Pronunciation: qu, ch, th, macrons

[Ahmesius]

salvete cives fori!
Taking quemquem me facis' advice, I had obtained the Cambridge Latin Course (first) book and began studying from it. I was very skeptic at first but I'm actually enjoying it quite a bit now.

One problem is that it lacks a preface or any sort of foreword... Just jumps straight away to the first text. Fine with me but I'm not sure how the Cambridge guys expect us to pronounce.
I did find some guidance to Roman pronunciation, but please do tell:

* Do you really say all c-s with a k sound? e.g. Caecilius sounds like Kay-kill-you-s (rather than Kay-tsill-you-s)?

* V is really W? so "in viā" will be "in wee-ya"?

* It seems there are too much "qu" sounds in Latin. Does the word "quoque" sound like "kwo-kwe", or "ko-ke", or "kvo-kve"...?

* The macrons... How do they help really? Can you tell where the stress is according to them? There are some words with more than one macron (vēnālīcius) and I just don't know what to do with them all.

* ch - an ordinary k or something like Greek χ, or German ch in machen?

* th - just t or something else?

* Anything else which is rather important and I neglected to mention?

Thanks in advance for the help!

EDIT
Silly me! I didn't see a thread about exactly the same subject just below I'll be glad if you answer at least how meticulous you are about how you pronounce and the particular sounds that did not appear in that thread (qu, ch, th, macrons)...

 

[QMF]

Happy to know that you picked up the CLC, lemme see if I can help. I'm using the classical pronunciations here; Iynx or someone else can help you if you're interested in ecclesiastical pronunciations.

Yes, all c's are hard.

Technically, I've heard that v is w, but in my opinion, it's a v sound; "weni, widi, wici" just sounds like baby talk to me.

Yes, there are a lot of qu- sounds in Latin; they are indeed pronounced as kw.

Macrons...well, I guess I have to give you a little lesson now. All Latin syllables have length. A syllable is, in general, long if a. its vowel is long (meaning that it has a macron, in a text with macrons) b. its vowel is a diphthong (e.g. ae, au, etc.) or c. the syllable per se ends in a consonant. For non-Latin speakers this last point can be confusing, as Latin syllabic construction is peculiar, at least to an Anglophone's ears. For instance, Caecilius is Cae-ci-li-us. Only the last syllable ends in a consonant. Someone may need to correct me, but I believe it would be "scanned" as "long-short-short-long." Now you're wondering, what does this have to do with my pronunciation question? Well, in Latin, a long syllable is supposed to get two morae, while a short syllable is supposed to get one mora. That is, a long syllable is twice as long. That may help in pronunciation if you can remember it. But emphasis in Latin is very simple. A short synopsis of the rules:
monosyllabic words are not accented.
disyllabic words always have the second-to-last syllable, or penult, accented.
Words with more than two syllables are decided by the length of the penult. If the penult is long, it is accented, if the penult is short, the antepenult (i.e. the third-to-last syllable) is accented.

So using our Caecilius example, it would be pronounced "Kai-KIH-lih-us."

Sorry to give a long lecture on that point...edit: there's actually more to it than that; macrons also dictate the sound of the vowel, and syllabic length, unlike English which bases its poetic meter in accents, is the basis of Latin poetic meter.

"Ch" is, as far as I know, universally derived from Greek, so it would indeed be similar to χ.

"Th" is also, again as far as I know, universally derived from Greek, and so it is pronounced like θ (if you know Greek, this means it is NOT pronounced like "the." but rather like "thousand.")

Edit: There's one rather important point that I don't really know much about, and that is elisions, or the running together of words. I'll only provide an example, since it's hard for me to understand:
Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori
Pronounced as if it were spelled:
Dulcet decorumst pro patria mori

 

[Andy]

Technically, I've heard that v is w, but in my opinion, it's a v sound; "weni, widi, wici" just sounds like baby talk to me.

I must agree that it sounds like baby-talk to me as well. But I must contend that this is most likely (if not the certain way) the Romans pronounced their 'v's.

It's a matter of taste in the end. Saying 'wini, widi, wici' might sound like baby talk to modern day ears - but Ceasar might have understood you. On the other hand, 'vini, vidi, vici' with hard 'v's might sound more 'v'aliant, but any educated Roman would probably look down on one.

