishibeō).^[25]

Notes on spelling[edit]

• Doubled consonant letters, such as cc, ss, represented geminated (doubled or long) consonants: /kː sː/. In Old Latin, geminate consonants were written singly like single consonants, until the middle of the 2nd century BC, when they began to be doubled in writing.^{[note 2]} Grammarians mention the marking of double consonants with the sicilicus, a diacritic in the shape of a sickle. This mark appears in a few inscriptions of the Augustan era.^[26]
• c and k both represent the velar stop /k/; qu represents the labialized velar stop /kʷ/. The letters q and c distinguish minimal pairs between /ku/ and /kʷ/, such as cui /kui̯/ and quī /kʷiː/.^[27] In Classical Latin, k appeared in only a few words, such as kalendae or Karthagō (but can also be spelled calendae and Carthagō respectively).^[28]
• x represented the consonant cluster /ks/. In Old Latin, this sequence was also spelled as ks, cs, and xs. X was borrowed from the Western Greek alphabet, in which the letterform of chi (Χ) was pronounced as /ks/. In the standard Ionic alphabet, used for modern editions of Ancient Greek, on the other hand, Χ represented /kʰ/, and the letter xi (Ξ) represented /ks/.^[29]
• In Old Latin inscriptions, /k/ and /ɡ/ were not distinguished. They were both represented by c before e and i, q before o and u, and k before consonants and a.^[2] The letterform of c derives from Greek gamma Γ, which represented /ɡ/, but its use for /k/ may come from Etruscan, which did not distinguish voiced and voiceless plosives. In Classical Latin, c represented /ɡ/ only in c and cn, the abbreviations of the praenomina (first names) Gaius and Gnaeus.^[28][30]
• The letter g was created in the third century BC to distinguish the voiced /ɡ/ from voiceless /k/.^[31] Its letterform derived from c by the addition of a diacritic or stroke. Plutarch attributes this innovation to Spurius Carvilius Ruga around 230 BC,^[2] but it may have originated with Appius Claudius Caecus in the fourth century BC.^[32]
• The combination gn probably represented the consonant cluster [ŋn], at least between vowels, as in agnus [ˈaŋ.nʊs] listen (help·info).^[14][33] Vowels before this cluster were sometimes long and sometimes short.^[20]
• The digraphs ph, th, and ch represented the aspirated plosives /pʰ/, /tʰ/ and /kʰ/. They began to be used in writing around 150 BC,^[31] primarily as a transcription of Greek phi Φ, theta Θ, and chi Χ, as in Philippus, cithara, and achāia. Some native words were later also written with these digraphs, such as pulcher, lachrima, gracchus, triumphus, probably representing aspirated allophones of the voiceless plosives near /r/ and /l/. Aspirated plosives and the glottal fricative /h/ were also used hypercorrectively, an affectation satirized in Catullus 84.^[6][7]
• In Old Latin, Koine Greek initial /z/ and /zz/ between vowels were represented by s and ss, as in sona from ζώνη and massa from μᾶζα. Around the second and first centuries B.C., the Greek letter zeta Ζ was adopted to represent /z/ and /zz/.^[10] However, the Vulgar Latin spellings z or zi for earlier di and d before e, and the spellings di and dz for earlier z, suggest the pronunciation /dz/, as for example ziomedis for diomedis, and diaeta for zeta.^[34]
• In ancient times u and i represented the approximant consonants /w/ and /j/, as well as the close vowels /u(ː)/ and /i(ː)/.
• i representing the consonant /j/ was usually not doubled in writing, so a single i represented double /jː/ or /jj/ and the sequences /ji/ and /jːi/, as in cuius for *cuiius /ˈkuj.jus/, conicit for *coniicit /ˈkon.ji.kit/, and rēicit for *reiiicit /ˈrej.ji.kit/. Both the consonantal and vocalic pronunciations of i could occur in some of the same environments: compare māius /ˈmaj.jus/ with Gāius /ˈɡaː.i.us/, and Iūlius /ˈjuː.li.us/ with Iūlus /iˈuː.lus/. The vowel before a doubled /jː/ is sometimes marked with a macron, as in cūius. It indicates not that the vowel is long but that the first syllable is heavy from the double consonant.^[23]
• u (v) between vowels represented single /w/ in native Latin words but double /ww/ in Greek loanwords. Both the consonantal and vocalic pronunciations of u (v) sometimes occurred in similar environments, as in genua [ˈɡɛ.nʊ.a] and silua (silva) [ˈsɪl.wa].^[24][35]

Vowels[edit]

Monophthongs[edit]

Latin has ten native vowels, spelled a, e, i, o, u. In Classical Latin, each vowel had short and long versions: /a e i o u/ and /aː eː iː oː uː/.

The long versions of the close and mid vowels e, i, o, u had probably a different vowel quality from the short versions, so that long /eː, oː/ were similar to short /ɪ, ʊ/ (see following section). Some loanwords from Greek had the vowel y, which was pronounced as /y yː/ by educated speakers but approximated with the native vowels u and i by less educated speakers.

	Front	Central	Back
short	long	short	long	short	long
Close	i	iː			u	uː
Mid	ɛ	ɛː			ɔ	ɔː
Open			a	aː

Long and short vowels[edit]

Each vowel letter (with the possible exception of y) represents at least two phonemes. a can represent either short /a/ or long /aː/, e represents either /e/ or /eː/, etc.

Short mid vowels /e, o/ and close vowels /i, u/ were probably pronounced with a different quality from their long counterparts, being also more open: [ɛ], [ɔ], [ɪ] and [ʊ]. This opening made the short vowels i, u [ɪ, ʊ] similar in quality to long ē ō [eː, oː] respectively. i, ē and u, ō were often written in place of each other in inscriptions:^[36]

• trebibos for tribibus [ˈtrɪ.bɪ.bʊs]
• minsis for mensis [ˈmẽː.sɪs]
• sob for sub [sʊb]
• punere for pōnere [ˈpoː.næ.rɛ]

Short /e/ most likely had a more open allophone before /r/ and tended toward near-open [æ].^[37]

Short /e/ and /i/ were probably pronounced closer when they occurred before another vowel. mea was written as mia in inscriptions. Short /i/ before another vowel is often written with i longa, as in dīes, indicating that its quality was similar to that of long /iː/ and is almost never confused with e in this position.^[38]

Adoption of Greek upsilon[edit]

y was used in Greek loanwords with upsilon Υ. This letter represented the close front rounded vowel, both short and long: /y yː/.^[39] Latin did not have this sound as a distinctive phoneme, and speakers tended to pronounce such loanwords with /u uː/ in Old Latin and /i iː/ in Classical and Late Latin if they were unable to produce /y yː/.

Sonus medius[edit]

An intermediate vowel sound (likely a close central vowel [ɨ] or possibly its rounded counterpart [ʉ]), called sonus medius, can be reconstructed for the classical period.^[40] Such a vowel is found in documentum, optimus, lacrima (also spelled docimentum, optumus, lacruma) and other words. It developed out of a historical short /u/, later fronted by vowel reduction. 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 /u/ [ʊ].^[41] It was sometimes spelled by the Claudian letter Ⱶ ⱶ.

Vowel nasalization[edit]

Vowels followed by a nasal consonant were allophonically realised as long nasal vowels in two environments:^[42]

• Before word-final m:^[15]
  • monstrum /ˈmon.strum/ > [ˈmõː.strũː]
  • dentem /ˈden.tem/ > [ˈdɛn.tẽː]
• Before nasal consonants followed by a fricative:^[17]
  • censor /ˈken.sor/ > [ˈkẽː.sɔr] (in early inscriptions, often written as cesor)
  • consul /ˈkon.sul/ > [ˈkõː.sʊl] (often written as cosol and abbreviated as cos)
  • inferōs /ˈin.fe.roːs/ > [ˈĩː.fæ.roːs] (written as iferos)

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 costar from Vulgar Latin cōstāre (originally constāre) and Italian mese from Vulgar Latin mēse (Classical Latin mensem). On the other hand, the short vowel and /n/ were restored, for example, in French enseigne and enfant from insignia and infantem (e is the normal development of Latin short i), likely by analogy with other forms beginning in the prefix in-.^[43]

When a final -m 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, tan dūrum [tan ˈduː.rũː] was written for tam dūrum in inscriptions, and cum nōbīs [kʊn ˈnoː.biːs] was a double entendre,^[15] possibly for cunnō bis [ˈkʊnnoː bɪs].

Diphthongs[edit]

Diphthongs classified by beginning sound

	Front	Back
Close		ui    ui̯
Mid	ei    ei̯ eu    eu̯	oe    oe̯ ~ eː
Open	ae    ae̯ ~ ɛː au    au̯

ae, oe, au, ei, eu could represent diphthongs: ae represented /ae̯/, oe represented /oe̯/, au represented /au̯/, ei represented /ei̯/, and eu represented /eu̯/. ui sometimes represented the diphthong /ui̯/, as in cui listen (help·info) and huic.^[27] The diphthong ei mostly had changed to ī by the classical epoch; ei remained only in a few words such as the interjection hei.

If there is a tréma above the second vowel, both vowels are pronounced separately: aë [a.ɛ], aü [a.ʊ], eü [ɛ.ʊ] and oë [ɔ.ɛ]. However, disyllabic eu in morpheme borders is traditionally written without the tréma: meus [ˈmɛ.ʊs] ‘my’.

In Old Latin, ae, oe were written as ai, oi and probably pronounced as [ai̯, oi̯], with a fully closed second element, similar to the final syllable in French travail (help·info). In the late Old Latin period, the last element of the diphthongs was lowered to [e],^[44] so that the diphthongs were pronounced [ae̯] and [oe̯] in Classical Latin. They were then monophthongized to [ɛː] and [eː] respectively, starting in rural areas at the end of the Republican period.^{[note 3]} 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.^[45]

Vowel and consonant length[edit]

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: ⟨ā ē ī ō ū ȳ⟩, while the breve is sometimes used to indicate that a vowel is short: ⟨ă ĕ ĭ ŏ ŭ y̆⟩.

