Which pronunciation of Latin is most useful?

[MASHomeschooler]

(We are not Catholic, so that doesn't play into it for us.) I am thinking, for the stated benefits of familiarity with large English words, scientific names, and other languages (particularly Spanish) - which pronunciation aligns best with these, and therefore would be more useful?

[TGHEALTHYMOM]

Bumping!

(We are not Catholic, so that doesn't play into it for us.) I am thinking, for the stated benefits of familiarity with large English words, scientific names, and other languages (particularly Spanish) - which pronunciation aligns best with these, and therefore would be more useful?

 

Some people make a much bigger deal about this than it really is.  Personally, I prefer the restored classical pronunciation.  It is very simple, very consistent, and it makes spelling the words easy.  Note that most modern legal terms in Latin are completely mispronounced with respect to all known Latin pronunciation standards!  And with regards to Spanish, there's probably more differentiation in how modern Spanish is pronounced all over the world today than the two main Latin pronunciation standards.

[Saddlemomma]

I took 5 year's of Spanish between Jr. and Sr. high.  The Spanish vowels are pronounced the exact same way as the Latin vowels using the Christian Latin pronunciation as in Latina Christiana curricula.

[MiMi 4under3]

We use both!!  

 

Depending on how the word sounds, we pick the one we like more.   :laugh:  :lol:

 

 

 

 

ETA:   I'm sorry -- that doesn't answer your question. 

[RootAnn]

Some people make a much bigger deal about this than it really is.  

Note that most modern legal terms in Latin are completely mispronounced with respect to all known Latin pronunciation standards!

And with regards to Spanish, there's probably more differentiation in how modern Spanish is pronounced all over the world today than the two main Latin pronunciation standards.

 

:iagree:  Find a program that works for you & use whatever it comes with. 

[MASHomeschooler]

Thanks, everyone. I do tend to over-think things. :)

[Dmmetler]

It's also really not a big deal to switch. My DD started with Ecclesiastical Latin because I learned Latin to sing it, so that was what I was comfortable with. She stuck with that through SSL and LFC. We switched to Cambridge because DD wasn't getting a lot of retention from LFC (she's a whole-Part learner, and I could see a difference in how she was learning Spanish, mostly via reading it, vs. Latin, via memorizing it), which not only is Classical Latin, but is Classical Latin with a British accent, and never skipped a beat-except that now she reads Latin out loud with a British accent ;).

[Wilma]

Unless you're planning to befriend the ancient Romans, it probably doesn't matter much at all.

[TGHEALTHYMOM]

I have both so I was not sure if it mattered.  I am glad you asked and got some great responses!

[dirty ethel rackham]

Another vote for "it doesn't matter."  Ds20 did for years of Latin with Ecclesiastical pronuncation.  When he went to college, they use Classical pronunciation.  He made the switch just fine.  He recently added a Classics major to his plan and was asked to be a paid Latin tutor for next year, so I don't think it held him back.

[Nomen Nescio]

If your kid can go from Ecclesiastical to Classical, good luck. But generally, that's going to be the harder path to take, because you actually learn less phonetic information about the word in the Ecclesiastical system, so the majority of your vocabulary would have to be relearned to absorb the new data. Furthermore, programs that use the Ecclesiastical pronunciation may mark the main stress of the word, because otherwise you might as well not even bother to try and read Latin poetry from the post-Classical period up to and including the recent translations of Dr. Suess. But if you learn the vowel qualities, you can not only figure out where the stresses are supposed to be without them being marked, you can develop an instinct for doing so in a cold reading.

 

Whatever you do, don't try to pronounce Latin as though they were English words, as Wise Bauer recommends in her book. Learn a system used by actual Latin speakers.

[dirty ethel rackham]

If your kid can go from Ecclesiastical to Classical, good luck. But generally, that's going to be the harder path to take, because you actually learn less phonetic information about the word in the Ecclesiastical system, so the majority of your vocabulary would have to be relearned to absorb the new data. Furthermore, programs that use the Ecclesiastical pronunciation may mark the main stress of the word, because otherwise you might as well not even bother to try and read Latin poetry from the post-Classical period up to and including the recent translations of Dr. Suess. But if you learn the vowel qualities, you can not only figure out where the stresses are supposed to be without them being marked, you can develop an instinct for doing so in a cold reading.

