Latin phonology and orthography
(
Latin Language
)
- Letterforms
- Letters and phonemes
- Consonants
- Vowels
- Monophthongs
- Long and short vowels
- Adoption of Greek upsilo..
- {{lang|la|Sonus medius}}
- Vowel nasalization
- Diphthongs
- Vowel and consonant leng..
- Table of orthography
- Syllables and stress
- Elision
- Modern conventions
- Pronunciation shared by ..
- Examples
- See also
- Notes
- References
- Bibliography
- Further reading
- External links
Latin phonology is the system of sounds used in Latin. Classical Latin was spoken from the late Roman Republic to the early Roman Empire: evidence for its pronunciation is taken from comments by Roman grammarians, common spelling mistakes, transcriptions into other languages, and the outcomes of various sounds in the Romance languages.Covington, Michael. (2019). Latin Pronunciation Demystified.
Latin orthography is the writing system used to spell Latin from its Old Latin down to the present. Latin was nearly always spelt in the Latin alphabet, but further details varied from period to period. The alphabet developed from Old Italic script, which had developed from a variant of the Greek alphabet, which in turn had developed from a variant of the Phoenician alphabet. The Latin alphabet most resembles the Greek alphabet that can be seen on black-figure pottery dating to c. 540 BC, especially the Euboean regional variant.
As the language continued to be used as a classical language, lingua franca and liturgical language long after it language death a native language, pronunciation and – to a lesser extent – spelling diverged significantly from the classical standard with Latin words being pronounced differently by native speakers of different languages. While nowadays a reconstructed classical pronunciation aimed to be that of the 1st century AD Latin Accents. is usually employed in the teaching of Latin, the Italian-influenced ecclesiastical pronunciation as used by the Catholic church is still in common use. The Traditional English pronunciation of Latin has all but disappeared from classics education but continues to be used for Latin-based loanwords and use of Latin e.g. for in taxonomy.
During most of the time written Latin was in widespread use, authors variously complained about language change or attempted to "restore" an earlier standard. Such sources are of great value in reconstructing various stages of the spoken language (the Appendix Probi is an important source for the spoken variety in the 4th century CE, for example) and have in some cases indeed influenced the development of the language. The efforts of Renaissance Latin authors were to a large extent successful in removing innovations in grammar, spelling and vocabulary present in Medieval Latin but absent in both classical and contemporary Latin.
Letterforms
Letters and phonemes
- The letters , , , , and , each of which could represent either a short vowel or a long one. The long vowels were sometimes marked with apices, as in , , , and , while long could be marked with long I . Since the 19th century, long vowels have been marked with macrons, as in , , , , and ; sometimes, may also be used to indicate short vowels, as in , , , , , and .
- The letters and , which could either indicate vowels (as mentioned) or the consonants and , respectively. In modern times, the letters and began to be used as distinct spellings for these consonants (now often pronounced very differently).
- Digraphs such as , and , which represented the diphthongs , and . In a few words, these could also stand for sequences of two adjacent vowels, which is sometimes marked by the use of a diaeresis in modern transcriptions, as in , and .
- The digraphs , and , standing for the aspirated consonants , and .
Consonants
Phonetics
- Latin may have had the labialized velar stops and as opposed to the stop + semivowel sequences and (as in the English quick or pen guin). The argument for is stronger than that for .
- The former could occur between vowels, where it always counted as a single consonant in Classical poetry, whereas the latter only occurred after , where it is impossible to tell whether it counted as one consonant or two. The labial element, whether or , appears to have been palatalised before a front vowel, resulting in or Voiced labial–palatal approximant (for instance quī would have sounded something like ). This palatalisation did not affect the independent consonant before front vowels.
- and before were not distinct from and , which were allophonically labialized to and by a following such that writing a double was unnecessary. This is suggested by the fact that equus and unguunt (from Old Latin equos and unguont) are also found spelt as ecus and ungunt.
- , and were less aspirated than the corresponding English consonants, as implied by their usually being transliterated into Ancient Greek as , and , and their pronunciation in most Romance languages. In many cases, however, it was not the Latin and , but rather and , that were used to render Greek word-initial and in borrowings (as in πύξος, κυβερνῶ > buxus, guberno), especially borrowings of a non-learned character. This might suggest that the Latin and had some degree of aspiration, making and more suitable to approximate the Greek sounds.