Long consonants were usually indicated through doubling, but ancient Latin orthography did not distinguish between the vocalic and consonantal uses of i and v. 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.^[46] 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 nono «ninth» versus nonno «grandfather».^[47]

Recording of ānus, annus, anus

A minimal set showing both long and short vowels and long and short consonants is ānus /ˈaː.nus/ (‘anus’), annus /ˈan.nus/ (‘year’), anus /ˈa.nus/ (‘old woman’).

Table of orthography[edit]

The letters b, d, f, h, m, n are always pronounced as in English [b], [d], [f], [h], [m], [n] respectively, and they do not usually cause any difficulties. The exceptions are mentioned below:

Pronunciation of Latin consonants

Latin grapheme	Latin phone	English approximation
⟨c⟩, ⟨k⟩	[k]	Always hard as k in sky, never soft as in cellar, cello, or social. ⟨k⟩ is a letter coming from Greek, but seldom used and generally replaced by c.
⟨ch⟩	[kʰ]	As ch in chemistry, and aspirated; never as in challenge or change (mostly used in Greek loanwords). Transliteration of Greek ⟨χ⟩.
⟨g⟩	[ɡ]	Always hard as g in good, never soft as g in gem.
⟨gn⟩	[gn ~ ŋn]	As ngn in wingnut.
⟨i⟩	[j]	Sometimes at the beginning of a syllable, as y in yard, never as j in just.
[jː]	Doubled between vowels, as y y in toy yacht.
⟨l⟩	[l]	When doubled ⟨ll⟩ or before ⟨i⟩, as clear l in link (l exilis).[48][49]
[ɫ]	In all other positions, as dark l in bowl (l pinguis).
⟨n⟩	[n]	As n in man.
⟨p⟩	[p]	As p in spy, never aspirated.
⟨ph⟩	[pʰ]	As p in party, always aspirated; never as in photo when being pronounced in English (mostly used in Greek loanwords). Transliteration of Greek ⟨φ⟩.
⟨qv⟩	[kʷ]	Similar to qu in quick, never as qu in antique.
⟨qvv⟩	[kʷɔ ~ kʷu ~ ku]	There were two trends: the educated and popular pronunciation. Within educated circles it was pronounced [kʷɔ], evoking the Old Latin pronunciation (equos, sequontur); meanwhile, within popular circles it was pronounced [ku] (ecus, secuntur).[50][51]
⟨r⟩	[r]	As r in Italian and several Romance languages.
⟨rh⟩	[r̥]	As r in Italian and several Romance languages (mostly used in Greek loanwords); e.g. diarrhoea ⟨διάῤῥοια⟩; but it is voiceless (see Voiceless alveolar trill).
⟨s⟩	[s]	As s in say, never as s in rise or measure.
⟨t⟩	[t]	As t in stay, never as t in nation.
⟨th⟩	[tʰ]	As th in thyme, and aspirated; never as in thing, or that (mostly used in Greek loanwords). Transliteration of Greek ⟨θ⟩.
⟨v⟩	[w]	Sometimes at the beginning of a syllable, or after ⟨g⟩ and ⟨s⟩, as w in wine, never as v in vine.
⟨vv⟩	[wɔ ~ wu]	as in some English accents one is pronounced, but without the nasal sound: PARVVS /ˈpɐr.wɔs/, VIVVNT /ˈwiː.wɔnt/. The spelling vu is post-classical (in order to become regular in spelling).[50][52]
⟨x⟩	[k͡s]	A letter representing ⟨c⟩ + ⟨s⟩, as well as ⟨g⟩ + ⟨s⟩: as x in English axe, never as x in example.
⟨z⟩	[d͡z ~ zː]	As in zoom, never as in pizza (mostly used in Greek loanwords). Transliteration of Greek ⟨ζ⟩.

Pronunciation of Latin vowels

Latin grapheme	Latin phone	English approximation
⟨a⟩	[a]	Similar to u in cut when short. Transliteration of Greek short ⟨α⟩.
[aː]	Similar to a in father when long. Transliteration of Greek long ⟨α⟩.
⟨e⟩	[ɛ]	As e in pet when short. Transliteration of Greek ⟨ε⟩.
[ɛː]	Similar to ey in they when long. Transliteration of Greek ⟨η⟩, and ⟨ει⟩ in some cases.
⟨i⟩	[i]	As i in sit when short. Transliteration of short Greek ⟨ι⟩.
[iː]	Similar to i in machine when long. Transliteration of Greek long ⟨ι⟩, and ⟨ει⟩ in some cases.
⟨o⟩	[ɔ]	As o in sort when short. Transliteration of Greek ⟨ο⟩.
[ɔː]	Similar to o in holy when long. Transliteration of Greek ⟨ω⟩, and ⟨ου⟩ in some cases.
⟨v⟩	[u]	Similar to u in put when short.
[uː]	Similar to u in true when long. Transliteration of Greek ⟨ου⟩.
⟨y⟩	[y]	As in German Stück when short (or as short u or i) (mostly used in Greek loanwords). Transliteration of Greek short ⟨υ⟩.
[yː]	As in German früh when long (or as long u or i) (mostly used in Greek loanwords). Transliteration of Greek long ⟨υ⟩.

Pronunciation of Latin diphthongs

Latin grapheme	Latin phone	English approximation
⟨ae⟩	[ae̯]	As in aisle. Transliteration of Greek ⟨αι⟩.
⟨av⟩	[au̯]	As in out. Transliteration of Greek ⟨αυ⟩.
⟨ei⟩	[ei̯]	As to ey in they. Transliteration of Greek ⟨ει⟩ in some cases.
⟨ev⟩	[eu̯]	As in Portuguese eu. Transliteration of Greek ⟨ευ⟩.
⟨oe⟩	[oe̯]	As in boy. Transliteration of Greek ⟨οι⟩.
⟨vi⟩	[ui̯]	As in Spanish muy, approximately to hooey.
⟨yi⟩	[yi̯]	Transliteration of the Greek diphthong ⟨υι⟩.

Syllables and stress[edit]

Old Latin stress[edit]

In Old Latin, as in Proto-Italic, stress normally fell on the first syllable of a word.^[53] 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:

• faciō ‘I do/make’, factus ‘made’; pronounced /ˈfa.ki.oː/ and /ˈfak.tus/ in later Old Latin and Classical Latin.
• afficiō ‘I affect’, affectus ‘affected’; pronounced /ˈaf.fi.ki.oː/ and /ˈaf.fek.tus/ in Old Latin following vowel reduction, /af.ˈfi.ki.oː/ and /af.ˈfek.tus/ 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.^[54] The placement of the stress then shifted to become the pattern found in classical Latin.

Classical Latin syllables and stress[edit]

In Classical Latin, stress changed. It moved from the first syllable to one of the last three syllables, called the antepenult, the penult, and the ultima (short for antepaenultima ‘before almost last’, paenultima ‘almost last’, and ultima syllaba ‘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.^[55] 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.^[56]

Syllable[edit]

To determine stress, syllable weight of the penult must be determined. To determine syllable weight, words must be broken up into syllables.^[57] 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[edit]

Every short vowel, long vowel, or diphthong belongs to a single syllable. This vowel forms the syllable nucleus. Thus magistrārum has four syllables, one for every vowel (a i ā u: V V VV V), aereus has three (ae e u: VV V V), tuō has two (u ō: V VV), and cui has one (ui: VV).^[58]

Onset and coda[edit]

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.^[58]

• fēminae /feː.mi.nae̯/ (CVV.CV.CVV)
• uidēre /wi.deː.re/ (CV.CVV.CV)
• puerō /pu.e.roː/ (CV.V.CVV)
• beātae /be.aː.tae̯/ (CV.VV.CVV)
• grauiter /ɡra.wi.ter/ (CCV.CV.CVC)
• strātum /straː.tum/ (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.^[59]

• puella /pu.el.la/ (CV.VC.CV)
• supersum /su.per.sum/ (CV.CVC.CVC)
• coāctus /ko.aːk.tus/ (CV.VVC.CVC)
• intellēxit /in.tel.leːk.sit/ (VC.CVC.CVVC.CVC)

There are two exceptions. A consonant cluster of a stop p t c b d g followed by a liquid l r between vowels usually goes to the syllable after it, although it is also sometimes broken up like other consonant clusters.^[59]

• uolucris /wo.lu.kris/ or /wo.luk.ris/ (CV.CV.KRVC or CV.CVK.RVC)

Heavy and light syllables[edit]

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 syllaba nātūrā longa (‘syllable long by nature’), and a syllable that is heavy because it ends in a consonant is called positiōne longa (‘long by position’). These terms are translations of Greek συλλαβὴ μακρά φύσει (syllabḕ makrá phýsei = ‘syllable long by nature’) and μακρὰ θέσει (makrà thései = ‘long by proposition’), respectively; therefore positiōne 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.^[59]

Stress rule[edit]

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.^[59] Below, stress is marked by placing the stress mark ⟨ˈ⟩ before the stressed syllable.

