Dipthong/Tripthong Pronounication

[Anonymous]

I am having trouble figuring out how to pronounce the dipthongs and tripthongs in Latin.

ae - caelum, Graecus, caecus, aetas
au - audire, nauta, laudare, pauci
ea - eadem, dea, creare
ei - deinde
eu - meus, neuter, deus
ia - quoniam, scientia, iam, iacere
ie - patientia
iu - iuvare, iudex, iucundus, ius
oe - coepisse
ua - numquam, quam, aqua
ue - puer, puella, fluere, arguementum
ui - quid, qui, quisque, quidque
uu - antiquus, tuus'
uo - quoniam, quod, quoque, quattuor

uae - quae

Any help on these pronounications would be greatly appreciated.

Furthermore, are there soft and hard sounds for vowels in Latin?

i - difficilis
e - regere
u - iucundus

How are these words pronounced, are the inner vowels soft/hard?

Thanks

 

[QMF]

For one, there is no such thing as a triphthong in Latin. I'll explain this in a moment.

ae is pronounced similar to a long i in English, as in fight. (NOT as in fit.)
au is pronounced similar to ou in English, as in house. (NOT as in soup.)
ea, ei, ia, ie, iu, ua, ue, uu, and uo are not diphthongs; each letter is pronounced separately, in most cases. Exceptions in a moment.
In most cases eu and ui are not diphthongs. They are usually pronounced separately. However, there are exceptions, such as neuter and cui.
I have been told that oe is pronounced similar to "oi" in English as "oil." I am still not quite certain on that, however.
qu- is very much like English, a simple "kw" sound. This is why "quae" does not contain a triphthong. (Technically one might say that the sound is really more like "k" followed by the Latin "v" sound, which is considered to have been written the same way as "u" and pronounced like "w", but don't overcomplicate things.) An exception to this is found with words with "quu", such as coquus, antiquus, etc. These words have the u's separated.

Exceptions to the rule for anything with i followed by a vowel:
There is a concept called consonantal i in Latin. Often, when followed by a vowel, i is pronounced like "y" as in "you." Examples are iam, ius, iucundus, iudex, etc. In general, this only occurs when the i starts the word, although when pronunciation changes are mandated, as in poetry, exceptions can be made.

"Hard and soft" vowel sounds is the wrong way to refer to Latin vowels. All Latin vowels have a length, either short or long. In some texts, a long syllable can be seen by what is called a macron, or a line over the letter. Long and short vowels, like in English, are pronounced differently. Description:
a-very similar between short and long, I never quite caught the difference. A long a is just longer. (Long syllables, which are affected by vowel length, are supposed to be about twice as long as short syllables.) Edit: both are pronounced as in "father", never as in "fate."
e-a short e is pronounced as in "bet", a long e is pronounced similar to "weigh."
i-a short i is pronunced as in "pit", a long i is pronounced similar to "fee."
o-a short o is pronounced as in "ox", a long o is pronounced as in "sofa."
u-a short u...this is debatable. I pronounce short u as in "uh" and long u as in "goo." Technically short u should be pronounced as "oo" but shorter, however.

I'm not certain, but estimates on vowel lengths for those words:
short, long, short, short
long, short, short
short, long, short

I hope this helped. It looks like you really just made things a lot harder than they needed to be, since you thought that every single one of those combinations were diphthongs.

 

[Andy]

Indeed, some of the reconstructionist speeches I've heard pronounce the vowel with double the length.

If there's an a with a macron on in (dunno how to place a macron with the keyboard) you would read one a (as in f'a'ther) for the duration of two 'a''s, if I'm not mistaken.

 

[Anonymous]

Thanks for such a timely reply. Just one thought though. If 'ae' is pronounced similiar to a long i in English, as in fight. How is Caesar pronounced? I always heard it pronounced as SEE-zar. Is it just a common mispronounciation or is it an exception to the rule?

Thanks.

 

[Andy]

It's a common mispronounciation, though it's pretty standard in English.

Caesar would have been pronounced: (remember, a as in f'a'ther and e as in 'e'loquent, s as in 's'urprise and r as in 'r'apid.)

KAESAR.

We can see obvious reflections of this in modern languages, Russian Czar, German Kaiser, and so on.

 

[QMF]

Actually Andy, I think Caesar may have actually been taken from German Kaiser (rather than the other way around) during the course of their interaction. There were quite a few "wars" (if you could call them that, as they were more like skirmishes) with the Germans before Iulius Caesar, so the word may have already proliferated.

Edit: section removed due to Marius' more accurate description.

 

[Marius Magnus]

The English pronunciation of Caesar as "SEE-zur" comes from French. Here are the sound changes that happened from Latin to French, in chronological order (more or less):

1. Diphthongs ae and oe were reduced to simply e (pronounced 'ay', not 'ee').

2. C and G became palatalized (pronounced like English CH and J, respectively) before front vowels E, I, and Y.

3. The affricates CH and J were weakened to the fricatives SH and ZH.

4. SH was fronted to S.

5. Intervocalic S was voiced to Z.

At this point, the word would have been borrowed from Old French and pronounced "SAY-zar".

During the Norman occupation, the English language then underwent the Great Vowel Shift, which raised "ay" to "ee". The result is "SEE-zar".

The Great Vowel Shift is what is responsible for the Modern English pronunciations of the vowels A, E, and I being different from their Continental pronunciations.

 

[timmy1729]

So basically, English is the Wildebeest of the languages? The leftovers jumbled together into something that works? LOL!
I guess that's why I like Latin. It seems so much more pure.

 

[Homo computatralis]

There's no such thing as a "pure" language. Latin itself underwent many changes since it diverged from Proto-Indo-European and was also influenced by other languages around it.

It should also be noted that what is taught in books is the "classical" pronunciation of Latin, like the Romans around the time of the first emperors used to pronounce it. But there is also another popular pronunciation, the so called "ecclesiastical" pronunciation, which is how the priests in the Vatican speak. This pronunciation evolved during the middle-ages and became widespread due to the catholic church. It's much softer and closer to the way modern Italian is spoken.

There are many other pronunciations which are basically the ecclesiastical pronunciation modified to fit the various local languages to which the catholic church spread. Some would say that they are "mispronunciations", but I think we shouldn't be so pedantic. After all, there would be no French or Spanish language if Latin were never mispronounced.

 

[Marius Magnus]

"Ecclesiastical" pronunciation is really just Italian pronunciation. Each location continued to use Latin in the church, but pronounced the letters as they were sounded in the local vernacular, and so you had an English pronunciation, a French pronunciation (of Latin, not of French), an Italian pronunciation, and so on. It so happens that the Vatican is in Italy, and so that pronunciation became standard for the Church. The Classical pronunciation was "rediscovered" by comparatively modern research.

The sound changes that produced the Italian pronunciation, indeed the Italian language itself, were well underway during the later Empire, before the Middle Ages. The most notable changes were:

1. AE, OE -> E

2. Y -> J

3. W -> V

4. C, G before front vowels -> CH, J

But these changes are particular to Italy; the language underwent different variations in other regions.

 

[deudeditus]

i don't know. i happen to love english; and i don't understand why people, especially anglophones, rag on it so much. it is a beautiful language and is very exact.

mari, concerning the [ Y -> J ] change. ?? do you mean [ I -> J ]? ... i'm not trying to be a smart-ass, i'm just wondering. [ cuius -> cujus ] (was that pronounced the same, or was it koo-juice? )