A few days; a few months; it is all ègal.
I come to throw my hat into the ring of pronunciations; I have time to upload only one at this time.
Let us hear and analyse each other's Latin pronunciation
- Thread starter Godmy
- Start date
I come to throw my hat into the ring of pronunciations; I have time to upload only one at this time.
Right, I will probably look at that once I get home. The problem with such posts as the preceding one from Bonifilius is that it contains simply too many minutes of recording and it takes me sometimes several minutes just to listen, review and write some commentary about 10 seconds of a recording. So a detailed honest review of a several minutes of recording may take me several hours (or 1-2 hours at least + sometimes I make a recording of my own to demonstrate some distinctions). Hence I already warned the potential posters that they shouldn't send everything at once... because then I start postponing it and may continue doing that ad infinitum. I am even tempted not to look at all of his recordings just because of that.
What, the reason I stated? ;PLol — sorry I just find this funny for some reason.(No offence to anyone.)
Ok ... I mean rather 
... whatever.
Well just before Bonifilius was of that good spirit and posted his examples I had stated that I won't be reviewing all recordings at once I also state it in the original post... People just don't pay attention, they don't care... I don't care either.
... I mean rather ... whatever.Well just before Bonifilius was of that good spirit and posted his examples I had stated that I won't be reviewing all recordings at once I also state it in the original post... People just don't pay attention, they don't care... I don't care either.
That said, I totally understand you. I too feel discouraged when someone posts a whole wall of translation to be corrected, for example... It just feels like too much at a time (especially if it's loaded with mistakes, which happens regularly...).
What I think is happening with the proletarians here, is that they viewed your first charging of six recordings as the standard number to upload to be reviewed. People will try to come close or be at six.
AndrewEarthrise thanks for your participation. You know I'm always honest in my criticism and I usually overlook the good parts (even if 90% of it is excellent) and mainly focus on the problems (though I tried also to appraise something). But please, don't feel ill to me for any criticism I might make: I judge everything as sincerely as possible and if I seem harsh sometimes, believe me that I must have found some phonetic reason for that and we can discuss it further / exchange recordings... etc.
But you knew what you were getting into
One of my biggest problems was that you haven't followed the prosody marks in my transcription of the text well enough and made sometimes totally arbitrary lengths (prolonged things that ought to be short, move accents randomly... etc.). What sometimes irritated me here the most was when you put accent to the last syllable which is totally unprecedented and as wrong as it can get... I know it was probably an accident, but again, that's why I made all these complicated and very well described guides and the transcription with a marked prosody.
Just promise me one thing: if you are going to make another recording, do not ever put again the stress at the end of the word: it's incredibly irritating (incoLUNT, imporTANT, abSUNT) <- you mainly do with the 3rd person plural indicative, present tense... strange, isn't it? Follow please the accents as I have transcribed them and marked by bold.
So here' the correctly marked text (the stress is in bold):
Here we go then:
- it seems to me you might have exaggerated it a bit while trying maybe too much to emulate the Italian accent/intonation: we have really no reason to believe that the peculiar intonation of modern standard Italian is the right model how to do it + it's not that exaggerated in the reality: it seems to me as a bit of overkill in your interpretation Honestly, I sometimes wasn't sure whether you made it on purpose for it to sound "more interesting", "more entertaining" because it naturally came to me as really really entertaining, but forgive me if I am now somehow unjustly harsh. What do you think Pacis puella ? You're going UP and down and UP and down all the time... it sounds a bit like stereotypical Italian accent that people sometimes try to imitate on parties. I could do that too... but... seriously?  Tongue.gif "(1) Tongue out :p")
(What does Laurentius as an Italian think of this intonation? Isn't it a bit exaggerated, made fun of as our friend tries to imitate it? I remember you wouldn't like me pretend speaking in that accent when I did ... )
- you do exactly what an Italian would in his own pronunciation (we call it Ecclesiastic today) by pronouncing Gallia as Gālia <- well, that is wrong. The "a" MUST be short (no matter the amount of stress/accent you put into it), but the L must be geminated (and here the Italian serves a good example). Incidentally, this is well done in my own example, as I believe, so you can just listen to it again.