- , and were pronounced with notable aspiration, like the initial consonants of the English p ot , top, and cot respectively. They are attested beginning c. 150 BC, in the spellings , and , at first only used to render the Greek , and in loanwords. (Previously these had been rendered in Latin as , and .) From c. 100 BC onward , and spread to a number of native Latin words as well, such as pulcher and lachrima. When this occurred it was nearly always in the vicinity of the consonant or , and the implication is that Latin , and had become aspirated in that context.
- was found as a rendering of the Greek in borrowings starting around the first century BC. (In earlier borrowings, the Greek sound had been rendered in Latin as .) In initial position, appears to have been pronounced , and between vowels it appears to have been gemination to (counted as two consonants in poetry).
- was unvoiced in all positions in Classical Latin. Previously however Old Latin appears to have voiced to between vowels, ultimately Rhotacism . Cicero reports the family-name Papisius being changed to Papirius in the fourth century BC, which may give some idea of the chronology. Afterward new instances of developed between vowels from sound-changes like the degemination of after long vowels and diphthongs (as in caussa > causa), which Quintilian reports to have happened a little after the time of Cicero and Virgil.
- In Old Latin, final after a short vowel was often lost, probably after first Debuccalization to , as in the inscriptional form Cornelio for Cornelios (Classical Cornelius). Often in the poetry of Plautus, Ennius, and Lucretius, final did not count as a consonant when followed by a word beginning with a consonant. By the Classical period this practice was described as characteristic of non-urban speech by Cicero.
- was labiodental in Classical Latin but may have been a bilabial in Old Latin, or perhaps in free variation with . Lloyd, Sturtevant, and Kent make this argument based on misspellings in early inscriptions, the fact that many instances of Latin descend from Proto-Indo-European *, and the outcomes of the sound in Romance (particularly in Spain).
- In most cases was pronounced as a bilabial nasal. At the end of a word, however, it was generally lost beginning in Old Latin (except when another nasal or a plosive followed it), leaving compensatory lengthening and nasal vowel on the preceding vowel (such that decem may have sounded something like , i.e. ). In Old Latin inscriptions, final is often omitted, as in for virom (Classical virum). It was frequently elided before a following vowel in poetry and lost without a trace (apart from perhaps lengthening) in the Romance languages, except in a number of monosyllabic words, where it often survives as or a further development thereof.
- and merged via assimilation before a following consonant, with the following consonant determining the resulting pronunciation: bilabial before a bilabial consonant (e.g. and ), coronal before a coronal consonant (e.g. and ) and velar before a velar consonant (e.g. , and ). This occurred both within words (e.g. quī nque may have sounded something like ) and across word-boundaries (for instance i n causā with , or i m pace).
- assimilated to a velar nasal before . Allen and Greenough say that a vowel before is always long, but W. Sidney Allen says that is based on an interpolation in Priscian, and the vowel was actually long or short depending on the root, as for example rēgnum from the root of rēx but magnus from the root of magis. probably did not assimilate to before . The cluster arose by syncope, as for example tegmen from tegimen. Original developed into in flamma, from the root of flagrō. At the start of a word, original was reduced to , and this change was reflected in the orthography of later texts, as in gnātus, gnōscō > nātus, nōscō.
- In Classical Latin, the rhotic consonant was most likely an alveolar trill , at least in some positions and when doubled. Gaius Lucilius likened it to the sound of a dog, and later writers described it as being produced by vibration. In Old Latin, intervocalic developed into (rhotacism), suggesting an approximant like the English , and was sometimes written as , possibly suggesting a tap (like the single in Spanish).
- was strongly Velarization in syllable coda and probably somewhat palatalized when Gemination or followed by . In intervocalic position, it appears to have been velarized before all vowels except .. In footnote 206, he adds: "The evidence has been thoroughly assessed in the diachronic literature; see Sen (2012: 472–3; 2015: 15 sqq.), Meiser (1998: 68–9), Leumann (1977: 85–7)."
- generally appeared only at the beginning of words, before a vowel, as in iaceō, except in compound words such as adiaceō (pronounced something like ). Between vowels, it was generally as a geminate , as in cuius (pronounced something like ) except in compound words such as trāiectus. This is sometimes marked in modern editions by a circumflex on the preceding vowel, e.g. cûius, êius, mâior, etc. could also have varied with in the same morpheme, as in iam and etiam , and in poetry one could be replaced with the other for metrical purpose.
- was pronounced as an approximant until the first century AD, when and intervocalic began to develop into fricatives. In poetry, and could be replaced with each other, as in ~ or ~. Unlike it remained a single consonant in most words, e.g. in cavē, although it did represent a double in borrowings from Greek such as the name Evander.
