Need help with Latin pronounciation

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basinite

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I’m currently learning Latin and have run into a stumbling block with short and long vowels.

I’ve noticed that most of the time, whether it’s at my church, u-tube, or some other website. That people pronounce short vowels as if they were long vowels. I’m not talking about in music, where short vowels are pronounced as long vowels. I’m talking about everyday prayers such as you would find in the Rosary.

Then you run into the problem of finding prayers and documents written in Latin, which don’t have any macrons distinguishing between long and short vowels. How do you know how to pronounce the word correctly?

Then there is the issue of H. Is H silent in all cases except when used in mihi and nihil, where it is pronounced as a K? Or are we supposed to pronounce the h in words like hora? There seems to be disagreements about this.

So…

How do you guys deal with these discrepancies?

How would you pronounce Filii? According to the Compendium, the first i is long and the other i’s are short.
 
basinite said:
I’m currently learning Latin and have run into a stumbling block with short and long vowels.

I’ve noticed that most of the time, whether it’s at my church, u-tube, or some other website. That people pronounce short vowels as if they were long vowels. I’m not talking about in music, where short vowels are pronounced as long vowels. I’m talking about everyday prayers such as you would find in the Rosary.

Then you run into the problem of finding prayers and documents written in Latin, which don’t have any macrons distinguishing between long and short vowels. How do you know how to pronounce the word correctly?

Then there is the issue of H. Is H silent in all cases except when used in mihi and nihil, where it is pronounced as a K? Or are we supposed to pronounce the h in words like hora? There seems to be disagreements about this.

So…

How do you guys deal with these discrepancies?

How would you pronounce Filii? According to the Compendium, the first i is long and the other i’s are short.
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As far as the h I think it’s always ha in classical Latin. In Ecclesiastical it is ha except with mihi and nihil which is k.

Do you have a pronunciation chart? Would that be helpful? You can google them.
 
ElizabethPH said:
As far as the h I think it’s always ha in classical Latin. In Ecclesiastical it is ha except with mihi and nihil which is k.

Do you have a pronunciation chart? Would that be helpful? You can google them.
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Thanks, but I already have lot’s of pronunciation charts. About 70 percent of them say h is always silent and the other 30 percent say you pronounce h like you mentioned.

My biggest problem is with long and short vowels. Like the example I gave using “Filii”. Most People pronounce this as Fee li ee (2 long i and 1 short), or Fee lee ee (3 long i). The compendium of the CCC has this word being pronounced; fee li i (1 long i and 2 short). I’ve never heard anyone pronounce Filii as the compendium of the Catholic Church suggest it be pronounced.

Let me give you an example;

Sicut,

Now say you came across “sicut” in a prayer and there are no macrons indicating whether there is any long vowels. Would you pronounce it See Coot, or Si Coot, or See Cut, or… you get my point. This is the brick wall I’m running into.
 
or would it be si coot as in sit not see. In classical latin it is always as sit.

If I was chanting, it would be see coot. As in Ecclesiastical Latin
 
basinite said:
My biggest problem is with long and short vowels. Like the example I gave using “Filii”. Most People pronounce this as Fee li ee (2 long i and 1 short), or Fee lee ee (3 long i). The compendium of the CCC has this word being pronounced; fee li i (1 long i and 2 short). I’ve never heard anyone pronounce Filii as the compendium of the Catholic Church suggest it be pronounced.
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In is normal for people to apply the pronunciation “rules” of the their native language to any new language they learn. In English, we lengthen stressed vowels. This is just something we do automatically and most people don’t even notice. But when we do it to another language it becomes noticeable. This is probably what you are observing.

In Latin, vowel length is not predictable. There isn’t a rule about where macrons are placed. If you really want to get your vowel lengths right, you have to memorize them. You could get a book like A Primer of Ecclesiastical Latin by John F. Collins that gives macrons and look up the words in the prayers you are learning.
 
floresco said:
In is normal for people to apply the pronunciation “rules” of the their native language to any new language they learn. In English, we lengthen stressed vowels. This is just something we do automatically and most people don’t even notice. But when we do it to another language it becomes noticeable. This is probably what you are observing.

In Latin, vowel length is not predictable. There isn’t a rule about where macrons are placed. If you really want to get your vowel lengths right, you have to memorize them. You could get a book like A Primer of Ecclesiastical Latin by John F. Collins that gives macrons and look up the words in the prayers you are learning.
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I am currently studying, John Collins; A Primer of Ecclesiastical Latin, and on page 18 he has filii with two macrons (first i and last i).

On the other hand…

I also own “Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin”, by Leo F Stelten and he has Filii listed as only having having one macron on the first i.

I want to learn Latin correctly. In other words, I don’t want to be saying,

“Heal Mary fool of grease, The Lord is bith vue”. No what I mean:D.
 
basinite said:
I am currently studying, John Collins; A Primer of Ecclesiastical Latin, and on page 18 he has filii with two macrons (first i and last i).

On the other hand…

I also own “Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin”, by Leo F Stelten and he has Filii listed as only having having one macron on the first i.
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The -i of the genitive ending always has a macron. It looks like Stelten is expecting his readers to know that and leaving it off. Use the macrons from Collins.
 
basinite said:
I also own “Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin”, by Leo F Stelten and he has Filii listed as only having having one macron on the first i.
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The final i in any second-declension nominative plural or genitive singular would always be long.
I want to learn Latin correctly. In other words, I don’t want to be saying,
Click to expand...
“Heal Mary fool of grease, The Lord is bith vue”. No what I mean:D.
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You’re right to wonder about these issues. The ecclesiastical pronunciation is kind of an odd duck, since it is mostly the pronunciation of Italian superimposed onto the Latin language. One thing that’s for certain, it’s nearly impossible to give an adequate rendering of a vowel sound by typing “fi” or “fee.” I will say, though, that the vowel sounds most Americans try to produce when they are told to pronounce a word, say, as “see-coot,” tend to be highly exaggerated, and produce an effect that is both strongly indicative of the “American accent” in Latin, and also very difficult to speak at anything approaching a natural pattern and fluent rate.

On one or two other threads, I’ve had occasion to mention these Audiolibri, a collection of assorted Latin texts read by the late Fr. Félix Sanchez Vallejo, whose impressive biography as a Vatican Latinist you can read here. I don’t think you will find recordings by a better speaker. I’d suggest Googling one of the texts and sitting down to hear what it sounds like.
 
MarkThompson said:
I will say, though, that the vowel sounds most Americans try to produce when they are told to pronounce a word, say, as “see-coot,” tend to be highly exaggerated, and produce an effect that is both strongly indicative of the “American accent” in Latin, and also very difficult to speak at anything approaching a natural pattern and fluent rate.
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Another one of the automatic English pronunciation rules is to add an “off-glide” to long vowels. Basically this means we add a y to i and e or a w to o or u. (y and w are called “glides”.) We continue to do this when speaking other languages that don’t have this rule. This is one of the main things people are noticing when they say someone has an English or American accent. If one is aware one is doing it, it may be possible to stop oneself. But, it is probably easier to follow Mark’s suggestion and simply imitate a good model.
 
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