 

Whatever you do, don't try to pronounce Latin as though they were English words, as Wise Bauer recommends in her book. Learn a system used by actual Latin speakers.

 

My son (the Classics and Biology major) begs to differ- he didn't find it a particularly difficult transition at all.  After 3 years of Ecclesiastical, it took all of about a week to figure out Classical pronunciation well enough to read poetry in meter. 

 

And who are the Latin speakers?  Both pronunciations are evolved pronunciations without a native speaking population.   Ecclesiastical is basically Latin with an Italian accent - which makes sense since the people who use it the most are primarily in Rome.  Classical is something that evolved over time in academia - long removed from the people who actually spoke it.  

 

I think the bigger issue for choosing a pronunciation is the best available class followed by the goal of learning the language.  For us, the goal was the mental exercise of Latin grammar, vocabulary enrichment, followed by singing and understanding Latin hymns in church.  The class we chose was a well-recommended school that fit with our schedule.  I never expected my "born a biologist" son to decide to double-major in Classics. 

 

[Nomen Nescio]

My son (the Classics and Biology major) begs to differ- he didn't find it a particularly difficult transition at all.  After 3 years of Ecclesiastical, it took all of about a week to figure out Classical pronunciation well enough to read poetry in meter. 

 

And who are the Latin speakers?  Both pronunciations are evolved pronunciations without a native speaking population.   Ecclesiastical is basically Latin with an Italian accent - which makes sense since the people who use it the most are primarily in Rome.  Classical is something that evolved over time in academia - long removed from the people who actually spoke it.  

 

I think the bigger issue for choosing a pronunciation is the best available class followed by the goal of learning the language.  For us, the goal was the mental exercise of Latin grammar, vocabulary enrichment, followed by singing and understanding Latin hymns in church.  The class we chose was a well-recommended school that fit with our schedule.  I never expected my "born a biologist" son to decide to double-major in Classics. 

I don't think this relates to what I'm talking about. There are 200-300 essential words that any Latin text will be obliged to cover. Some people put the core vocabulary at more like 1000 words. The difference between memorizing such a long list of words without specific vowel quantity versus that same list with the vowel quantities is a lot of data. In addition to adding that amount of data to a vocabulary list already memorized, going from Ecclesiastical pronunciation to Classical would mean re-mapping much of what you had internalized under the less specific system. This is the kind of thing I'm talking about, and it is surely not the kind of thing you mean when you say your son made the transition in a week. Within a week a person can learn to recognize and render from markings on the page the entire phonetic catalog of Classical Latin, and even consistently find the stressed syllable based on how stress location is moderated by quantity. And that is not the kind of thing I'm talking about when I say it takes extra work to go from Ecclesiastical to Classical. It's that huge vocabulary list that has to be re-learned and re-internalized.

 

It's like going from a system in which you have previously learned 1000 numbers to two decimal places to another system where you now need those same numbers to three decimal places. The work you've already done will help, but it's an awful lot like starting all over again.

 

Whereas, if you learned your vocabulary in the classical system to begin with, then the specifications you have memorized fit perfectly well with the relaxed demand for specificity, and you mostly need to learn a few changes in the pronunciation of diphthongs and consonant clusters, and a handful of special rules for how consonants that are always the same in the Classical system change according to placement in the Ecclesiastical system. Again, nothing nearly on the order of having to overwrite your memorization of 200-1000 words. 

 

The reconstructed classical pronunciation didn't evolve, it was painstakingly researched. If you want to complain about it, the actual problem is exactly the opposite of what would arise if it had evolved, because it is fastidiously normalized to a very particular time period and body of literature over which we take particular interest and have especially good evidence. The Ecclesiastical system is also normalized, and that not without its own artifices and overreaches. But by the time the Ecclesiastical model became codified and normalized, so that it ceased to evolve nearly so quickly, it was already not backwards compatible with Classical Latin. But Classical Latin is forward-compatible with Ecclesiastical Latin. There it's a matter of less specificity, in general, and some grammatical innovations that can be vexing but which will not be dealt with in introductory courses anyway. 