- was generally still pronounced in Classical Latin, at least by educated speakers, but in many cases it appears to have been lost early on between vowels, and sometimes in other contexts as well (diribeō < *dis-habeō being a particularly early example). Where intervocalic survived, it was likely voiced (that is, ).
Notes on spelling
- Doubled consonant letters represented genuinely Gemination consonants, as in for . In Old Latin, geminate consonants were written as if they were single until the middle of the second century BC, when orthographic doubling began to appear. Grammarians mention the marking of double consonants with the sicilicus, a diacritic in the shape of a sickle. It appears in a few inscriptions of the Augustan era.
- and both represented , whereas represented . and distinguish minimal pairs such as cui and quī . In Classical Latin appeared in only a few words like kalendae, Karthagō - which could also be spelt calendae, Carthagō.
- represented . It was borrowed from the Western Greek alphabet, where chi stood for as well. This was unlike the usage of chi in the Greek alphabet, where it stood for , with instead represented by the letter xi .
- and were also used to spell in Old Latin, but by the Classical period, was reserved for words containing the prefix ex- combined with a base starting with (e.g. exsanguis).
- In Old Latin inscriptions, and were not distinguished. They were both represented by before and , by before and , and by before consonants or . The letterform derives from the Greek gamma , which represented . Its use for may come from Etruscan, which did not distinguish voiced plosives from voiceless ones. In Classical Latin, represented only in the abbreviations c and cn, for Gaius and Gnaeus respectively.
- was created in the third century BC to distinguish from . Its letterform derived from with the addition of a diacritic or typeface anatomy. Plutarch attributes this innovation to Spurius Carvilius Ruga around 230 BC, but it may have originated with Appius Claudius Caecus in the fourth century BC.
- The cluster probably represented the consonant cluster , at least between vowels, as in agnus . Vowels before this cluster were sometimes long and sometimes short.
- The digraphs , , and represented the aspirated plosives , and . They began to be used in writing around 150 BC, 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 and . Aspirated plosives and the glottal fricative were also used hypercorrection, an affectation satirized in .
- In Old Latin, Koine Greek initial and between vowels were represented by and , as in sona from ζώνη and massa from μᾶζα. Around the second and first centuries B.C., the Greek letter zeta was adopted to represent and . However, the Vulgar Latin spellings or for earlier and before , and the spellings and for earlier , suggest the pronunciation , as for example ziomedis for diomedis, and diaeta for zeta.
- In ancient times and represented the approximant consonants and , as well as the close vowels and .
- representing the consonant was usually not doubled in writing, so a single represented double or and the sequences and , as in cuius for *cuiius , conicit for *coniicit , and reicit for *reiiicit . Both the consonantal and vocalic pronunciations of could occur in some of the same environments: compare māius with Gāius , and Iūlius with Iūlus . The vowel before a doubled is sometimes marked with a macron, as in cūius. It indicates not that the vowel is long but that the first syllable is syllable weight from the double consonant.
- between vowels represented single in native Latin words but double in Greek loanwords. Both the consonantal and vocalic pronunciations of sometimes occurred in similar environments, as in GENVA and SILVA .
Vowels
Monophthongs
Long and short vowels
- for tribibus
- for mēnsis
- for sub
- for pōnere
most likely had a more open allophone before .
and were probably pronounced closer when they occurred before another vowel, with e.g. mea written as in some inscriptions. Short before another vowel is often written with the so-called [[long I]], as in for diēs, indicating that its quality was similar to that of long ; it was almost never confused with in this position.
Adoption of Greek upsilon
was used in Greek loanwords with upsilon . This letter represented the close front rounded vowel, both short and long: and . Latin did not have this sound as a native phoneme, and speakers tended to pronounce such loanwords with and in Old Latin and and in Classical and Late Latin if they were unable to produce and .
Sonus medius
Vowel nasalization
- Before word-final :
- monstrum >
- dentem >
- Before nasal consonants followed by a fricative:
- censor > (in early inscriptions, often written as cesor)
- consul > (often written as cosol and abbreviated as cos)
- inferōs > (written as iferos)
When a final 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 was written for tam dūrum in inscriptions, and cum nōbīs was a double entendre, presumably for cunnō bis .
Diphthongs
| + Diphthongs classified by beginning sound ! !! Front !! Back |
If there is a tréma above the second vowel, both vowels are pronounced separately: , , and . However, disyllabic in morpheme borders is traditionally written without the tréma: meus 'my'.