- I take it you don't nasalize the final -m (quārum) - well, that's ok, many people don't and it's not yet become a standard (though it should be) and I even think that my own recording in the original post doesn't do it (in fact, any of those recordings, but I change my habits a lot in the last year...)
- you also pronounce "qu" in the standard way as [kw] - well, that's Ok (and I did it like that in my original post too), but now I do try and I think more people should try to do it as it was reconstructed and that sound is a bit different, so I'm just letting you know (I may post a recording). More about it in my other thread THREAD: pronunciation-of-qu-restored-pronunciation
- you say āliam... again aliam <- you don't respect the short vowels, you just let if flow like modern Italian which is really NOT fitting on its own without any modifications to do the restituted pronunciation with.
- oh btw, I must praise your vowel qualities, your realization of the long vowels (though you sometimes realize them in unfitting places) and your R: WELL DONE! (if you are an English native speakers). Also the stops are done very well: no audible aspiration of t/d/p...
- you pronounced appellantur (if I don't that semi-elision you did there) as apē-lantūr" <- well, you can see what's wrong with it: 1) you need pp, not p 2) you need e, not ē 3) you need ll, not ll 4) you need tur and not TŪR <- the last number is probably the worst of it (I could overlook the first 3 pints maybe)
- I noticed your transitional vowel between hī omnēs is a quite strong consonantal i/j: I think that is really unnecessary given that the tongue travels from i to o downwards and therefore doesn't need to create this semi-consonant (or it is really weak, that could posit its absence). But that's just a detail
- hī omnēs linguā <- the ā in linguā must be long, otherwise it's not ablative but nominative and that makes sense there (that's also why my transcription included it), so pay attention to this one.
- difFERunt pronounced as diffeRUNT with a final accent: that never happens in Latin (unless the word is monosyllabic) nor is there any reason for it. My transcription of the text is quite clear where to put the accent (I take it that you did it according to that). I'm not sure whether your FF here was doubled or not... but I'll believe it was (it seems so a bit).
- Gallōs -> I hear it again as Gālōs, maybe Galōs... in both cases you can see what's wrong with it (vowel quantity / consonant length).
- you pronounced the name of the river the same way as you would pronounce the label for a married woman matrōna, ae (though properly there should also be a long ā: mātrōna), you said MaTRŌNa, but have you followed my transcription with marked vowel lengths and stresses? You would have known this particular name is a bit different word and should therefore be pronounce MĀtrona (long and accented first syllable and SHORT "o" and therefore unaccented).
- also Sēquana sounded a bit like Sēquāna <- this will be my biggest problem with your recording. You either haven't followed my marked text that well or you did, but ignored these quite fine parts that are important too. One must not arbitrarily make up lengths where there are none!
- 1) you pronounced DĪvidit as diVĪDdit <- that's wrong (the first syllable is long and accented, the second one is short and unaccented) 2) you pronounced "v" here with your teeth and lower lip: that's wrong in the restituted pronunciation and it's quite serious transgression since this is one thing that sets it quite clearly apart from the traditional ones, so one should pay extra attention not to mix these two pronunciations
- in "Belgae" in (.. sunt Belgae) I don't really hear the diphthong at the end really well: it should still be heard in this pronunciation
- in proptereā between e and ā you do a consonantal "j" (a trasitional vowel) I mean distinguishible one: again no reason for it really. One can travel with the tongue from "e" and "a" without going through the place of "j" articulation and very well avoid its pronunciation with these two vowels: it's needless there
- in longissimē I hear quite a long ē (that's good), but not "ss"
- absunt pronounced as abSUNT <- why a stress on the last syllable??
- in ad eōs you connect it in a way as to create the from the "d" a flap/tap sound as there is one int he American pronunciation sometimes in the words as "pretty" or "city" + the way you did it here quite borders with the flap sound that is done for the short "r" in many languages for example Spanish (so with a little bit of imagination it comes our almost as "areōs" <- well, that's not good, you shouldn't change the consonant qualities in this way for whatever purposes. Also the ō in the "eōs" was disproportionally long: for no reason at all. That's the intonation quirk again...