Words with stress on antepenult

volucris	fēminae	puerō
/ˈwo.lu.kris/	/ˈfeː.mi.nae̯/	/ˈpu.e.roː/
CV.CV.CCVC	CVV.CV.CVV	CV.V.CVV

Words with stress on penult

volucris	vidēre	intellēxit	beātae	puella	coāctus
CV.CVC.CVC	CV.CVV.CV	VC.CVC.CVVC.CVC	CV.VV.CVV	CV.VC.CV	CV.VVC.CVC
/woˈluk.ris/	/wiˈdeː.re/	/in.telˈleːk.sit/	/beˈaː.tae̯/	/puˈel.la/	/koˈaːk.tus/

Iambic shortening[edit]

Iambic shortening or brevis brevians is vowel shortening that occurs in words of the type light–heavy, where the light syllable is stressed. By this sound change, words like egō, modō, benē, amā with long final vowel change to ego, modo, bene, ama with short final vowel.^[60]

The term also refers to shortening of closed syllables following a short syllable, for example quid ĕst, volŭptātem, apŭd iudicem 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[edit]

Where one word ended with a vowel (including the nasalized vowels written am em im um~(om) and the diphthong ae) 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 /i/ and /u/) pronounced like the corresponding semivowel. When the second word was est or es, and possibly when the second word was et, a different form of elision sometimes occurred (prodelision): the vowel of the preceding word was retained, and the e 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 scriptust for scriptum est.^[61]

Modern conventions[edit]

Spelling[edit]

Letters[edit]

Modern usage, even for classical Latin texts, varies in respect of I and V. During the Renaissance, the printing convention was to use I (upper case) and i (lower case) for both vocalic /i/ and consonantal /j/, to use V in the upper case and in the lower case to use v at the start of words and u subsequently within the word regardless of whether /u/ and /w/ was represented.^[62]

Many publishers (such as Oxford University Press) have adopted the convention of using I (upper case) and i (lower case) for both /i/ and /j/, and V (upper case) and u (lower case) for both /u/ and /w/.

An alternative approach, less common today, is to use i and u only for the vowels and j and v for the approximants.

Most modern editions, however, adopt an intermediate position, distinguishing between u and v but not between i and j. Usually, the non-vocalic v after q or g is still printed as u rather than v, probably because in this position it did not change from /w/ to /v/ in post-classical times.^{[note 4]}

Diacritics[edit]

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, Româ /ˈroːmaː/ (‘from Rome’ ablative) compared to Roma /ˈroːma/ (‘Rome’ nominative).^[63]

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[edit]

Post-Medieval Latin[edit]

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[edit]

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 ae and oe (occasionally written as ligatures: æ and œ, respectively), which both denote /iː/ in English. The digraph ae or ligature æ in some words tend to be given an /aɪ/ pronunciation, for example, curriculum vitae.

However, using loan words 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,^{[citation needed]} 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 on «Derivative languages»).

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[edit]

Because of the central position of Rome within the Catholic Church, an Italian pronunciation of Latin became commonly accepted, but this was not the case until the latter part of the 19th century. This pronunciation corresponds to that of the Latin-derived words in Italian. Before then, the pronunciation of Latin in church was the same as the pronunciation as Latin in other fields and tended to reflect the sound values associated with the nationality of the speaker.^[64] Other ecclesiastical variations are still in use (e.g. Germanic pronunciations), especially outside the Catholic Church.

The following are the main points that distinguish modern Italianate ecclesiastical pronunciation from Classical Latin pronunciation:

The letters b, d, f, m, n are always pronounced as in English [b], [d], [f], [m], [n] respectively, and they do not usually cause any difficulties. The exceptions are mentioned below:

Notes

Latin grapheme	Latin phone	English approximation
hard ⟨c⟩, ⟨ch⟩, ⟨k⟩	[k]	As in sky before a, o, u.
soft ⟨c⟩	[t͡ʃ]	As in change before ae, e, i, oe, y.
hard ⟨g⟩	[ɡ]	As in gate before a, o, u.
soft ⟨g⟩	[d͡ʒ]	As in gem before ae, e, i, oe, y.
⟨gn⟩	[ɲː]	As gn in Italian (gnocchi), or ñ in Spanish (niño).
⟨h⟩	∅, [k]	Usually mute; occasionally [k] (hard c) in words like «mihi» and «nihil«.
⟨i⟩	[j]	Sometimes at the beginning of a syllable, as y in yard, never as j in just.
[jː]	Doubled between vowels, as y y in toy yacht.
⟨l⟩	[l]	l exilis and l pinguis merge.
⟨n⟩	[n]	As n in man.
⟨p⟩	[p]	As p in spy, never aspirated.
⟨ph⟩	[f]	As in photo when being pronounced in English (mostly used in Greek loanwords).
⟨qu⟩	[kʷ]	Similar to qu in quick, never as qu in antique.
⟨r⟩, ⟨rh⟩	[r]	As r in Italian and several Romance languages.
⟨s⟩	[s, z]	Strictly as s in hiss (severus) as in the Spanish of the Americas, though increasingly inter-vocally pronounced [z] -s- (rosa) as in the Italian language. Pronounced [sː] when being -ss-.
⟨sce⟩, ⟨sci⟩	[ʃːe, ʃːi]	As sh in shade (scientia).
⟨t⟩, ⟨th⟩	[t]	As t in stay, never as t in nation.
⟨ti⟩	[t͡si]	Only if followed by a vowel, not word-initial or stressed, and not preceded by s, t, or x.
⟨v⟩	[v]	In Ecclesiastical pronunciation, ⟨v⟩ only represents a consonant [v].
⟨x⟩	[ks, ɡz]	A letter representing ⟨c⟩ + ⟨s⟩, as well as ⟨g⟩ + ⟨s⟩: as x in English axe. [ɡz] is also a common allophone intervocalically (as in exemplum).
⟨xce⟩, ⟨xci⟩	[kʃe, kʃi]	Used in words like excellens.
⟨z⟩	[d͡z]	Never as in pizza (mostly used in Greek loanwords). Transliteration of Greek ⟨ζ⟩.

Pronunciation of Latin vowels

Latin grapheme	Latin phone	English approximation
⟨a⟩	[a]	As in car. Transliteration of Greek ⟨α⟩.
⟨ae/æ⟩	[e]	As in pet. Transliteration of Greek ⟨αι⟩.
⟨oe/œ⟩	[e]	As in pet. Transliteration of Greek ⟨οι⟩.
⟨e⟩	[e]	As in pet. Transliteration of Greek ⟨ε⟩, ⟨η⟩, and ⟨ει⟩ in some cases.
⟨i⟩	[i]	As in seek. Transliteration of Greek ⟨ι⟩, and ⟨ει⟩ in some cases.
⟨o⟩	[o]	As in sort. Transliteration of Greek ⟨ο⟩, ⟨ω⟩, and ⟨ου⟩ in some cases.
⟨u⟩	[u]	As in cool. Transliteration of Greek ⟨ου⟩.
⟨y⟩	[i]	As in seek. Transliteration of Greek ⟨υ⟩.

Pronunciation of Latin diphthongs

Latin grapheme	Latin phone	English approximation
⟨au⟩	[au̯]	As in out. Transliteration of Greek ⟨αυ⟩.
⟨ei⟩	[ei̯]	Similar to ey in they. Transliteration of Greek ⟨ει⟩ in some cases.
⟨eu⟩	[eu̯]	As in Portuguese eu, similar to the Southern British English pronunciation of low. Transliteration of Greek ⟨ευ⟩.
⟨ui⟩	[ui̯]	As in Spanish muy, approximately to hooey.

• 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 m and n are pronounced fully, with no nasalization of the preceding vowel.

In his Vox Latina: A guide to the Pronunciation of Classical Latin, William Sidney Allen remarked that this pronunciation, used by the Catholic Church in Rome and elsewhere, and whose adoption Pope Pius X recommended in a 1912 letter to the Archbishop of Bourges, «is probably less far removed from classical Latin than any other ‘national’ pronunciation»; but, as can be seen from the table above, there are, nevertheless, very significant differences.^[65] The introduction to the Liber Usualis indicates that Ecclesiastical Latin pronunciation should be used at Church liturgies.^[66] 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, Czechia and Slovakia, it is the most widely used standard in choral singing which, with a few exceptions like Stravinsky’s Oedipus rex, is concerned with liturgical texts.^{[citation needed]} 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[edit]

Because it gave rise to many modern languages, Latin did not «die»; it merely evolved over the centuries in different regions in diverse ways. The local dialects of Vulgar Latin that emerged eventually became modern Italian, Spanish, French, Romanian, Portuguese, Catalan, Romansh, Dalmatian, Sardinian, and many others.

Key features of Vulgar Latin and Romance languages include:

• Total loss of /h/ as well as the loss, in polysyllablic words, of final /m/.
• Conversion of the distinction of vowel length into a distinction of height, and subsequent merger of some of these phonemes. Most Romance languages merged short /u/ with long /oː/ and short /i/ with long /eː/.
• Monophthongization of /ae̯/ into /ɛː/ and /oe̯/ into /eː/.
• Loss of marginal phonemes such as aspirates (/pʰ/, /tʰ/, /kʰ/, generally replaced by /f/, /t/, /k/) and the close front-rounded vowel (/y/, generally replaced by /i/).
• Loss of /n/ before /s/^[67] (CL spōnsa > VL spōsa) but this influence on the later development of Romance languages was limited from written influence, analogy, and learned borrowings.^[68]
• Palatalization of /k/ before /e/ and /i/ (not in all varieties), probably first into /kʲ/ and then /tʲ/ before it finally developed into /ts/ or /tʃ/.^[69]
• Palatalization of /ɡ/ before /e/ and /i/, merging with /j/, which could develop into an affricate [dʒ], and then further into [ʒ] in some Romance varieties.^[69]
• Palatalization of /ti/ followed by a vowel (if not preceded by s, t, x) into /tsj/. It merged with /ts/ in dialects in which /k/ had developed into this sound, but it remained separate elsewhere (such as Italian).
• Palatalization of /li/ and /ni/ followed by a vowel into [ʎ] and [ɲ].
• Fortition of syllable-initial /w/ into /β/, developing further into [v] in many Romance varieties, or sometimes alternatively into [b] in some contexts.
• Lenition of /b/ between vowels into [β], developing further into [v] in many Romance varieties.