In Old Latin, and were written as , and probably pronounced as and , with a fully closed second element, similar to the final syllable in French . In the late Old Latin period, the last element of the diphthongs was lowered to , so that the diphthongs were pronounced and in Classical Latin. They were then monophthongized to and respectively, starting in rural areas at the end of the Republican period. The process, however, does not seem to have been completed before the 3rd century AD, and some scholars say that it may have been regular by the 5th century.
Vowel and consonant length
Long consonants were usually indicated through doubling, but ancient Latin orthography did not distinguish between the vocalic and consonantal uses of and . Vowel length was indicated only intermittently in classical sources and even then through a variety of means. Later medieval and modern usage tended to omit vowel length altogether. A short-lived convention of spelling long vowels by doubling the vowel letter is associated with the poet Lucius Accius. Later spelling conventions marked long vowels with an apex (a diacritic similar to an acute accent) or, in the case of long i, by increasing the height of the letter (long i); in the second century AD, those were given apices as well. The Classical vowel length system faded in later Latin and ceased to be phonemic in Romance, having been replaced by contrasts in vowel quality. Consonant length, however, remains contrastive in much of Italo-Romance, cf. Italian nono "ninth" versus nonno "grandfather".
A minimal pair showing both long and short vowels and long and short consonants is ānus ('anus'), annus ('year'), anus ('old woman').
Table of orthography
| + Pronunciation of Latin consonants |
| + Pronunciation of Latin vowels
! Latin grapheme ! Latin phone ! English approximation |
| + Pronunciation of Latin diphthongs
! Latin grapheme ! Latin phone ! English approximation |
Syllables and stress
Nature of the accent
Old Latin stress
- f aciō 'I do/make', f actus 'made'; pronounced and in later Old Latin and Classical Latin.
- aff iciō 'I affect', aff ectus 'affected'; pronounced and in Old Latin following vowel reduction, and in Classical Latin.
Classical Latin syllables and stress
Syllable
Nucleus
Onset and coda
- fēminae (CVV.CV.CVV)
- uidēre (CV.CVV.CV)
- puerō (CV.V.CVV)
- beātae (CV.VV.CVV)
- grauiter (CCV.CV.CVC)
- strātum (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.
- puella (CV.VC.CV)
- supersum (CV.CVC.CVC)
- coāctus (CV.VVC.CVC)
- intellēxit (VC.CVC.CVVC.CVC)
There are two exceptions. A consonant cluster of a stop , , , , , or followed by a liquid or between vowels usually goes to the syllable after it, although it is also sometimes broken up like other consonant clusters.
- uolucris or (CV.CV.KRVC or CV.CVK.RVC)
Heavy and light syllables
| V ! V !! |
| V ! 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 (), and a syllable that is heavy because it ends in a consonant is called positiōne longa (). These terms are translations of Greek συλλαβὴ μακρά φύσει () and μακρὰ θέσει (), 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.
Stress rule
| + Words with stress on antepenult |
| puerō |
| CV.V.CVV |
| + Words with stress on penult | coāctus |
| CV.VVC.CVC | |
Iambic shortening
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
Modern conventions
Spelling
Letters
Many publishers (such as Oxford University Press) have adopted the convention of using (upper case) and (lower case) for both and , and (upper case) and (lower case) for both and .
An alternative approach, less common today, is to use and only for the vowels, and and for the approximants.
Most modern editions, however, adopt an intermediate position, distinguishing between and , but not between and . Usually, a non-vocalic after , or is still printed as rather than , likely because these did not change from to post-classically.
Diacritics
Sometimes, for instance in Roman Catholic service books, an acute accent over a vowel is used to indicate the stressed syllable. It would be redundant for one who knew the classical rules of accentuation and made the correct distinction between long and short vowels, but most Latin speakers since the 3rd century have not made any distinction between long and short vowels, but they have kept the accents in the same places; thus, the use of accent marks allows speakers to read a word aloud correctly even if they have never heard it spoken aloud.
Pronunciation
Post-Medieval Latin
Loan words and formal study
Latin words in common use in English are generally fully assimilated into the English sound system, with little to mark them as foreign; for example, cranium, saliva. Other words have a stronger Latin feel to them, usually because of spelling features such as the digraphs and (occasionally written with the ligatures: and , respectively), which both denote in English. The digraph or ligature in some words tend to be given an pronunciation; for example, curriculum vitae.
However, using loanwords in the context of the language borrowing them is a markedly different situation from the study of Latin itself. In this classroom setting, instructors and students attempt to recreate at least some sense of the original pronunciation. What is taught to native anglophones is suggested by the sounds of today's Romance languages, the direct descendants of Latin. Instructors who take this approach rationalize that Romance vowels probably come closer to the original pronunciation than those of any other modern language (see also the section below).