- commeant pronounced as comēiant - again with a needless (or needlessly strong transitional "i" consonant) and wrongly done the initial mm and short "e" (shouldn't not be long)
- animōs.... why ānimōs??! I'm sorry, I don't get it I will just think it's because of that weird intonation you have chosen (but still: the intonation shouldn't butcher the vowel quantities - that's already wrong).
- important pronounced as imporTANT - again, no sense... see my transcription
- Germānīs pronounced as Germānijīs...(or Germājiīs) - you added an extra syllable to the end and maybe shifted the accent/stress (though I'm not 100% sure here)
- incolunt as incoLUNT... why????
- bellum as bēlum <- wrong (maybe trying too much to sound Italian here?)
But again, don't think of me as of some angry and evil person I've just spent almost an hour on this and I do really mean for you that become better
Those things that I praised I mean seriously: that is great and moves you surely beyond many English speakers I have heard attempting to do the same.
But please try to correct those things I repeatedly mentioned (that you would repeatedly get wrong): the final accents were atrocious
But you knew what you were getting into
One of my biggest problems was that you haven't followed the prosody marks in my transcription of the text well enough and made sometimes totally arbitrary lengths (prolonged things that ought to be short, move accents randomly... etc.). What sometimes irritated me here the most was when you put accent to the last syllable which is totally unprecedented and as wrong as it can get... I know it was probably an accident, but again, that's why I made all these complicated and very well described guides and the transcription with a marked prosody.
Just promise me one thing: if you are going to make another recording, do not ever put again the stress at the end of the word: it's incredibly irritating
(incoLUNT, imporTANT, abSUNT) <- you mainly do with the 3rd person plural indicative, present tense... strange, isn't it? Follow please the accents as I have transcribed them and marked by bold.So here' the correctly marked text (the stress is in bold):
Gallia est omnis dīvīsa in partēs trēs, quārum ūnam incolunt Belgae, aliam Aquītānī, tertiam quī ipsōrum linguā Celtae, nostrā Gallī appellantur. Hī omnēs linguā, īnstitūtīs, lēgibus inter sē differunt. Gallōs ab Aquītānīs Garumna flūmen, ā Belgīs Mātrona et Sēquana dīvidit. Hōrum omnium fortissimī sunt Belgae, proptereā quod ā cultū atque hūmānitāte prōvinciae longissimē absunt, minimēque ad eōs mercātōrēs saepe commeant atque ea quae ad effēminandōs animōs pertinent important, proximīque sunt Germānīs, quī trāns Rhēnum incolunt, quibuscum continenter bellum gerunt.
Here we go then:
- it seems to me you might have exaggerated it a bit while trying maybe too much to emulate the Italian accent/intonation: we have really no reason to believe that the peculiar intonation of modern standard Italian is the right model how to do it + it's not that exaggerated in the reality: it seems to me as a bit of overkill in your interpretation
Honestly, I sometimes wasn't sure whether you made it on purpose for it to sound "more interesting", "more entertaining" because it naturally came to me as really really entertaining, but forgive me if I am now somehow unjustly harsh. What do you think Pacis puella ? You're going UP and down and UP and down all the time... it sounds a bit like stereotypical Italian accent that people sometimes try to imitate on parties. I could do that too... but... seriously? (What does Laurentius as an Italian think of this intonation? Isn't it a bit exaggerated, made fun of as our friend tries to imitate it? I remember you wouldn't like me pretend speaking in that accent when I did ... )- you do exactly what an Italian would in his own pronunciation (we call it Ecclesiastic today) by pronouncing Gallia as Gālia <- well, that is wrong. The "a" MUST be short (no matter the amount of stress/accent you put into it), but the L must be geminated (and here the Italian serves a good example). Incidentally, this is well done in my own example, as I believe, so you can just listen to it again.
- I take it you don't nasalize the final -m (quārum) - well, that's ok, many people don't and it's not yet become a standard (though it should be) and I even think that my own recording in the original post doesn't do it (in fact, any of those recordings, but I change my habits a lot in the last year...)