Examples[edit]

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

From Classical Latin[edit]

Virgil’s Aeneid, 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.»

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

1. Ancient Roman orthography (before 2nd century)^{[note 5]}

   ARMA·VIRVMQVE·CANÓ·TRÓIAE·QVꟾ·PRꟾMVS·ABÓRꟾS

   ꟾTALIAM·FÁTÓ·PROFVGVS·LÁVꟾNIAQVE·VÉNIT

   LꟾTORA·MVLTVM·ILLE·ETTERRꟾS·IACTÁTVS·ETALTÓ

   Vꟾ·SVPERVM·SAEVAE·MEMOREM·IV́NÓNIS·OBꟾRAM

2. Traditional (19th century) English orthography

   Arma virúmque cano, Trojæ qui primus ab oris

   Italiam, fato profugus, Lavíniaque venit

   Litora; multùm ille et terris jactatus et alto

   Vi superum, sævæ memorem Junonis ob iram.

3. Modern orthography with macrons

   Arma virumque canō, Trōiae quī prīmus ab ōrīs

   Ītaliam, fātō profugus, Lāvīniaque vēnit

   Lītora; multum ille et terrīs iactātus et altō

   Vī superum, saevae memorem Iūnōnis ob īram.

4. Modern orthography without macrons

   Arma virumque cano, Troiae qui primus ab oris

   Italiam, fato profugus, Laviniaque venit

   Litora; multum ille et terris iactatus et alto

   Vi superum, saevae memorem Iunonis ob iram.

5. [Reconstructed] Classical Roman pronunciation

   [ˈar.ma wɪ|ˈrũː.kᶣɛ ˈka|noː ˈtroː|jae̯ kᶣiː |ˈpriː.mʊs‿a‖ˈb‿oː.riːs

   iː.ˈta.li|ãː ˈfaː|toː ˈprɔ.fʊ|ɡʊs laː|ˈwiː.nja.kᶣɛ ‖ˈweː.nɪt

   ˈliː.tɔ.ra | ˈmʊɫ.t(ᶣ)‿ɪl|l‿ɛt ˈtɛr|riːs jak|ˈtaː.tʊ.s‿ɛ‖ˈt.aɫ.toː

   wiː ˈsʊ.pæ|rũː ˈsae̯|wae̯ ˈmɛ.mɔ|rẽː juː|ˈnoː.nɪ.s‿ɔ‖ˈb‿iː.rãː]

Note the elisions in mult(um) and ill(e) in the third line. For a fuller discussion of the prosodic features of this passage, see Dactylic hexameter.

Some manuscripts have «Lāvīna» rather than «Lāvīnia» in the second line.

From Medieval Latin[edit]

Beginning of Pange Lingua Gloriosi Corporis Mysterium 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).
   • Pange lingua gloriósi
   • Córporis mystérium,
   • Sanguinísque pretiósi,
   • quem in mundi prétium
   • fructus ventris generósi
   • Rex effúdit géntium.
2. «Italianate» ecclesiastical pronunciation
   • [ˈpand͡ʒe ˈliŋɡwa ɡlori’ozi
   • ˈkorporis misˈterium
   • saŋɡwiˈniskwe pret͡si’ozi
   • kwem in ˈmundi ˈpretsium
   • ˈfruktus ˈventris d͡ʒeneˈrozi
   • reks efˈfudit ˈd͡ʒentsium

See also[edit]

• Latin alphabet
• Latin grammar
• Latin regional pronunciation
• Traditional English pronunciation of Latin
• Deutsche Aussprache des Lateinischen (in German) – traditional German pronunciation
• Schulaussprache des Lateinischen (in German) – revised «school» pronunciation
• Traditional French pronunciation (in French)

Notes[edit]

References[edit]

Bibliography[edit]

Further reading[edit]

• 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. https://www.jstor.org/stable/23546146.Copy

External links[edit]

• phonetica latinæ: Classical and ecclesiastical Latin pronunciation with audio examples
• «Ecclesiastical Latin». Catholic Encyclopedia. 1910.
• Lord, Frances Ellen (2007) [1894]. The Roman Pronunciation of Latin: Why we use it and how to use it. Gutenberg Project.
• 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

Latin phonology continually evolved over the centuries, making it difficult for speakers in one era to know how Latin was spoken before then. A given phoneme may be represented by different letters in different periods. This article deals primarily with modern scholarship’s best reconstruction of Classical Latin’s phonemes (phonology) and the pronunciation and spelling used by educated people in the late Roman Republic. This article then touches upon later changes and other variants. Knowledge of how Latin was pronounced comes from Roman grammar books, common misspellings by Romans, transcriptions into other ancient languages, and from how pronunciation has evolved in derived Romance languages.^[1]

Latin orthography is the spelling of Latin words written in the scripts of all historical phases of Latin from Old Latin to the present. All scripts use the Latin alphabet, but conventional spellings may vary from phase to phase. The Latin alphabet was adapted from the Old Italic script to represent the phonemes of the Latin language. The Old Italic script had in turn been borrowed from the Greek alphabet, itself adapted from the Phoenician alphabet. The Latin alphabet most resembles the Greek alphabet around 540 BC, as it appears on the black-figure pottery of the time.

Letterforms[edit]

The forms of the Latin alphabet used during the Classical period did not distinguish between upper case and lower case. Roman inscriptions typically use Roman square capitals, which resemble modern capitals, and handwritten text often uses old Roman cursive, which includes letterforms similar to modern lowercase.

Letters and phonemes[edit]

In ancient Latin spelling, individual letters mostly corresponded to individual phonemes, with three main exceptions:

1. The vowel letters a, e, i, o, u, y represented both short and long vowels. The long vowels were often marked by apices during the Classical period ⟨Á É Ó V́ Ý⟩, and long i was written using a taller version ⟨I⟩, called i longa «long I»: ⟨ꟾ⟩;^[2] but now long vowels are sometimes written with a macron in modern editions (ā), while short vowels are marked with a breve (ă) in dictionaries when necessary.
2. Some pairs of vowel letters, such as ae, represented either a diphthong in one syllable or two vowels in adjacent syllables.
3. The letters i and u (v) represented either the close vowels /i/ and /u/ or the semivowels /j/ and /w/.

In the tables below, Latin letters and digraphs are paired with the phonemes that they usually represent in the International Phonetic Alphabet.

Consonants[edit]

This is a table of the consonant phonemes of Classical Latin. Those in parentheses have a debatable status as phonemes, and those marked with an asterisk are only found in Greek loanwords in educated pronunciation, except for some instances of /kʰ/. See below for further details.

	Labial	Coronal	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
plain	labialized
Plosive	voiced	b	d		ɡ	(ɡʷ)
voiceless	p	t		k	(kʷ)
aspirated	pʰ*	tʰ*		kʰ*
Fricative	voiced		z*
voiceless	f	s				h
Nasal	m	n
Rhotic		r
Approximant		l	j		w

Notes on phonetics[edit]