However, other languages—including Romance family members—all have their own interpretations of the Latin phonological system, applied both to loan words and formal study of Latin. But English, Romance, or other teachers do not always point out that the particular accent their students learn is not actually the way ancient Romans spoke.
Ecclesiastical pronunciation
A guide to this Italianate pronunciation is provided below. Since the letters or letter-combinations , , , , , and are pronounced as they are in English, they are not included in the table.
| + Consonants |
| + Vowels ! Grapheme ! Pronunciation ! English approximation |
| + Diphthongs ! Grapheme ! Pronunciation ! English approximation |
- Vowel length is not phonemic. As a result, the automatic stress accent of Classical Latin, which was dependent on vowel length, becomes a phonemic one in Ecclesiastical Latin. (Some Ecclesiastical texts mark the stress with an acute accent in words of three or more syllables.)
- Word-final and are pronounced fully, with no nasal 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, was recommended by Pope Pius X in a 1912 letter to the Archbishop of Bourges. However, as can be seen from the table above, there are very significant differences. The introduction to the Liber Usualis indicates that Ecclesiastical Latin pronunciation should be used at Church liturgies. Liber Usualis, p. xxxvj The Pontifical Academy for Latin is the pontifical academy in the Vatican that is charged with the dissemination and education of Catholics in the Latin language.
Outside of Austria, Germany, Poland, Hungary, Czechia and Slovakia, it is the most widely used standard in choir singing which, with a few exceptions like Stravinsky's Oedipus rex, is concerned with liturgical texts. Anglican choirs adopted it when classicists abandoned traditional English pronunciation after World War II. The rise of historically informed performance and the availability of guides such as Copeman's Singing in Latin has led to the recent revival of regional pronunciations.
Pronunciation shared by Vulgar Latin and Romance languages
- Loss of , in all contexts, and loss of final , in polysyllabic words.
- Monophthongization of to respectively.
- Fortition of to , then lenition of intervocalic to . (Later developing to in many areas.)
- Phonemic (no longer allophonic) loss of before and of final in polysyllabic words.
- Phonemic (no longer allophonic) development of to when unstressed and in hiatus.
- Palatalization of the consonants by a following .
- Loss of phonemic vowel length, with vowel quality becoming the distinctive factor instead. A number of vowel mergers followed as a result.
- Palatalization of various other consonants by a following .
- Palatalization of before front vowels (not everywhere).
Examples
From Classical Latin
- 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.
- Modern orthography with macrons
- :Arma virumque canō, Troiae quī prīmus ab ōrīs
- :Ītaliam, fātō profugus, Lāvīniaque vēnit
- :Lītora; multum ille et terrīs iactātus et altō
- :Vī superum, saevae memorem Iūnōnis ob īram.
- Modern orthography with macrons and without u and v distinction
- :Arma uirumque canō, Troiae quī prīmus ab ōrīs
- :Ītaliam, fātō profugus, Lāuīniaque uēnit
- :Lītora; multum ille et terrīs iactātus et altō
- :Uī superum, saeuae memorem Iūnōnis ob īram.
- 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.
- Reconstructed Classical Roman pronunciation
- :
- :
- :
- :
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
- 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.
- Italianate ecclesiastical pronunciation:
- :
- :
- :
- :
- :
- :
See also
- Latin alphabet
- Latin grammar
- Latin regional pronunciation
- Traditional English pronunciation of Latin
- Deutsche Aussprache des Lateinischen – traditional German pronunciation
- Schulaussprache des Lateinischen – revised "school" pronunciation
- Traditional French pronunciation
Notes
Bibliography
-
(2025). 9780521889155, Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521889155
-
(2025). 9781585100422, R. Pullins Company. ISBN 9781585100422
-
(2025). 9781405162098, Blackwell Publishing. ISBN 9781405162098
Further reading
- Hall, William Dawson, and Michael De Angelis. 1971. Latin Pronunciation According to Roman Usage. Anaheim, CA: National Music Publishers.
- Trame, Richard H. 1983. "A Note On Latin Pronunciation." The Choral Journal 23, no. 5: 29.
External links
- : Classical and ecclesiastical Latin pronunciation with audio examples
- glottothèque - Ancient Indo-European Grammars online, an online collection of video lectures on Ancient Indo-European languages, including lectures about the phonology and writing systems of Early Latin
|
|