 

A person who perfectly absorbed the Classical system can shoot the breeze just fine with someone who perfectly absorbed the Ecclesiastical model. But in terms of the amount of work it takes to switch from one system to the other, the advantage is to the Classical system.

[Wilma]

I still submit that for most people there just isn't going to be much "shooting of the breeze".  It's a dead language, y'all.  Useful and cool, yes.  But not something to converse in regularly, and thusly not something over which to be in a wad over pronunciation styles.

[umsami]

I tend to go for the "Goodbye Mr. Chips" reasoning… paraphrasing..."Why teach Kikero when the kids are going to hear Cicero the rest of their lives?"

 

 

But I don't think it matters.   And when I took Latin, it was "Kikero"  "Kiwus" etc.

 

 

This has some fun clips from Monty Python http://www.carmentalatin.com/extras/extras.html

[Nomen Nescio]

I still submit that for most people there just isn't going to be much "shooting of the breeze".  It's a dead language, y'all.  Useful and cool, yes.  But not something to converse in regularly, and thusly not something over which to be in a wad over pronunciation styles.

I just mean that they are mutually intelligible, which is a non-trivial point against my own position. It matters less which system you use if people using different systems communicate among each other perfectly well, which they do. Why I'm claiming that it matters anyway is that the vocabulary memorized under the Classical system is the more complete form of the vocabulary you memorize under the Ecclesiastical system. 

[Reefgazer]

I've heard this before.  When I was looking into whether to have my daughter learn church Latin or classical Latin, I pondered this; I would have preferred classical Latin for this reason.  However, I went with church Latin because I did not know a stitch of Latin and I needed a video teacher and clear, idiot-proof teaching materials for her and I to work on (I felt she was too young to navigate one of the online classes that are offered). The best curricula I found (for teaching materials and support) happened to be church Latin.  I've always intended to switch her over to classical at some point (when she is old enough to cope with an online class), but I am not sure when the best time to do that would be.  We are working on the Form series from Memoria Press and learning it well and enjoying it.  I would like to stick with that through Fourth Form, if possible, because it is idiot proof for me and teaches the all the grammar first before delving into vocabulary (which makes it easier for me to learn the language).  Anyway, this roughly corresponds to finishing Henle II.  Would a switch then be difficult or not?  If I should abandon the Form series earlier, can you recommend a good, idiot-proof curriculum that teaches the grammar first (preferably with a video)? 

 

OTOH, as Ethel says, it might not matter.  But I am not enough of a Latin speaker to have a clue.  Does this even matter if a kid is not going past high school Latin courses?  Could a kid read the typical high school Latin courses without the Classical pronunciation, or is learning the Classical pronunciation necessary to do this (and possibly take the AP exam, for example?)

I don't think this relates to what I'm talking about. There are 200-300 essential words that any Latin text will be obliged to cover. Some people put the core vocabulary at more like 1000 words. The difference between memorizing such a long list of words without specific vowel quantity versus that same list with the vowel quantities is a lot of data. In addition to adding that amount of data to a vocabulary list already memorized, going from Ecclesiastical pronunciation to Classical would mean re-mapping much of what you had internalized under the less specific system. This is the kind of thing I'm talking about, and it is surely not the kind of thing you mean when you say your son made the transition in a week. Within a week a person can learn to recognize and render from markings on the page the entire phonetic catalog of Classical Latin, and even consistently find the stressed syllable based on how stress location is moderated by quantity. And that is not the kind of thing I'm talking about when I say it takes extra work to go from Ecclesiastical to Classical. It's that huge vocabulary list that has to be re-learned and re-internalized.

 

It's like going from a system in which you have previously learned 1000 numbers to two decimal places to another system where you now need those same numbers to three decimal places. The work you've already done will help, but it's an awful lot like starting all over again.