• The labialized velar stops /kʷ/ and /ɡʷ/ may both have been single phonemes rather than clusters like the /kw/ and /ɡw/ in English quick and penguin. /kʷ/ is more likely to have been a phoneme than /ɡʷ/. /kʷ/ occurs between vowels and counts as a single consonant in Classical Latin poetry, but /ɡʷ/ occurs only after [ŋ], where it cannot be identified as a single or double consonant.^[3] /kʷ/ and [ɡʷ] were palatalized before a front vowel, becoming [kᶣ] and [ɡᶣ], as in quī [kᶣiː] listen (help·info) compared with quod [kʷɔd], and lingua [ˈlɪŋ.ɡʷa] compared with pinguis [ˈpɪŋ.ɡᶣɪs]. This sound change did not apply to /w/ in the same position: uī — vī [wiː].^[4]
• /kʷ ɡʷ/ before /u/ may have become [k ɡ] by dissimilation. This is suggested by the fact that equus [ˈɛ.kʷʊs] and unguunt [ˈʊŋ.ɡʷʊnt] (Old Latin equos and unguont) are spelled ecus and ungunt, which may have indicated the pronunciations [ˈɛ.kʊs] and [ˈʊŋ.ɡʊnt]. These spellings may, however, simply indicate that c g before u were labialized like /kʷ ɡʷ/, so that writing a double uu was redundant.^[5]
• The voiceless plosives /p t k kʷ/ in Latin were likely less aspirated than voiceless plosives at the beginning of words in English; for example, Latin /k/ was not as strongly aspirated as k in kind but more like k in English sky or look. However, there was no phonemic contrast between voiceless and aspirated plosives in native Latin words, and the voiceless plosives were probably somewhat aspirated at the beginnings of words and near /r/ and /l/.^[6][7] Some Greek words beginning with the voiceless plosives /p t k/, when they were borrowed into colloquial Latin, were spelled with the graphemes used to represent voiced plosives b d g /b d ɡ/, e.g., Latin gubernator besides West Greek κυβερνάτας [kʉbernaːtaːs] (cybernatas) (helmsman). That suggests that Latin speakers felt the Greek voiceless plosives to sound less aspirated than their own native equivalents.^[8]
• The aspirated consonants /pʰ tʰ kʰ/ as distinctive phonemes were originally foreign to Latin, appearing in educated loanwords and names from Greek. In such cases, the aspiration was likely produced only by educated speakers.^[6][7]
• /z/ was also not native to Classical Latin. It appeared in Greek loanwords starting around the first century BC, when it was probably pronounced [z] initially and doubled [zz] between vowels, in contrast to Classical Greek [dz] or [zd]. In Classical Latin poetry, the letter ⟨z⟩ between vowels always counts as two consonants for metrical purposes.^[9][10]
• In Classical Latin, the coronal sibilant /s/ was likely unvoiced in all positions. In Old Latin, single /s/ between vowels was pronounced as voiced [z] but had changed to /r/ by rhotacism by the time of Classical Latin, as in gerō /ˈɡe.roː/ as compared with gestus /ˈɡes.tus/. Single intervocalic /s/ in Classical Latin usually derives from an earlier double /ss/ after a long vowel or diphthong, as in causa, cāsus from earlier caussa, cāssus;^[11] or is found in loanwords, such as pausa from Greek παῦσις (pausis).^{[citation needed]}
• In Old Latin, final /s/ after a short vowel was often lost, probably after first changing to [h] (debuccalization), as in the inscriptional form Cornelio for Cornelios (Classical Latin Cornelius). Often in the poetry of Plautus, Ennius, and Lucretius, final /s/ before a word beginning in a consonant did not make the preceding syllable heavy. By the Classical period this was felt to be somewhat of a marker of non-urban speech by Cicero.^[11]
• /f/ was labiodental in Classical Latin, but it may have been bilabial [ɸ] in Old Latin,^[12] or perhaps [ɸ] in free variation with [f]. Lloyd, Sturtevant, and Kent make this argument based on certain misspellings in inscriptions, the Proto-Indo-European phoneme *bʰ from which many instances of the Latin f descended (others are from *dʰ and *gʷʰ) and the way the sound appears to have behaved in Vulgar Latin, particularly in Spain.^[13]
• In most cases /m/ 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), causing the preceding vowel to be lengthened and nasalized,^[14] as in decem [ˈdɛ.kẽː] listen (help·info). In Old Latin inscriptions, final m is often omitted, as in uiro (viro) for uirom (virom) (Classical virum). It was frequently elided before a following vowel in Latin poetry, and it was lost without a trace (apart from lengthening, possibly) in the Romance languages,^[15] except in monosyllabic words, where it’s reflected as /n/ or its further developments.
• /n/ assimilated to /m/ before labial consonants as in impār, inpār [ˈɪm.paːr], to [ɱ] before /f/ (when present at all as opposed to representing nasalisation) and to [ŋ] before velar consonants, as in quīnque [ˈkᶣiːŋ.kᶣɛ] listen (help·info).^[16] This assimilation, like most other Latin contact processes, occurred regardless of word boundaries, for instance between the preposition in and a following word: in causā [ɪŋ ˈkau̯.saː], in pāce [ɪm ˈpaː.kɛ],^[17] as well as between two lexical words: nōmen mātris [ˈnoːmɛmˈmaːtrɪs].
• /ɡ/ assimilated to a velar nasal [ŋ] before /n/.^[18] Allen and Greenough say that a vowel before [ŋn] is always long,^[19] 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 rēgnum [ˈreːŋ.nũː] from the root of rēx [reːks], but magnus [ˈmaŋ.nʊs] from the root of magis [ˈma.ɡɪs].^[20] /ɡ/ probably did not assimilate to [ŋ] before /m/. The cluster /ɡm/ arose by syncope, as for example tegmen [ˈtɛɡ.mɛn] from tegimen. Original /ɡm/ developed into /mm/ in flamma, from the root of flagrō.^[3] At the start of a word, original /gn/ was reduced to [n], and this change was reflected in the orthography in later texts: gnātus [ˈnaː.tʊs] became nātus, gnōscō [ˈnoː.skoː] became nōscō.
• In Classical Latin, the rhotic /r/ was most likely an alveolar trill [r]. Gaius Lucilius likens it to the sound of a dog, and later writers describe it as being produced by vibration. In Old Latin, intervocalic /z/ developed into /r/ (rhotacism), suggesting an approximant like the English [ɹ], and /d/ was sometimes written as /r/, suggesting a tap [ɾ] like Spanish single r.^[21]
• /l/ was strongly velarized in syllable coda and probably somewhat palatalized when geminated or followed by /i(ː)/. In intervocalic position, it appears to have been velarized before all vowels except /i(ː)/.^[22]
• /j/ generally appeared only at the beginning of words, before a vowel, as in iaceō /ˈja.kɛ.oː/, except in compound words such as adiaceō (adjaceō) /adˈja.kɛ.oː/ listen (help·info). Between vowels, this sound was generally not found as a single consonant, only as doubled /jː/, as in cuius /ˈkuj.jus/ listen (help·info), except in compound words such as trāiectus (trājectus) /traːˈjek.tus/. /j/ varied with /i/ in the same morpheme in iam /jãː/ and etiam /ˈe.ti.ãː/, and in poetry, one could be replaced with the other for the purposes of meter.^[23]
• /w/ was pronounced as an approximant until the first century AD, when /w/ and /b/ began to develop into fricatives. In poetry, /w/ and /u/ could be replaced with each other, as in /ˈsi.lu.a/ for silua (silva) /ˈsil.wa/ and /ˈɡen.wa/ for genua /ˈɡe.nu.a/. Unlike /j/, it was not doubled as /wː/ or /ww/ between vowels, except in Greek loanwords: caué (cavē) /ˈka.weː/, but Euander (Evander) /ewˈwan.der/ from Εὔανδρος.^[24]
• /h/ was apparently still pronounced in Classical Latin, but was probably voiced to [ɦ] between vowels and prone to loss in this environment already at an early stage (compare especially diribeō with rhotacism from *disibeō and earlier *dishibeō).^[25]

Notes on spelling[edit]

• Doubled consonant letters, such as cc, ss, represented geminated (doubled or long) consonants: /kː sː/. In Old Latin, geminate consonants were written singly like single consonants, until the middle of the 2nd century BC, when they began to be doubled in writing.^{[note 2]} Grammarians mention the marking of double consonants with the sicilicus, a diacritic in the shape of a sickle. This mark appears in a few inscriptions of the Augustan era.^[26]
• c and k both represent the velar stop /k/; qu represents the labialized velar stop /kʷ/. The letters q and c distinguish minimal pairs between /ku/ and /kʷ/, such as cui /kui̯/ and quī /kʷiː/.^[27] In Classical Latin, k appeared in only a few words, such as kalendae or Karthagō (but can also be spelled calendae and Carthagō respectively).^[28]
• x represented the consonant cluster /ks/. In Old Latin, this sequence was also spelled as ks, cs, and xs. X was borrowed from the Western Greek alphabet, in which the letterform of chi (Χ) was pronounced as /ks/. In the standard Ionic alphabet, used for modern editions of Ancient Greek, on the other hand, Χ represented /kʰ/, and the letter xi (Ξ) represented /ks/.^[29]
• In Old Latin inscriptions, /k/ and /ɡ/ were not distinguished. They were both represented by c before e and i, q before o and u, and k before consonants and a.^[2] The letterform of c derives from Greek gamma Γ, which represented /ɡ/, but its use for /k/ may come from Etruscan, which did not distinguish voiced and voiceless plosives. In Classical Latin, c represented /ɡ/ only in c and cn, the abbreviations of the praenomina (first names) Gaius and Gnaeus.^[28][30]
• The letter g was created in the third century BC to distinguish the voiced /ɡ/ from voiceless /k/.^[31] Its letterform derived from c by the addition of a diacritic or stroke. Plutarch attributes this innovation to Spurius Carvilius Ruga around 230 BC,^[2] but it may have originated with Appius Claudius Caecus in the fourth century BC.^[32]
• The combination gn probably represented the consonant cluster [ŋn], at least between vowels, as in agnus [ˈaŋ.nʊs] listen (help·info).^[14][33] Vowels before this cluster were sometimes long and sometimes short.^[20]
• The digraphs ph, th, and ch represented the aspirated plosives /pʰ/, /tʰ/ and /kʰ/. They began to be used in writing around 150 BC,^[31] primarily as a transcription of Greek phi Φ, theta Θ, and chi Χ, as in Philippus, cithara, and achāia. Some native words were later also written with these digraphs, such as pulcher, lachrima, gracchus, triumphus, probably representing aspirated allophones of the voiceless plosives near /r/ and /l/. Aspirated plosives and the glottal fricative /h/ were also used hypercorrectively, an affectation satirized in Catullus 84.^[6][7]
• In Old Latin, Koine Greek initial /z/ and /zz/ between vowels were represented by s and ss, as in sona from ζώνη and massa from μᾶζα. Around the second and first centuries B.C., the Greek letter zeta Ζ was adopted to represent /z/ and /zz/.^[10] However, the Vulgar Latin spellings z or zi for earlier di and d before e, and the spellings di and dz for earlier z, suggest the pronunciation /dz/, as for example ziomedis for diomedis, and diaeta for zeta.^[34]
• In ancient times u and i represented the approximant consonants /w/ and /j/, as well as the close vowels /u(ː)/ and /i(ː)/.
• i representing the consonant /j/ was usually not doubled in writing, so a single i represented double /jː/ or /jj/ and the sequences /ji/ and /jːi/, as in cuius for *cuiius /ˈkuj.jus/, conicit for *coniicit /ˈkon.ji.kit/, and rēicit for *reiiicit /ˈrej.ji.kit/. Both the consonantal and vocalic pronunciations of i could occur in some of the same environments: compare māius /ˈmaj.jus/ with Gāius /ˈɡaː.i.us/, and Iūlius /ˈjuː.li.us/ with Iūlus /iˈuː.lus/. The vowel before a doubled /jː/ is sometimes marked with a macron, as in cūius. It indicates not that the vowel is long but that the first syllable is heavy from the double consonant.^[23]
• u (v) between vowels represented single /w/ in native Latin words but double /ww/ in Greek loanwords. Both the consonantal and vocalic pronunciations of u (v) sometimes occurred in similar environments, as in genua [ˈɡɛ.nʊ.a] and silua (silva) [ˈsɪl.wa].^[24][35]

Vowels[edit]

Monophthongs[edit]

Latin has ten native vowels, spelled a, e, i, o, u. In Classical Latin, each vowel had short and long versions: /a e i o u/ and /aː eː iː oː uː/.

