teaching Latin--which pronunciation?

[garddwr]

If you teach Latin, which pronunciation do you choose? Why? I know it's not a huge deal one way or the other, but I'm hung up on this...

[K&Rs Mom]

We use Ecclesiastical because the church connection is important to me.

[littlebug42]

We use ecclesiastical as well as we are Catholic so it has meaning to the children. They requested that we learn more Latin so they can understand more for church.

[ocelotmom]

I started with Classical when we started Song School Latin, as we have no church connection. This seems to make the most sense if they're going to eventually study it at the college level or something.

 

However, listening to the Ecclesiastical tracks, I found that it matched up much better with how I instinctively pronounced the words.

[Mommy22alyns]

Ecclesiastical, because I couldn't imagine Veni Vidi Vici prounced as Way-nee Wee-dee Wee-kee. No.

[KidsHappen]

This is not going to be a terribly popular answer but I'll give it anyhow. I use an Americanized pronunciation. In other words, how it would be pronounced if your were using basic English phonics. I do this because I have found that while the general public (and a great deal of lawyers, doctors and scientists) may know lots of Latin words, they don't understand them when they are pronounced correctly. Of course, that means I sound uneducated to the people that actually know Latin but I interact with less of those people IRL. I figure it is a dead language, we are not exactly sure how it was pronounced in the first place and there are at least two current (I belive there may be a third) usages and generally speaking you really only need to know how to read and write it (unless of course you listen to Mass in church in which case the choice is already made for you). Ok, where is the tomato proof suit? :leaving:

[garddwr]

Hmm, seems Ecclesiastical is the most popular...

I'm leaning towards Classical, but explaining other pronunciations as we encounter them...I just need to make up my mind and go with it!

[ereks mom]

We used classical, but I think we're in the minority.

[Greenmama2]

Ecclesiastical here despite not being Catholic or even Christian. I agree with the PP who pointed out that most folks are familiar with quite a bit of Latin but not pronunciation. It also seems though, at least here is Aus that most people have been exposed through singing Haydn or Mozart Mass etc so ecclesiastical will be the most familiar.

[Janie Grace]

Classical. It's what I learned in high school, so ecclesiastical sounds strange to me.

[Firefly]

We're not Christian, so I decided to teach classical pronunciation.

[ocelotmom]

Hmm, seems Ecclesiastical is the most popular...

I'm leaning towards Classical, but explaining other pronunciations as we encounter them...I just need to make up my mind and go with it!

 

We're sort of still deciding.

 

I think I'm actually leaning towards classical, just because ecclesiastical seems more phonetically intuitive for English speakers, and therefore easier to switch to that should they end up deciding to become Catholic or something, if that makes sense. (And because I think that, if they go on to study it further, it will most likely be in a setting that uses Classical.)

[EKS]

Classical. We're not Christian.

[Aquinas Academy]

Both! :D When DD 14 began Latin we used ecclesiastical pronunciation because we're Catholic. When we started reading more Roman writings we started using classical pronunciation, but kept using ecclesiastical pronunciation for prayers. For my other kids we've done both pronunciations right from the get-go and haven't had any problems.

[2_girls_mommy]

ecclesiastical. My step dad, who spoke latin and had a position in the church that required him to speak it once told me if they are saying, "Salwe" for hello then I was using the wrong thing :)

[nd293]

I went with classical as we are not religious and I assume classical will be most useful at university level - it's just an assumption, though.

[Desert Rat]

We use Classical because we are secular with no religious affilitations.

[TKDmom]

We use classical. I had a really hard time deciding and was leaning toward ecclesiastical, because the pronunciation seemed more intuitive. But I asked dd which she would prefer, and she wanted to learn classical. She felt more strongly about her choice than I did, so I went with what she wanted.

[Jen in PA]

We use classical. It just seemed like the best choice in case the dc end up continuing Latin through college.

[Truscifi]

I went with classical as we are not religious and I assume classical will be most useful at university level - it's just an assumption, though.

 

This.

[kchara]

We use ecclesiastical. I figured that if they're going to actually hear it read or sung, anyway, it would be in ecclesiastical, so that's what we went with. I figured for reading and language study, it really didn't matter, anyway. We're Christian, but not Catholic, and that didn't really play into it.

[boscopup]

:lurk5: I've been saying all along that I don't plan to do Latin, but then today I got this bug and decided I *might* do Latin in a year or two. I was looking at this issue, and we have no religious reason to do Ecclesiastical, but Classical sounds weird to me with the w's and such. I don't know if I can get over that. :lol:

 

So is Classical typically used in colleges? What about in the fields of science and medicine? Is one over the other preferred, or do they use an Americanized version? I have never learned Latin. My children aren't old enough to know what fields they'll go into, though I can definitely see the oldest going into a science field of some type.

[garddwr]

Science and medicine definitely use an "English" pronunciation, neither ecclesiastical nor classical; one of the earlier posters mentioned that is what she is using. I'm leaning towards classical only because I've always been fascinated by "Ancient" cultures (I have a degree in Archeology)--and using the classical pronunciation seems more authentic. At the same time, what Latin I know comes from singing in a choir--only it was a German choir, so the version of Latin, while similar to the Italicized ecclesiastical Latin used by the Catholic church and by most "Christian" Latin programs, was the unique German/Austrian pronunciation of ecclesiastical Latin :-)

[Imprimis]

We went with the classical pronunciation.