- you also pronounce "qu" in the standard way as [kw] - well, that's Ok (and I did it like that in my original post too), but now I do try and I think more people should try to do it as it was reconstructed and that sound is a bit different, so I'm just letting you know (I may post a recording). More about it in my other thread THREAD: pronunciation-of-qu-restored-pronunciation
- you say āliam... again aliam <- you don't respect the short vowels, you just let if flow like modern Italian which is really NOT fitting on its own without any modifications to do the restituted pronunciation with.
- oh btw, I must praise your vowel qualities, your realization of the long vowels (though you sometimes realize them in unfitting places) and your R: WELL DONE! (if you are an English native speakers). Also the stops are done very well: no audible aspiration of t/d/p...
- you pronounced appellantur (if I don't that semi-elision you did there) as apē-lantūr" <- well, you can see what's wrong with it: 1) you need pp, not p 2) you need e, not ē 3) you need ll, not ll 4) you need tur and not TŪR <- the last number is probably the worst of it (I could overlook the first 3 pints maybe)
- I noticed your transitional vowel between hī omnēs is a quite strong consonantal i/j: I think that is really unnecessary given that the tongue travels from i to o downwards and therefore doesn't need to create this semi-consonant (or it is really weak, that could posit its absence). But that's just a detail
- hī omnēs linguā <- the ā in linguā must be long, otherwise it's not ablative but nominative and that makes sense there (that's also why my transcription included it), so pay attention to this one.
- difFERunt pronounced as diffeRUNT with a final accent: that never happens in Latin (unless the word is monosyllabic) nor is there any reason for it. My transcription of the text is quite clear where to put the accent (I take it that you did it according to that). I'm not sure whether your FF here was doubled or not... but I'll believe it was (it seems so a bit).
- Gallōs -> I hear it again as Gālōs, maybe Galōs... in both cases you can see what's wrong with it (vowel quantity / consonant length).
- you pronounced the name of the river the same way as you would pronounce the label for a married woman matrōna, ae (though properly there should also be a long ā: mātrōna), you said MaTRŌNa, but have you followed my transcription with marked vowel lengths and stresses? You would have known this particular name is a bit different word and should therefore be pronounce MĀtrona (long and accented first syllable and SHORT "o" and therefore unaccented).
- also Sēquana sounded a bit like Sēquāna <- this will be my biggest problem with your recording. You either haven't followed my marked text that well or you did, but ignored these quite fine parts that are important too. One must not arbitrarily make up lengths where there are none!
- 1) you pronounced DĪvidit as diVĪDdit <- that's wrong (the first syllable is long and accented, the second one is short and unaccented) 2) you pronounced "v" here with your teeth and lower lip: that's wrong in the restituted pronunciation and it's quite serious transgression since this is one thing that sets it quite clearly apart from the traditional ones, so one should pay extra attention not to mix these two pronunciations
- in "Belgae" in (.. sunt Belgae) I don't really hear the diphthong at the end really well: it should still be heard in this pronunciation
- in proptereā between e and ā you do a consonantal "j" (a trasitional vowel) I mean distinguishible one: again no reason for it really. One can travel with the tongue from "e" and "a" without going through the place of "j" articulation and very well avoid its pronunciation with these two vowels: it's needless there
- in longissimē I hear quite a long ē (that's good), but not "ss"
- absunt pronounced as abSUNT <- why a stress on the last syllable??
- in ad eōs you connect it in a way as to create the from the "d" a flap/tap sound as there is one int he American pronunciation sometimes in the words as "pretty" or "city" + the way you did it here quite borders with the flap sound that is done for the short "r" in many languages for example Spanish (so with a little bit of imagination it comes our almost as "areōs" <- well, that's not good, you shouldn't change the consonant qualities in this way for whatever purposes. Also the ō in the "eōs" was disproportionally long: for no reason at all. That's the intonation quirk again...