The long versions of the close and mid vowels e, i, o, u had probably a different vowel quality from the short versions, so that long /eː, oː/ were similar to short /ɪ, ʊ/ (see following section). Some loanwords from Greek had the vowel y, which was pronounced as /y yː/ by educated speakers but approximated with the native vowels u and i by less educated speakers.

	Front	Central	Back
short	long	short	long	short	long
Close	i	iː			u	uː
Mid	ɛ	ɛː			ɔ	ɔː
Open			a	aː

Long and short vowels[edit]

Each vowel letter (with the possible exception of y) represents at least two phonemes. a can represent either short /a/ or long /aː/, e represents either /e/ or /eː/, etc.

Short mid vowels /e, o/ and close vowels /i, u/ were probably pronounced with a different quality from their long counterparts, being also more open: [ɛ], [ɔ], [ɪ] and [ʊ]. This opening made the short vowels i, u [ɪ, ʊ] similar in quality to long ē ō [eː, oː] respectively. i, ē and u, ō were often written in place of each other in inscriptions:^[36]

• trebibos for tribibus [ˈtrɪ.bɪ.bʊs]
• minsis for mensis [ˈmẽː.sɪs]
• sob for sub [sʊb]
• punere for pōnere [ˈpoː.næ.rɛ]

Short /e/ most likely had a more open allophone before /r/ and tended toward near-open [æ].^[37]

Short /e/ and /i/ were probably pronounced closer when they occurred before another vowel. mea was written as mia in inscriptions. Short /i/ before another vowel is often written with i longa, as in dīes, indicating that its quality was similar to that of long /iː/ and is almost never confused with e in this position.^[38]

Adoption of Greek upsilon[edit]

y was used in Greek loanwords with upsilon Υ. This letter represented the close front rounded vowel, both short and long: /y yː/.^[39] Latin did not have this sound as a distinctive phoneme, and speakers tended to pronounce such loanwords with /u uː/ in Old Latin and /i iː/ in Classical and Late Latin if they were unable to produce /y yː/.

Sonus medius[edit]

An intermediate vowel sound (likely a close central vowel [ɨ] or possibly its rounded counterpart [ʉ]), called sonus medius, can be reconstructed for the classical period.^[40] Such a vowel is found in documentum, optimus, lacrima (also spelled docimentum, optumus, lacruma) and other words. It developed out of a historical short /u/, later fronted by vowel reduction. 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 /u/ [ʊ].^[41] It was sometimes spelled by the Claudian letter Ⱶ ⱶ.

Vowel nasalization[edit]

Vowels followed by a nasal consonant were allophonically realised as long nasal vowels in two environments:^[42]

• Before word-final m:^[15]
  • monstrum /ˈmon.strum/ > [ˈmõː.strũː]
  • dentem /ˈden.tem/ > [ˈdɛn.tẽː]
• Before nasal consonants followed by a fricative:^[17]
  • censor /ˈken.sor/ > [ˈkẽː.sɔr] (in early inscriptions, often written as cesor)
  • consul /ˈkon.sul/ > [ˈkõː.sʊl] (often written as cosol and abbreviated as cos)
  • inferōs /ˈin.fe.roːs/ > [ˈĩː.fæ.roːs] (written as iferos)

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 costar from Vulgar Latin cōstāre (originally constāre) and Italian mese from Vulgar Latin mēse (Classical Latin mensem). On the other hand, the short vowel and /n/ were restored, for example, in French enseigne and enfant from insignia and infantem (e is the normal development of Latin short i), likely by analogy with other forms beginning in the prefix in-.^[43]

When a final -m 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, tan dūrum [tan ˈduː.rũː] was written for tam dūrum in inscriptions, and cum nōbīs [kʊn ˈnoː.biːs] was a double entendre,^[15] possibly for cunnō bis [ˈkʊnnoː bɪs].

Diphthongs[edit]

Diphthongs classified by beginning sound

	Front	Back
Close		ui    ui̯
Mid	ei    ei̯ eu    eu̯	oe    oe̯ ~ eː
Open	ae    ae̯ ~ ɛː au    au̯

ae, oe, au, ei, eu could represent diphthongs: ae represented /ae̯/, oe represented /oe̯/, au represented /au̯/, ei represented /ei̯/, and eu represented /eu̯/. ui sometimes represented the diphthong /ui̯/, as in cui listen (help·info) and huic.^[27] The diphthong ei mostly had changed to ī by the classical epoch; ei remained only in a few words such as the interjection hei.

If there is a tréma above the second vowel, both vowels are pronounced separately: aë [a.ɛ], aü [a.ʊ], eü [ɛ.ʊ] and oë [ɔ.ɛ]. However, disyllabic eu in morpheme borders is traditionally written without the tréma: meus [ˈmɛ.ʊs] ‘my’.

In Old Latin, ae, oe were written as ai, oi and probably pronounced as [ai̯, oi̯], with a fully closed second element, similar to the final syllable in French travail (help·info). In the late Old Latin period, the last element of the diphthongs was lowered to [e],^[44] so that the diphthongs were pronounced [ae̯] and [oe̯] in Classical Latin. They were then monophthongized to [ɛː] and [eː] respectively, starting in rural areas at the end of the Republican period.^{[note 3]} 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.^[45]

Vowel and consonant length[edit]

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: ⟨ā ē ī ō ū ȳ⟩, while the breve is sometimes used to indicate that a vowel is short: ⟨ă ĕ ĭ ŏ ŭ y̆⟩.

Long consonants were usually indicated through doubling, but ancient Latin orthography did not distinguish between the vocalic and consonantal uses of i and v. 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.^[46] 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 nono «ninth» versus nonno «grandfather».^[47]

Recording of ānus, annus, anus

A minimal set showing both long and short vowels and long and short consonants is ānus /ˈaː.nus/ (‘anus’), annus /ˈan.nus/ (‘year’), anus /ˈa.nus/ (‘old woman’).

Table of orthography[edit]

The letters b, d, f, h, m, n are always pronounced as in English [b], [d], [f], [h], [m], [n] respectively, and they do not usually cause any difficulties. The exceptions are mentioned below:

Pronunciation of Latin consonants

Latin grapheme	Latin phone	English approximation
⟨c⟩, ⟨k⟩	[k]	Always hard as k in sky, never soft as in cellar, cello, or social. ⟨k⟩ is a letter coming from Greek, but seldom used and generally replaced by c.
⟨ch⟩	[kʰ]	As ch in chemistry, and aspirated; never as in challenge or change (mostly used in Greek loanwords). Transliteration of Greek ⟨χ⟩.
⟨g⟩	[ɡ]	Always hard as g in good, never soft as g in gem.
⟨gn⟩	[gn ~ ŋn]	As ngn in wingnut.
⟨i⟩	[j]	Sometimes at the beginning of a syllable, as y in yard, never as j in just.
[jː]	Doubled between vowels, as y y in toy yacht.
⟨l⟩	[l]	When doubled ⟨ll⟩ or before ⟨i⟩, as clear l in link (l exilis).[48][49]
[ɫ]	In all other positions, as dark l in bowl (l pinguis).
⟨n⟩	[n]	As n in man.
⟨p⟩	[p]	As p in spy, never aspirated.
⟨ph⟩	[pʰ]	As p in party, always aspirated; never as in photo when being pronounced in English (mostly used in Greek loanwords). Transliteration of Greek ⟨φ⟩.
⟨qv⟩	[kʷ]	Similar to qu in quick, never as qu in antique.
⟨qvv⟩	[kʷɔ ~ kʷu ~ ku]	There were two trends: the educated and popular pronunciation. Within educated circles it was pronounced [kʷɔ], evoking the Old Latin pronunciation (equos, sequontur); meanwhile, within popular circles it was pronounced [ku] (ecus, secuntur).[50][51]
⟨r⟩	[r]	As r in Italian and several Romance languages.
⟨rh⟩	[r̥]	As r in Italian and several Romance languages (mostly used in Greek loanwords); e.g. diarrhoea ⟨διάῤῥοια⟩; but it is voiceless (see Voiceless alveolar trill).
⟨s⟩	[s]	As s in say, never as s in rise or measure.
⟨t⟩	[t]	As t in stay, never as t in nation.
⟨th⟩	[tʰ]	As th in thyme, and aspirated; never as in thing, or that (mostly used in Greek loanwords). Transliteration of Greek ⟨θ⟩.
⟨v⟩	[w]	Sometimes at the beginning of a syllable, or after ⟨g⟩ and ⟨s⟩, as w in wine, never as v in vine.
⟨vv⟩	[wɔ ~ wu]	as in some English accents one is pronounced, but without the nasal sound: PARVVS /ˈpɐr.wɔs/, VIVVNT /ˈwiː.wɔnt/. The spelling vu is post-classical (in order to become regular in spelling).[50][52]
⟨x⟩	[k͡s]	A letter representing ⟨c⟩ + ⟨s⟩, as well as ⟨g⟩ + ⟨s⟩: as x in English axe, never as x in example.
⟨z⟩	[d͡z ~ zː]	As in zoom, never as in pizza (mostly used in Greek loanwords). Transliteration of Greek ⟨ζ⟩.

