Cringy

I don’t know about you, but the way spoken Latin, at least when making use of the restored pronunciation (I think Ecclesiastical Latin sounds beautiful) sounds makes me cringe. Maybe it’s just the Americans who make me cringe (I am 100% ethnically Mexican with heavy Spanish descent, so perhaps it’s just the fact I grew up hearing Spanish though English is my first language). What’s your experience with the way people speak Latin?
 

Pacifica

grammaticissima

  • Aedilis

Location:
Belgium
To be honest, most Latin speakers I've heard have sounded somewhat robotic to me. Not that I fare much better...
 

womanofmanyturns

New Member

I totally agree. I got used to it after awhile, but it still doesn't sound very dignified. Most people don't pronounce it well, on top of that. It's difficult to blame them though, seeing as it's not currently spoken anywhere.
 

Glabrigausapes

Philistine

  • Civis Illustris

Location:
Milwaukee
It will always, in my opinion, sound pretty robotic and awful, no matter how much you ham it up with mixings of some 'pure' Romance dialect or other. If I said 'Yow hæblow espænyole' real American-like /yoʊ 'hæ-bloʊ ɛ-'spæn-yoʊl/, and you'd never heard real native Spanish before, you'd still know that I'm not pronouncing it correctly. You'd think, 'There's absolutely no way that this other, far-distant language is so perfectly congruous in terms of euphony to Modern English.' Such is the case with Latin. We don't need to have heard the original to know we're not doing everything exactly right.

Also, the exaggerated Ecclesiastical pronunciation makes me want to wretch, pardon my saying so. And I'm sure that if I were to articulate my own tongue in that same hallowed style, I'd be publicly (and rightly) garroted.
 

Issacus Divus

H₃rḗǵs h₁n̥dʰéri diwsú

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Location:
Gæmleflodland
I always use to feel uncomfortable with people slinging around the idea that they knew how the Romans exactly talked. One of the things that got in the way of learning Latin was the thought of "What if these people, so confident in their Latin, are getting it wrong?"

Suppose I was sort of right.
 

Pacifica

grammaticissima

  • Aedilis

Location:
Belgium
I think we've got a good idea of what it approximately sounded like, but there's no way we can be sure of every detail. We'd need ancient voice recordings for that.
 

Issacus Divus

H₃rḗǵs h₁n̥dʰéri diwsú

  • Civis Illustris

Location:
Gæmleflodland
That would be so cool, to have authentic Roman recordings.
 

Callaina

Feles Curiosissima

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  • Patrona

Location:
Canada
I prefer Classical, but I can appreciate a consistent Ecclesiastical pronunciation as well, particularly when the text dates from medieval times. What I CANNOT stomach is the horrible Canadian Maritime "Ecclesiastical Latin" dialect that produces monstrosities such as "ven-EYE-tee" and "ben-a-DICE-a-tee"!

:vomit:
 

Callaina

Feles Curiosissima

  • Civis Illustris

  • Patrona

Location:
Canada
Now THAT's "cringy", lol.
 

Issacus Divus

H₃rḗǵs h₁n̥dʰéri diwsú

  • Civis Illustris

Location:
Gæmleflodland
B

Bitmap

Guest


Well, that song (or that transfer, I should say) was written by a speaker of German (I think an Austrian) and it contains all the typical pronunciation mistakes (concerning vowel lemgths) Germans make when trying to pronounce Latin.
 

Issacus Divus

H₃rḗǵs h₁n̥dʰéri diwsú

  • Civis Illustris

Location:
Gæmleflodland
My biggest problem with this is that caelo pronunciation as "selo" though...
 
B

Bitmap

Guest

That's the least of my problems with that song (as that one is at least consistent and retains the classical syllable length).
 

Issacus Divus

H₃rḗǵs h₁n̥dʰéri diwsú

  • Civis Illustris

Location:
Gæmleflodland
Well, I guess it is. My mind races to pronounciation stuff first.
 

Issacus Divus

H₃rḗǵs h₁n̥dʰéri diwsú

  • Civis Illustris

Location:
Gæmleflodland
It's not.
 
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