 

[Iynx]

If you're trying to learn "classical" pronunciation, I'm afraid that if I say too much I'll just confuse you. "Ecclesiatically" (to give one example), we say chay-CHILL-ee-uhs, and pronounce the v's like English v's.

Ecclesiastically, ch is usually rendered something like the kh in "blockhouse". Some speakers reduce it to a simple k before an i or an e. But sch is very variably pronounced. I try to just put an s before a "blockhouse" kh, but some speakers (mostly Academics) do an sk, and some Ecclesiastics do an sh.

Ecclesiastics usually pronounce th like that in the English "hothouse". I certainly have heard Academic Latinists do the same, and, with respect to qmf, I have also heard θ so rendered.

 

[QMF]

I never claimed to be an expert

 

[Cato]

Re: Pronunciation

* The macrons... How do they help really? Can you tell where the stress is according to them? There are some words with more than one macron (vēnālīcius) and I just don't know what to do with them all.

QMF gives a pretty good answer on the macrons. They really aren't that much help starting out (the pronounciation difference between long and short a, for example, is a detail I wouldn't worry about just now), but they come in handy later. The idea is you will notice them now, and they won't seem like such an odd thing later when their importance becomes clear.

Three quick points:

* The macron often lets you distinguish between case endings; the 1st decl. nominative singular is terra, but the ablative is terrā.
* Some words have the exact same spelling, but different meanings. The presence or absense of a macron is the only way to tell them apart: Levis means "light", but lēvis means "smooth". There aren't a lot of these, but there are some.
* If the penultimate syllable (second-to-last) of a 3+ syllable word has a macron, the accent goes there (e.g. amātus is pronounced "a-MAH-tus"). However, this doesn't mean a penultimate syllable that lacks the macron lacks the accent; an unmacroned penultimate syllable will still get the accent if it has two consonants before the final-syllable vowel (e.g. amandus is pronounced "a-MAN-dus" despite the short a). Otherwise the accent goes on the third-to-last (antepenult) syllable (e.g. filius is pronounced "FI-li-us").

 

[Marius Magnus]

Re: Pronunciation

* Do you really say all c-s with a k sound? e.g. Caecilius sounds like Kay-kill-you-s (rather than Kay-tsill-you-s)?

Yes. All C's are hard: "kigh-KEE-lee-uss". Note also the vowel pronunciation: "ae" is a diphthong combining "ah" and "eh", approximately the same sound as English "igh".

* V is really W? so "in viā" will be "in wee-ya"?

Yep, and your opening line would be "sal-WEH-teh, KEE-wehs FOH-ree".

* It seems there are too much "qu" sounds in Latin. Does the word "quoque" sound like "kwo-kwe", or "ko-ke", or "kvo-kve"...?

Yep. "KWO-kweh", "KWEENG-kweh", etc.

In Old English we occasionally had "cwaet", and later "hwaet", for "what" (Latin "quid"...hmm...). All these KW's come from Proto-Indo-European, and over time gradually morphed into things easier to pronounce (W in English, V in German, K in most Romance languages, but note that Icelandic still has "hvað", pronounced "khfadh").

* The macrons... How do they help really? Can you tell where the stress is according to them? There are some words with more than one macron (vēnālīcius) and I just don't know what to do with them all.

Length is more important than stress, which is why we have macrons and not accent marks. Stress is there, but weaker than in English. Stress is also regularly predictable from the vowel lengths, as I think someone already described.

* ch - an ordinary k or something like Greek χ, or German ch in machen?

* th - just t or something else?

CH, TH, and PH represent the Greek chi, theta, and phi. There is some debate, however, on exactly how these were pronounced in Classical Greek. They could be fricatives (as in German "machen", English "thing", and something like the letter F only pronounced with both lips rather than the lower lip and the upper teeth), or they could be aspirate stops. It is much more likely they were aspirate stops, however, because then their spelling is quite literal: i.e., a CH is a C (hard K) followed by an H, as though they were a consonant cluster.

The real trick is that ordinary C, T, and P were unaspirated in Latin, and therefore are sounds we don't have in English, since we aspirate every K, T, or P that occurs in isolation. To highlight the aspiration of these consonants, consider:

top-hat
back-hoe
foot-hold

Those are more intensely aspirated than normal; to get an ordinary Latin K, T or P, try to remove the "puff of air" (i.e., the H) that normally follows them in English.