Pronunciation of Latin vowels

Latin grapheme	Latin phone	English approximation
⟨a⟩	[a]	Similar to u in cut when short. Transliteration of Greek short ⟨α⟩.
[aː]	Similar to a in father when long. Transliteration of Greek long ⟨α⟩.
⟨e⟩	[ɛ]	As e in pet when short. Transliteration of Greek ⟨ε⟩.
[ɛː]	Similar to ey in they when long. Transliteration of Greek ⟨η⟩, and ⟨ει⟩ in some cases.
⟨i⟩	[i]	As i in sit when short. Transliteration of short Greek ⟨ι⟩.
[iː]	Similar to i in machine when long. Transliteration of Greek long ⟨ι⟩, and ⟨ει⟩ in some cases.
⟨o⟩	[ɔ]	As o in sort when short. Transliteration of Greek ⟨ο⟩.
[ɔː]	Similar to o in holy when long. Transliteration of Greek ⟨ω⟩, and ⟨ου⟩ in some cases.
⟨v⟩	[u]	Similar to u in put when short.
[uː]	Similar to u in true when long. Transliteration of Greek ⟨ου⟩.
⟨y⟩	[y]	As in German Stück when short (or as short u or i) (mostly used in Greek loanwords). Transliteration of Greek short ⟨υ⟩.
[yː]	As in German früh when long (or as long u or i) (mostly used in Greek loanwords). Transliteration of Greek long ⟨υ⟩.

Pronunciation of Latin diphthongs

Latin grapheme	Latin phone	English approximation
⟨ae⟩	[ae̯]	As in aisle. Transliteration of Greek ⟨αι⟩.
⟨av⟩	[au̯]	As in out. Transliteration of Greek ⟨αυ⟩.
⟨ei⟩	[ei̯]	As to ey in they. Transliteration of Greek ⟨ει⟩ in some cases.
⟨ev⟩	[eu̯]	As in Portuguese eu. Transliteration of Greek ⟨ευ⟩.
⟨oe⟩	[oe̯]	As in boy. Transliteration of Greek ⟨οι⟩.
⟨vi⟩	[ui̯]	As in Spanish muy, approximately to hooey.
⟨yi⟩	[yi̯]	Transliteration of the Greek diphthong ⟨υι⟩.

Syllables and stress[edit]

Old Latin stress[edit]

In Old Latin, as in Proto-Italic, stress normally fell on the first syllable of a word.^[53] 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:

• faciō ‘I do/make’, factus ‘made’; pronounced /ˈfa.ki.oː/ and /ˈfak.tus/ in later Old Latin and Classical Latin.
• afficiō ‘I affect’, affectus ‘affected’; pronounced /ˈaf.fi.ki.oː/ and /ˈaf.fek.tus/ in Old Latin following vowel reduction, /af.ˈfi.ki.oː/ and /af.ˈfek.tus/ 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.^[54] The placement of the stress then shifted to become the pattern found in classical Latin.

Classical Latin syllables and stress[edit]

In Classical Latin, stress changed. It moved from the first syllable to one of the last three syllables, called the antepenult, the penult, and the ultima (short for antepaenultima ‘before almost last’, paenultima ‘almost last’, and ultima syllaba ‘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.^[55] 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.^[56]

Syllable[edit]

To determine stress, syllable weight of the penult must be determined. To determine syllable weight, words must be broken up into syllables.^[57] 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[edit]

Every short vowel, long vowel, or diphthong belongs to a single syllable. This vowel forms the syllable nucleus. Thus magistrārum has four syllables, one for every vowel (a i ā u: V V VV V), aereus has three (ae e u: VV V V), tuō has two (u ō: V VV), and cui has one (ui: VV).^[58]

Onset and coda[edit]

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.^[58]

• fēminae /feː.mi.nae̯/ (CVV.CV.CVV)
• uidēre /wi.deː.re/ (CV.CVV.CV)
• puerō /pu.e.roː/ (CV.V.CVV)
• beātae /be.aː.tae̯/ (CV.VV.CVV)
• grauiter /ɡra.wi.ter/ (CCV.CV.CVC)
• strātum /straː.tum/ (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.^[59]

• puella /pu.el.la/ (CV.VC.CV)
• supersum /su.per.sum/ (CV.CVC.CVC)
• coāctus /ko.aːk.tus/ (CV.VVC.CVC)
• intellēxit /in.tel.leːk.sit/ (VC.CVC.CVVC.CVC)

There are two exceptions. A consonant cluster of a stop p t c b d g followed by a liquid l r between vowels usually goes to the syllable after it, although it is also sometimes broken up like other consonant clusters.^[59]

• uolucris /wo.lu.kris/ or /wo.luk.ris/ (CV.CV.KRVC or CV.CVK.RVC)

Heavy and light syllables[edit]

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 syllaba nātūrā longa (‘syllable long by nature’), and a syllable that is heavy because it ends in a consonant is called positiōne longa (‘long by position’). These terms are translations of Greek συλλαβὴ μακρά φύσει (syllabḕ makrá phýsei = ‘syllable long by nature’) and μακρὰ θέσει (makrà thései = ‘long by proposition’), respectively; therefore positiōne 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.^[59]

Stress rule[edit]

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.^[59] Below, stress is marked by placing the stress mark ⟨ˈ⟩ before the stressed syllable.

Words with stress on antepenult

volucris	fēminae	puerō
/ˈwo.lu.kris/	/ˈfeː.mi.nae̯/	/ˈpu.e.roː/
CV.CV.CCVC	CVV.CV.CVV	CV.V.CVV

Words with stress on penult

volucris	vidēre	intellēxit	beātae	puella	coāctus
CV.CVC.CVC	CV.CVV.CV	VC.CVC.CVVC.CVC	CV.VV.CVV	CV.VC.CV	CV.VVC.CVC
/woˈluk.ris/	/wiˈdeː.re/	/in.telˈleːk.sit/	/beˈaː.tae̯/	/puˈel.la/	/koˈaːk.tus/

Iambic shortening[edit]

Iambic shortening or brevis brevians is vowel shortening that occurs in words of the type light–heavy, where the light syllable is stressed. By this sound change, words like egō, modō, benē, amā with long final vowel change to ego, modo, bene, ama with short final vowel.^[60]

The term also refers to shortening of closed syllables following a short syllable, for example quid ĕst, volŭptātem, apŭd iudicem 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[edit]

Where one word ended with a vowel (including the nasalized vowels written am em im um~(om) and the diphthong ae) 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 /i/ and /u/) pronounced like the corresponding semivowel. When the second word was est or es, and possibly when the second word was et, a different form of elision sometimes occurred (prodelision): the vowel of the preceding word was retained, and the e 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 scriptust for scriptum est.^[61]

Modern conventions[edit]

Spelling[edit]

Letters[edit]

Modern usage, even for classical Latin texts, varies in respect of I and V. During the Renaissance, the printing convention was to use I (upper case) and i (lower case) for both vocalic /i/ and consonantal /j/, to use V in the upper case and in the lower case to use v at the start of words and u subsequently within the word regardless of whether /u/ and /w/ was represented.^[62]

Many publishers (such as Oxford University Press) have adopted the convention of using I (upper case) and i (lower case) for both /i/ and /j/, and V (upper case) and u (lower case) for both /u/ and /w/.

An alternative approach, less common today, is to use i and u only for the vowels and j and v for the approximants.

Most modern editions, however, adopt an intermediate position, distinguishing between u and v but not between i and j. Usually, the non-vocalic v after q or g is still printed as u rather than v, probably because in this position it did not change from /w/ to /v/ in post-classical times.^{[note 4]}

Diacritics[edit]

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, Româ /ˈroːmaː/ (‘from Rome’ ablative) compared to Roma /ˈroːma/ (‘Rome’ nominative).^[63]

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[edit]

Post-Medieval Latin[edit]

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[edit]

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 ae and oe (occasionally written as ligatures: æ and œ, respectively), which both denote /iː/ in English. The digraph ae or ligature æ in some words tend to be given an /aɪ/ pronunciation, for example, curriculum vitae.

However, using loan words 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,^{[citation needed]} 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 on «Derivative languages»).

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[edit]

Because of the central position of Rome within the Catholic Church, an Italian pronunciation of Latin became commonly accepted, but this was not the case until the latter part of the 19th century. This pronunciation corresponds to that of the Latin-derived words in Italian. Before then, the pronunciation of Latin in church was the same as the pronunciation as Latin in other fields and tended to reflect the sound values associated with the nationality of the speaker.^[64] Other ecclesiastical variations are still in use (e.g. Germanic pronunciations), especially outside the Catholic Church.

The following are the main points that distinguish modern Italianate ecclesiastical pronunciation from Classical Latin pronunciation:

The letters b, d, f, m, n are always pronounced as in English [b], [d], [f], [m], [n] respectively, and they do not usually cause any difficulties. The exceptions are mentioned below:

Notes

Latin grapheme	Latin phone	English approximation
hard ⟨c⟩, ⟨ch⟩, ⟨k⟩	[k]	As in sky before a, o, u.
soft ⟨c⟩	[t͡ʃ]	As in change before ae, e, i, oe, y.
hard ⟨g⟩	[ɡ]	As in gate before a, o, u.
soft ⟨g⟩	[d͡ʒ]	As in gem before ae, e, i, oe, y.
⟨gn⟩	[ɲː]	As gn in Italian (gnocchi), or ñ in Spanish (niño).
⟨h⟩	∅, [k]	Usually mute; occasionally [k] (hard c) in words like «mihi» and «nihil«.
⟨i⟩	[j]	Sometimes at the beginning of a syllable, as y in yard, never as j in just.
[jː]	Doubled between vowels, as y y in toy yacht.
⟨l⟩	[l]	l exilis and l pinguis merge.
⟨n⟩	[n]	As n in man.
⟨p⟩	[p]	As p in spy, never aspirated.
⟨ph⟩	[f]	As in photo when being pronounced in English (mostly used in Greek loanwords).
⟨qu⟩	[kʷ]	Similar to qu in quick, never as qu in antique.
⟨r⟩, ⟨rh⟩	[r]	As r in Italian and several Romance languages.
⟨s⟩	[s, z]	Strictly as s in hiss (severus) as in the Spanish of the Americas, though increasingly inter-vocally pronounced [z] -s- (rosa) as in the Italian language. Pronounced [sː] when being -ss-.
⟨sce⟩, ⟨sci⟩	[ʃːe, ʃːi]	As sh in shade (scientia).
⟨t⟩, ⟨th⟩	[t]	As t in stay, never as t in nation.
⟨ti⟩	[t͡si]	Only if followed by a vowel, not word-initial or stressed, and not preceded by s, t, or x.
⟨v⟩	[v]	In Ecclesiastical pronunciation, ⟨v⟩ only represents a consonant [v].
⟨x⟩	[ks, ɡz]	A letter representing ⟨c⟩ + ⟨s⟩, as well as ⟨g⟩ + ⟨s⟩: as x in English axe. [ɡz] is also a common allophone intervocalically (as in exemplum).
⟨xce⟩, ⟨xci⟩	[kʃe, kʃi]	Used in words like excellens.
⟨z⟩	[d͡z]	Never as in pizza (mostly used in Greek loanwords). Transliteration of Greek ⟨ζ⟩.