 

Whereas, if you learned your vocabulary in the classical system to begin with, then the specifications you have memorized fit perfectly well with the relaxed demand for specificity, and you mostly need to learn a few changes in the pronunciation of diphthongs and consonant clusters, and a handful of special rules for how consonants that are always the same in the Classical system change according to placement in the Ecclesiastical system. Again, nothing nearly on the order of having to overwrite your memorization of 200-1000 words. 

 

The reconstructed classical pronunciation didn't evolve, it was painstakingly researched. If you want to complain about it, the actual problem is exactly the opposite of what would arise if it had evolved, because it is fastidiously normalized to a very particular time period and body of literature over which we take particular interest and have especially good evidence. The Ecclesiastical system is also normalized, and that not without its own artifices and overreaches. But by the time the Ecclesiastical model became codified and normalized, so that it ceased to evolve nearly so quickly, it was already not backwards compatible with Classical Latin. But Classical Latin is forward-compatible with Ecclesiastical Latin. There it's a matter of less specificity, in general, and some grammatical innovations that can be vexing but which will not be dealt with in introductory courses anyway. 

 

A person who perfectly absorbed the Classical system can shoot the breeze just fine with someone who perfectly absorbed the Ecclesiastical model. But in terms of the amount of work it takes to switch from one system to the other, the advantage is to the Classical system.

 

[Beth in Mint Hill]

I agree with Nomen: there is a great advantage to learning Latin using the restored classical. But I also feel that any student who is studying 3-4 years of Latin should learn both systems. Just learn the basics of the ecclesiastical system as a secondary system and enjoy the way it sounds with songs and Latin prayers. But, as Nomen points out, mastering the core vocab with the vowel quantities of the classical system is important!

I still submit that for most people there just isn't going to be much "shooting of the breeze".  It's a dead language, y'all.  Useful and cool, yes.  But not something to converse in regularly, and thusly not something over which to be in a wad over pronunciation styles.

 

I would point out that even if a language is not used conversationally, (though there are those who do speak Latin), there are still many important verbal uses.  I can't even imagine memorizing vocab without at least silently repeating the Latin words in my head, speaking them out loud helps more. Same goes for memorizing paradigms.  As mentioned a couple of times above, this is even more important for scanning, memorizing and reciting Latin poetry.  When composing Latin sentences, it is critical to spell the words correctly, which is trivial if you use the completely phonetic Classical pronunciation.

 

While I'm OK with ecclesiastical pronunciation, I can't believe WTM recommends the vernacular pronunciation.  This is a horrible, no-good, un-SWB kind of idea.  "bona fide" as three syllables?  I can't even fathom how many problems that would cause.

[Reefgazer]

Just wondering, Ellen... Did your son happen to take the SAT II or the AP Latin?  If so, how did he find it, difficulty-wise?  That's my concern for my daughter...that she be able to handle both of those exams well.  If that's possible with church Latin, I probably won't switch at all.

My son (the Classics and Biology major) begs to differ- he didn't find it a particularly difficult transition at all.  After 3 years of Ecclesiastical, it took all of about a week to figure out Classical pronunciation well enough to read poetry in meter. 

 

And who are the Latin speakers?  Both pronunciations are evolved pronunciations without a native speaking population.   Ecclesiastical is basically Latin with an Italian accent - which makes sense since the people who use it the most are primarily in Rome.  Classical is something that evolved over time in academia - long removed from the people who actually spoke it.  

 

I think the bigger issue for choosing a pronunciation is the best available class followed by the goal of learning the language.  For us, the goal was the mental exercise of Latin grammar, vocabulary enrichment, followed by singing and understanding Latin hymns in church.  The class we chose was a well-recommended school that fit with our schedule.  I never expected my "born a biologist" son to decide to double-major in Classics. 

 

[Alexigail]

I will probably go with the classical pronunciation but we did strongly consider ecclesiastical.  We're not Catholic, but we have a lot of singers in my family, including myself.  I've been singing in Latin and Italian for a long time and the switch will be difficult for me as a teacher.