Medieval/Renaissance Latin pronunciation
Iain
to read aloud medieval, or later, Latin texts such as a medieval Latin
poem or a letter of Erasmus or a Latin poem by Richard Crashaw, for
example, and I wanted it to sound as close as possible to the way such
writers would likely have pronounced and thought of the Latin they
spoke and wrote, then I should read it as church Latin, i.e. with an
Italianate pronunciation; a 'v ' as a v and not as 'w' as in
Classical times, a 'c' before i or e, as 'ch', and so on.
To jump to the present, I also wondered how those who write Latin here
pronounce what they write - do they now use the classical
pronunciation since they now know so much more about the likely
authentic pronunciation used in Roman times and want to use that in
the interests of accuracy; or do they use the pronunciation most
English speakers use when saying Latin phrases, for example, such as
'vice versa' or 'ex officio', etc.
In other words, do they revert to the traditional or 'old' way of
pronouncing Latin before W. S. Allen wrote his "Vox Latina"? Or the
way it will be spoken in the Vatican at the present time?
Ed Cryer
I've examined my conscience on this and found some discrepancy.
I definitely use what you call "the pronunciation most English speakers
use" with Latin phrases in English texts. But I stick with classical
pronunciation for all Latin texts, ancient & modern both.
Ed
Johannes Patruus
> to read aloud medieval, or later, Latin texts such as a medieval Latin
> poem or a letter of Erasmus or a Latin poem by Richard Crashaw, for
> example, and I wanted it to sound as close as possible to the way such
> writers would likely have pronounced and thought of the Latin they
> spoke and wrote, then I should read it as church Latin, i.e. with an
> Italianate pronunciation; a 'v ' as a v and not as 'w' as in
> Classical times, a 'c' before i or e, as 'ch', and so on.
I believe it will be apparent from the books catalogued here -
http://bit.ly/gncRTU - that the pronunciation of Latin varied a lot with
time and place.
We recently had a discussion here - http://goo.gl/ApQqi - about how
Spinoza would have pronounced the word "acquiescentia", the conclusion
being that it's difficult to know with any certainty.
> To jump to the present, I also wondered how those who write Latin here
> pronounce what they write - do they now use the classical
> pronunciation since they now know so much more about the likely
> authentic pronunciation used in Roman times and want to use that in
> the interests of accuracy; or do they use the pronunciation most
> English speakers use when saying Latin phrases, for example, such as
> 'vice versa' or 'ex officio', etc.
> In other words, do they revert to the traditional or 'old' way of
> pronouncing Latin before W. S. Allen wrote his "Vox Latina"? Or the
> way it will be spoken in the Vatican at the present time?
Speaking for myself, I make it up as I go along!
One would tend not to pronounce a phrase such as "vice versa" the same way
in a Latin text as one would in an English text.
Patruus
Will Parsons
> Hi, I just wondered if you would you agree (or not) that if I wanted
> to read aloud medieval, or later, Latin texts such as a medieval Latin
> poem or a letter of Erasmus or a Latin poem by Richard Crashaw, for
> example, and I wanted it to sound as close as possible to the way such
> writers would likely have pronounced and thought of the Latin they
> spoke and wrote, then I should read it as church Latin, i.e. with an
> Italianate pronunciation; a 'v ' as a v and not as 'w' as in
> Classical times, a 'c' before i or e, as 'ch', and so on.
There would be a lot of variation of pronunciation depending on both time and
place. For mediaeval Latin, I would suggest pronouncing consonantal V ("v")
as in English (i.e., [v]), "soft" G like English soft G or J (as in "genus"),
and soft C as [ts]. (The latter typical of most of Europe outside of Italy.)
In addition, pronounce TI as [tsi] in interior positions preceding a vowel
except when following an [s] sound, such a "natio" as [natsio]. (The
similarity of this pronunciation to "Nazi" is *not* a coincidence.) Pronounce
the combinations AE and OE as simple E. It's a toss-up whether to pronounce
GN as Spanish ñ or ngn (i.e., whether to pronounce "agnus" [aɲus] or [aŋnus].
These rules follow what is now called the "Ecclesiastical pronunciation" with
the exception of soft C and possibly GN.
For later periods (Renaissance on), the pronunciation of soft C as [ts] would
tend to be replaced by [s] in areas where that change took place in the host
language (France, England, the Netherlands, &c., but not Germany). Personally
though, I wouldn't bother, but just use a more conservative mediaeval
pronunciation.
> To jump to the present, I also wondered how those who write Latin here
> pronounce what they write - do they now use the classical
> pronunciation since they now know so much more about the likely
> authentic pronunciation used in Roman times and want to use that in
> the interests of accuracy; or do they use the pronunciation most
> English speakers use when saying Latin phrases, for example, such as
> 'vice versa' or 'ex officio', etc.
> In other words, do they revert to the traditional or 'old' way of
> pronouncing Latin before W. S. Allen wrote his "Vox Latina"? Or the
> way it will be spoken in the Vatican at the present time?
Most people will use a more or less authentic Classical pronunciation. I know
I do, with one slight anachronism - I use the assibilated pronunciation of TI
as [tsi].
--
Will
Iain
I only started thinking about this because I read that Elliott Carter
started a major orchestral work (and at the age of 85!), his
Symphonia: 'sum fluxae pretium spei' (1993-96), using the poem "Bulla"
by Richard Crashaw as his inspiration - (see
http://www.boosey.com/pages/cr/catalogue/cat_detail.asp?musicid=850).
As a result, I bought the complete poems of Crashaw just to have this
one poem, but there are many other Latin poems in the book. And then I
started wondering how exactly Richard Crashaw would have pronounced
his own poems.
As for ' v ', my assumption is that absolutely no-one in the course of
many hundreds of years, perhaps even from as early as the 2nd century
AD onwards, would have pronounced this as a 'w' sound any more, not
until comparatively recent times; but to make such a sweeping
assumption probably ensures that I'll be wrong. But the way one
pronounces ' v ' does seem to make a huge difference to me.