Pronunciation of Latin vowels

Latin grapheme	Latin phone	English approximation
⟨a⟩	[a]	As in car. Transliteration of Greek ⟨α⟩.
⟨ae/æ⟩	[e]	As in pet. Transliteration of Greek ⟨αι⟩.
⟨oe/œ⟩	[e]	As in pet. Transliteration of Greek ⟨οι⟩.
⟨e⟩	[e]	As in pet. Transliteration of Greek ⟨ε⟩, ⟨η⟩, and ⟨ει⟩ in some cases.
⟨i⟩	[i]	As in seek. Transliteration of Greek ⟨ι⟩, and ⟨ει⟩ in some cases.
⟨o⟩	[o]	As in sort. Transliteration of Greek ⟨ο⟩, ⟨ω⟩, and ⟨ου⟩ in some cases.
⟨u⟩	[u]	As in cool. Transliteration of Greek ⟨ου⟩.
⟨y⟩	[i]	As in seek. Transliteration of Greek ⟨υ⟩.

Pronunciation of Latin diphthongs

Latin grapheme	Latin phone	English approximation
⟨au⟩	[au̯]	As in out. Transliteration of Greek ⟨αυ⟩.
⟨ei⟩	[ei̯]	Similar to ey in they. Transliteration of Greek ⟨ει⟩ in some cases.
⟨eu⟩	[eu̯]	As in Portuguese eu, similar to the Southern British English pronunciation of low. Transliteration of Greek ⟨ευ⟩.
⟨ui⟩	[ui̯]	As in Spanish muy, approximately to hooey.

• 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 m and n are pronounced fully, with no nasalization of the preceding vowel.

In his Vox Latina: A guide to the Pronunciation of Classical Latin, William Sidney Allen remarked that this pronunciation, used by the Catholic Church in Rome and elsewhere, and whose adoption Pope Pius X recommended in a 1912 letter to the Archbishop of Bourges, «is probably less far removed from classical Latin than any other ‘national’ pronunciation»; but, as can be seen from the table above, there are, nevertheless, very significant differences.^[65] The introduction to the Liber Usualis indicates that Ecclesiastical Latin pronunciation should be used at Church liturgies.^[66] 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, Czechia and Slovakia, it is the most widely used standard in choral singing which, with a few exceptions like Stravinsky’s Oedipus rex, is concerned with liturgical texts.^{[citation needed]} 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[edit]

Because it gave rise to many modern languages, Latin did not «die»; it merely evolved over the centuries in different regions in diverse ways. The local dialects of Vulgar Latin that emerged eventually became modern Italian, Spanish, French, Romanian, Portuguese, Catalan, Romansh, Dalmatian, Sardinian, and many others.

Key features of Vulgar Latin and Romance languages include:

• Total loss of /h/ as well as the loss, in polysyllablic words, of final /m/.
• Conversion of the distinction of vowel length into a distinction of height, and subsequent merger of some of these phonemes. Most Romance languages merged short /u/ with long /oː/ and short /i/ with long /eː/.
• Monophthongization of /ae̯/ into /ɛː/ and /oe̯/ into /eː/.
• Loss of marginal phonemes such as aspirates (/pʰ/, /tʰ/, /kʰ/, generally replaced by /f/, /t/, /k/) and the close front-rounded vowel (/y/, generally replaced by /i/).
• Loss of /n/ before /s/^[67] (CL spōnsa > VL spōsa) but this influence on the later development of Romance languages was limited from written influence, analogy, and learned borrowings.^[68]
• Palatalization of /k/ before /e/ and /i/ (not in all varieties), probably first into /kʲ/ and then /tʲ/ before it finally developed into /ts/ or /tʃ/.^[69]
• Palatalization of /ɡ/ before /e/ and /i/, merging with /j/, which could develop into an affricate [dʒ], and then further into [ʒ] in some Romance varieties.^[69]
• Palatalization of /ti/ followed by a vowel (if not preceded by s, t, x) into /tsj/. It merged with /ts/ in dialects in which /k/ had developed into this sound, but it remained separate elsewhere (such as Italian).
• Palatalization of /li/ and /ni/ followed by a vowel into [ʎ] and [ɲ].
• Fortition of syllable-initial /w/ into /β/, developing further into [v] in many Romance varieties, or sometimes alternatively into [b] in some contexts.
• Lenition of /b/ between vowels into [β], developing further into [v] in many Romance varieties.

Examples[edit]

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

From Classical Latin[edit]

Virgil’s Aeneid, 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.»

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

1. Ancient Roman orthography (before 2nd century)^{[note 5]}

   ARMA·VIRVMQVE·CANÓ·TRÓIAE·QVꟾ·PRꟾMVS·ABÓRꟾS

   ꟾTALIAM·FÁTÓ·PROFVGVS·LÁVꟾNIAQVE·VÉNIT

   LꟾTORA·MVLTVM·ILLE·ETTERRꟾS·IACTÁTVS·ETALTÓ

   Vꟾ·SVPERVM·SAEVAE·MEMOREM·IV́NÓNIS·OBꟾRAM

2. Traditional (19th century) English orthography

   Arma virúmque cano, Trojæ qui primus ab oris

   Italiam, fato profugus, Lavíniaque venit

   Litora; multùm ille et terris jactatus et alto

   Vi superum, sævæ memorem Junonis ob iram.

3. Modern orthography with macrons

   Arma virumque canō, Trōiae quī prīmus ab ōrīs

   Ītaliam, fātō profugus, Lāvīniaque vēnit

   Lītora; multum ille et terrīs iactātus et altō

   Vī superum, saevae memorem Iūnōnis ob īram.

4. Modern orthography without macrons

   Arma virumque cano, Troiae qui primus ab oris

   Italiam, fato profugus, Laviniaque venit

   Litora; multum ille et terris iactatus et alto

   Vi superum, saevae memorem Iunonis ob iram.

5. [Reconstructed] Classical Roman pronunciation

   [ˈar.ma wɪ|ˈrũː.kᶣɛ ˈka|noː ˈtroː|jae̯ kᶣiː |ˈpriː.mʊs‿a‖ˈb‿oː.riːs

   iː.ˈta.li|ãː ˈfaː|toː ˈprɔ.fʊ|ɡʊs laː|ˈwiː.nja.kᶣɛ ‖ˈweː.nɪt

   ˈliː.tɔ.ra | ˈmʊɫ.t(ᶣ)‿ɪl|l‿ɛt ˈtɛr|riːs jak|ˈtaː.tʊ.s‿ɛ‖ˈt.aɫ.toː

   wiː ˈsʊ.pæ|rũː ˈsae̯|wae̯ ˈmɛ.mɔ|rẽː juː|ˈnoː.nɪ.s‿ɔ‖ˈb‿iː.rãː]

Note the elisions in mult(um) and ill(e) in the third line. For a fuller discussion of the prosodic features of this passage, see Dactylic hexameter.

Some manuscripts have «Lāvīna» rather than «Lāvīnia» in the second line.

From Medieval Latin[edit]

Beginning of Pange Lingua Gloriosi Corporis Mysterium 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).
   • Pange lingua gloriósi
   • Córporis mystérium,
   • Sanguinísque pretiósi,
   • quem in mundi prétium
   • fructus ventris generósi
   • Rex effúdit géntium.
2. «Italianate» ecclesiastical pronunciation
   • [ˈpand͡ʒe ˈliŋɡwa ɡlori’ozi
   • ˈkorporis misˈterium
   • saŋɡwiˈniskwe pret͡si’ozi
   • kwem in ˈmundi ˈpretsium
   • ˈfruktus ˈventris d͡ʒeneˈrozi
   • reks efˈfudit ˈd͡ʒentsium

See also[edit]

• Latin alphabet
• Latin grammar
• Latin regional pronunciation
• Traditional English pronunciation of Latin
• Deutsche Aussprache des Lateinischen (in German) – traditional German pronunciation
• Schulaussprache des Lateinischen (in German) – revised «school» pronunciation
• Traditional French pronunciation (in French)

Notes[edit]

References[edit]

Bibliography[edit]

Further reading[edit]

• 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. https://www.jstor.org/stable/23546146.Copy

External links[edit]

• phonetica latinæ: Classical and ecclesiastical Latin pronunciation with audio examples
• «Ecclesiastical Latin». Catholic Encyclopedia. 1910.
• Lord, Frances Ellen (2007) [1894]. The Roman Pronunciation of Latin: Why we use it and how to use it. Gutenberg Project.
• 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