- commeant pronounced as comēiant - again with a needless (or needlessly strong transitional "i" consonant) and wrongly done the initial mm and short "e" (shouldn't not be long)
- animōs.... why ānimōs??! I'm sorry, I don't get it
I will just think it's because of that weird intonation you have chosen (but still: the intonation shouldn't butcher the vowel quantities - that's already wrong).- important pronounced as imporTANT - again, no sense... see my transcription
- Germānīs pronounced as Germānijīs...(or Germājiīs) - you added an extra syllable to the end and maybe shifted the accent/stress (though I'm not 100% sure here)
- incolunt as incoLUNT... why????
- bellum as bēlum <- wrong (maybe trying too much to sound Italian here?)
But again, don't think of me as of some angry and evil person
I've just spent almost an hour on this and I do really mean for you that become better Those things that I praised I mean seriously: that is great and moves you surely beyond many English speakers I have heard attempting to do the same.
But please try to correct those things I repeatedly mentioned (that you would repeatedly get wrong): the final accents were atrocious
Well, Godmy, just because I sent six recordings isn't a very excuse not to comment on any of them! You could choose just one and comment on it if you like. Nor does it have to be a long comment. I agree with you about AndrewEarthrise's recording that he does somewhat over-exaggerate the Italian accent, and puts the accent in strange places and pronounces the final vowel of linguā and Celtae as short. On the other hand it is very vigorous and also very clear and easy to understand. I think perhaps sometimes we concentrate too much on individual letters though and forget to try to make the language flow and sound like a real language. We must also not forget rhythm, which is so important to a Roman writer; that is to say we should scan prose and read it as if it were verse. How different Livy's 'conclamat vir paterque!' sounds from what Cicero might say, namely 'vir paterque conclamat!'
Actually I have a good excuse: it's the rules of this thread you probably didn't follow:
But I should have told you right away in the summer. My bad (though you could have read it, right?). Btw. what happened that summoned you here after such a long time?Ok, choose the recording that you think is the best and I'll review it... tomorrow maybe.
About the commentary length: I don't determine it, I just listen and write the things down: and even if I wanted to summarize repeated mistakes (if there are some), I would still have to have those notes, so there is nothing I can do about that.
In a way (if you omit that ablatives are not pronounced as ablative e.g.: that doesn't really deepen the understanding, does it?). But that's not the point, is it? The participants know very well they will be criticized for everything that is a part of the pronunciation the prosody certainly is. Now I know that it is difficult to know where to pronounce long and short vowels and stresses, and that's why I put there those transcriptions. So I take no excuses for them not to follow it and they will be criticized even for long, short vowels and misplaced stress, since I had already made a great deal of job for them by putting there those transcriptions (+ they are not required to repeat those texts I recorded... but it's ideal + there are those transcriptions.)
Well, but how a language should sound is so heavily subjective and everybody then can pronounce things to his random likings, therefore the reconstructed prosody must be followed to stay as objective as we can., we shouldn't randomly hallucinate what is the natural way to say it... that is just wrong.
I would object to that: I and also Wilfried Stroh think that there was nothing special (apart from elisions) in recitation of the poetry. The poetic thing was in the meter itself - it was emergent from the way it was written, not in the way the Roman said it. The ictus then shouldn't be something that gets any phonetical prominence at all, it's all based upon long & short vowels, long & short syllables and the correct prosodical pronunciation that you will do also in prose (in the same way). Then there is really no sense in trying to pronounce prose as you would poetry... that doesn't really make any sense to me.
The "rhythm" then you're talking becomes an emergent thing by reading the meter "naturally". Almost an abstract thing in a modern view of what rhythm is.
But I won't be starting a debate with you here, that's not really what this thread is for. Maybe make a new one.
Gratias tibi ago godmy! Criticism is a good thing, as one can always improve from whatever they do. To be honest, what made my pronunciation different was the intonation . Before last night, I did not read Latin as that.
I had for the most part ignored macrons, but when I heard your recording and when I tried it the first time, forgive me, but it did not sound quite human.
I was trying to figure out a way to pronounce the macrons as well as sound like a person. After recording a few times, I realized that the Italian intonation fit the macrons well, and it went along with it.
I really enjoyed myself, and to be honest, I kind of exaggerated it too much, which really hurt some of the pronunciation (as well as when I did it, it was 3 hours on the morrow)
If you will, I could record it again with your corrections in mind, and reupload it for you? Because of what you have written I shall be indubitably improved.
