In another thread:
First, there is no single "pronunciation of Latin" at all. The language changed, in pronunciation and grammar, over the several centuries spanned by our extant documents. The so-called "Ecclesiastical Pronunciation" reflects the pronunciation in Italy toward the very end of the Empire, which is why it is essentially the same pronunciation as modern Italian. The diphthongs ae and oe merged to e early on, and afterward C and G were palatalized before soft vowels; and the semivowels W and Y gradually shifted to the consonants V and J.
In the earlier Classical period, however, V and I were most certainly pronounced as semivowels. There is plenty of evidence for this; notably Roman spelling (why would they have used the same letter to represent two different sounds? They didn't have any historical reasons to do so as we do today; it was their own alphabet, after all), and also in borrowings into other languages (the English wine and vine, for example, are both borrowed from the same Latin word, but at different points in time).
And in pre-Classical times, pronunciation was still different. The letter F (borrowed from the Greek digamma) originally represented our sound W, while in the places where V would later show up, proto-Latin had GW. A pre-Classical sound shift brought W to F, and GW to W. There is linguistic evidence of this as well, notably in PIE cognates:
Proto-Latin *gwigwo vs. English quick (as in, "the quick and the dead")
Also, there are parallel processes all across the linguistic spectrum of W becoming V in some dialects, remaining W in others (this being one of the consonant shifts which separated the Anglo-Frisian branch from the main Germanic).
Second, what is actually silly-sounding about "Wehnee, weedee, weekee" (they are all long vowels, are they not?) in the first place? It certainly doesn't make any sense to judge the sound of the phrase by modern English aesthetic values. Remember that these words had "immediate meaning" to the Romans; they were not mere sounds, but came with their own array of emotional associations. Say it like you're actually serious about it, and believe me, it can sound compelling.
There is nothing inherently "silly" about W sounds anyway...we have plenty of "heavy", "respectable"-sounding short W-words in English as well, such as "wealth", "worth", "well", "war", "weight", etc.
Also it is worth noting that English, so I am told, sounds rather ugly to speakers of most other languages, even the poetic phrases that we find beautiful.
Well, a few things:quemquem me facis dixit:Oh geez Marius, don't get into the idiots who tell you Latin v's are pronounced as w's...that's professorial stupidity.
I mean...say "veni, vidi, vici" (whether with the Italian ch sound or not) with the v's pronounced that way, and it'll sound like baby talk.
First, there is no single "pronunciation of Latin" at all. The language changed, in pronunciation and grammar, over the several centuries spanned by our extant documents. The so-called "Ecclesiastical Pronunciation" reflects the pronunciation in Italy toward the very end of the Empire, which is why it is essentially the same pronunciation as modern Italian. The diphthongs ae and oe merged to e early on, and afterward C and G were palatalized before soft vowels; and the semivowels W and Y gradually shifted to the consonants V and J.
In the earlier Classical period, however, V and I were most certainly pronounced as semivowels. There is plenty of evidence for this; notably Roman spelling (why would they have used the same letter to represent two different sounds? They didn't have any historical reasons to do so as we do today; it was their own alphabet, after all), and also in borrowings into other languages (the English wine and vine, for example, are both borrowed from the same Latin word, but at different points in time).
And in pre-Classical times, pronunciation was still different. The letter F (borrowed from the Greek digamma) originally represented our sound W, while in the places where V would later show up, proto-Latin had GW. A pre-Classical sound shift brought W to F, and GW to W. There is linguistic evidence of this as well, notably in PIE cognates:
Proto-Latin *gwigwo vs. English quick (as in, "the quick and the dead")
Also, there are parallel processes all across the linguistic spectrum of W becoming V in some dialects, remaining W in others (this being one of the consonant shifts which separated the Anglo-Frisian branch from the main Germanic).
Second, what is actually silly-sounding about "Wehnee, weedee, weekee" (they are all long vowels, are they not?) in the first place? It certainly doesn't make any sense to judge the sound of the phrase by modern English aesthetic values. Remember that these words had "immediate meaning" to the Romans; they were not mere sounds, but came with their own array of emotional associations. Say it like you're actually serious about it, and believe me, it can sound compelling.
There is nothing inherently "silly" about W sounds anyway...we have plenty of "heavy", "respectable"-sounding short W-words in English as well, such as "wealth", "worth", "well", "war", "weight", etc.
Also it is worth noting that English, so I am told, sounds rather ugly to speakers of most other languages, even the poetic phrases that we find beautiful.