1st Distich of Cato

[Notascooby]

I want to commit a few of these distich's to memory but I'm not too confident with pronunciation nevermind metre. I'm not trying to do this perfectly but only to make a fairly solid approximation. I don't want to memorise these until I have an idea that I'm doing it reasonably well. I've been reading up on the rules and listening to audio, and recording myself but I don't think there is any substitute for the criticism of others. So with that in mind please let me know what you think. Though please bear in mind I'm new to this.

deus est animus nobis ut carmina dicunt
hic tibi praecipue sit pura mente colendus

Thanks

 

[Quasus]

My ear is not accustomed to vowel length, but frankly, I can't hear any long vowels here except in praecipuē.

 

[Anbrutal Russicus]

Yes, there's only one long vowel in that recording, the last one of praecipuē, which I suspect is simple English phonotactics - no final short vowels allowed (which makes long /ē/ in words like facere a staple of English mispronunciation of Latin). The lack of vowel length marking in the text is already ominous - if you can't mark where they are supposed to be, you won't be able to pronounce them either, which is why the default suggestion for improving one's pronunciation in that regard is getting into a habit of marking them in writing.

The good news is that in other regards your recording isn't that bad - if you remove the aspiration from /k/, it might not be that trivial to tell your native language.

 

[Notascooby]

Thanks for the reply

I've got the long vowels marked down on a bit of paper. I'll need to go and do some work on pronunciation.

 

[Michael Zwingli]

Wow, guys...I can't tell you how many times I've read the line in Chaucer's Miller's Tale:

"He knew nat Catoun, for his wit was rude,
that bad man sholde wedde his similitude."

(I love Chaucer), and never knew or looked up the reference! Now that you have brought these distichs to my attention, I am quite interested in them myself. @Notascooby, are these readily available in print, or are you using a library copy?

 

[Notascooby]

I downloaded a PDF from archive.com. There are a couple of different versions on there. Amazon has a few in print but they are print on demand versions which can sometimes be good sometimes not so good.