I had for the most part ignored macrons, but when I heard your recording and when I tried it the first time, forgive me, but it did not sound quite human.
I was trying to figure out a way to pronounce the macrons as well as sound like a person. After recording a few times, I realized that the Italian intonation fit the macrons well, and it went along with it.
I really enjoyed myself, and to be honest, I kind of exaggerated it too much, which really hurt some of the pronunciation (as well as when I did it, it was 3 hours on the morrow)
If you will, I could record it again with your corrections in mind, and reupload it for you? Because of what you have written I shall be indubitably improved.
Thank you for your response. The Italian pronunciation does some things... wrong in respect to the ancient pronunciation. For example they always make the accented vowel long: in Latin the accent/stress must not prolong the vowel: they are not connected at all. Therefore e.g. animus or familia with all vowels short but stressed in the right places.
Yeah, I thought you enjoyed yourself
Ok, record it... but just pay attention at least to the accents... or well, ideally to anything I've written. I may answer tomorrow.
Yeah, I thought you enjoyed yourself
Ok, record it... but just pay attention at least to the accents... or well, ideally to anything I've written. I may answer tomorrow.
So it's OK for you to upload six recordings, but not for anyone else? What very strange rules! Yes, choose the Caesar, since Andrew has chosen that and we have heard his italianate version. But I fear you are going to criticise tiny slips of the tongue rather than the whole gist. The slips of the tongue are neither here nor there in my opinion. Does it sound like a natural language? That's the important thing. - As for poetry, I didn't mean of course that we should distort the natural stresses, either when reading verse or when reading prose. What I meant was that the rhythm - the longs and shorts and the elisions - should be taken into account in prose just as much as in verse. Which is something you appear to believe in too.
You may post as many recordings as you want, but you can't expect then me going through them. I started the thread, I made the rules of this thread, I uploaded some content for others to imitate (as much as I could!) and supplied the transcriptions giving others all the help I could, I explained some phonetical rules. Is it so hard to follow how it works here at this forum? This is getting ridiculous, Bonifilius. From your first post where you picked on one controversial thing that may or may not be a mistake and used a logical fallacy against me, up to this one.
About the elisions in prose: that is quite a statement I don't think you would find so much support for. Some elisions yes (as one might pick in Plautus), but not in that extreme way it is done in poetry - I don't think that's really supported anywhere.
As I said, I won't be having discussion with you here in this thread. Why don't you make your own one? State your own rules...
About the elisions in prose: that is quite a statement I don't think you would find so much support for. Some elisions yes (as one might pick in Plautus), but not in that extreme way it is done in poetry - I don't think that's really supported anywhere.
As I said, I won't be having discussion with you here in this thread. Why don't you make your own one? State your own rules...
How very strange you are! You had no objection when Seraphinus uploaded 6 files, and you commented on them all, but when I uploaded just four it was apparently too many! And so far you haven't said anything about any of them, even in a general way. Perhaps because there is nothing to say. But as for elisions, nothing seems more probable to me than that the Romans pronounced their Latin with elisions in prose just as much as in verse. It was a natural part of the language, after all, and the clausulae show that elisions were made in prose. As for Plautus, whom you cite presumably as someone who wrote as closely as possible to spoken Latin, he is full of such lines as 'Nunc quam r(em) orat(um) huc veni primum proloquar' which won't scan unless you make the elisions.
By the way, I don't know if I conveyed this enough, because (as I warned you) I focused just on the bugs, but you really sounded convincingly non-English (no aspirated stops, no too strange vowel qualities)... if you didn't have the nation of origin written under your nickname, I would have been struggling guessing where you come from (whether not after all from Italy: though I considered it a bit over the top, that's why I also asked there one Italian guy to verify) and that is rare indeed.
Anyway, for that, well done!
Just try to work on some of those things: you did just like 2-3 mistakes that you would repeat over and over again and again. So if you manage to remove them, it should be just perfect: because otherwise you really seem to do foreign pronunciations really well!