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Read Ebook: Latin Pronunciation: A Short Exposition of the Roman Method by Peck Harry Thurston
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LATIN PRONUNCIATION.
INTRODUCTORY.
THIS short manual is primarily intended for those who, being interested in the study of Latin, have accepted the Roman method of pronunciation upon the authority of the Grammars, but have either not been able to command the time to make themselves familiar with the arguments upon which this system is based, or have been repelled by the technicalities employed in treating the question from the standpoint of the specialist. It is believed that the following pages will be found to give in simple form the main facts bearing upon this interesting question; and that nothing has been introduced that is either unnecessary or obscure. For those who may wish to pursue their investigations farther after mastering these facts, a bibliography of the subject is given at the end.
The Roman method of pronouncing Latin has now received the approval of all Latinists of authority in Europe and America, as giving substantially the pronunciation employed by educated Romans of the Augustan Age. It has been formally adopted at our leading Universities. The most recent Grammars of the language recognize no other method. Thus, one great reproach to classical scholarship seems likely to be soon removed, and one universal pronunciation of the noblest of the ancient languages to receive general acceptation. This little book will more than accomplish its object if it shall have aided ever so slightly in discrediting the barbarisms of a method which, to use the expression of a distinguished scholar, "ought long since to have followed the Ptolemaic system of astronomy into the limbo of unscientific curiosities."
It is natural that the Roman system should make its way more rapidly into use in this country than in Europe, not because Americans are more given to experiments, but because here in the United States the inconveniences of having no standard system have been more sharply felt. New England being wholly settled from Old England, long continued the English system of pronouncing Latin. In the Middle States, the Germans and Dutch introduced their own methods; in the South and West, the French pronunciation came in quite frequently; and all over the Union, the Catholic clergy in their schools and colleges have propagated the traditional usage of their Church. Hence a Babel of pronunciations and systems existing and practised side by side, in a picturesque confusion such as no European country ever knew; and hence the general willingness to accept a single method, especially one that is based upon historic truth.
SOURCES OF OUR INFORMATION.
A QUESTION of much interest to the student of Latin, and one that does not always receive a satisfactory answer, relates to the sources of our information.
What knowledge have we of how the Romans pronounced their own language nineteen hundred years ago? How is it possible after so long an interval to reconstruct the laws of a pronunciation which prevailed at a given period of the remote past?
Briefly summarized, the sources of our information are six in number.
We may, then, broadly divide the ancient authorities on this subject into two groups,--the first consisting of those writers who themselves belonged to the classical age; the second, of those grammarians and commentators who have left us very full statements, though the date at which they wrote somewhat impairs the value of their testimony.
Of the other writers on language who treat the subject very minutely, a great number might be cited. The most important are Terentianus Maurus, who wrote, perhaps about the third century, a poem on letters, syllables, feet, and metres, which is twice quoted by St. Augustine; Verrius Flaccus, the tutor to the grandchildren of the Emperor Augustus and author of a work on the meaning of words which has come down to us in a later abridgment; Aulus Gellius, who, toward the end of the second century, compiled a huge scrap-book on a variety of subjects, many of them of great linguistic interest, and, with the exception of a few chapters, still extant; Priscianus Caesariensis, who wrote under Justinian at Constantinople eighteen books of grammatical commentaries which form the most complete grammar of antiquity; and Aelius Donatus , whose elementary treatise was so highly thought of in the Middle Ages that the name "donat" was used as a generic term for a grammar.
From these and many other writers one gathers a great mass of instructive facts; and their very silence is sometimes as significant as what they say.
From these six sources can be gained a very accurate understanding of how Latin was pronounced in the days of Cicero and Caesar. It is not too much to claim that the system of pronunciation upon which scholars are now agreed, differs less from that of the Romans of the Augustan Age than does our modern pronunciation of English differ from that of Shakespeare and his contemporaries.
Others are Josephus, the Jewish historian; Dionysius of Halicarnassus; Appian; and Dio Cassius,--the last a Roman who wrote in Greek.
THE LATIN ALPHABET.
V represented originally the open palm with the thumb extended, just as our 0 is thought to represent a closed hand.
SOUNDS OF THE LETTERS.
The facts upon which this statement is founded are as follows:
The pronunciation of this letter is so described for us by Martianus Capella as to prove it a hard palatal.
The position of the vocal organs in uttering this letter is described by Terentianus Maurus ; Marius Victorinus ; and Martianus Capella .
Martianus Capella says: "I is a breathing with the teeth nearly closed."
Because of its snarling sound it is called by the satirist Persius "the dog's letter" .
Which Martin has very cleverly translated:
"Whenever Arrius wished to name 'Commodious,' out 'chommodious' came: And when of his intrigues he blabbed, With his 'hintrigues' our ears he stabbed; And thought moreover, he displayed A rare refinement when he made His h's thus at random fall With emphasis most guttural. When suddenly came news one day Which smote the city with dismay, That the Ionian seas a change Had undergone, most sad and strange; For since by Arrius crossed, the wild 'Hionian Hocean' they were styled!"
Quint, ix. 4, 40; Prise. 1, p. 29 .
Velius Lougus, p. 80 .
Don. in Serv. p. 445.
With this preliminary observation we may proceed to the discussion of the several diphthongs.
"To teach the student, from his first entrance upon the study of Latin, the English system of pronunciation; to get him thoroughly habituated to this false method, and then by lodging in his brain some verbal rules of quantity and prosody, at war often with each other and commonly with his pronunciation, to attempt to make him appreciate and observe the rhythm of Latin poetry, is like keeping a child in a rude society where all the laws of a pure and finished language are habitually violated, and then expecting him, by virtue of committing to memory the common rules of grammar and rhetoric, to talk at once with grammatical and rhetorical correctness and elegance."
Because it is approximately the system used by the Romans themselves.
Because it is more musical and harmonious in sound, and makes the structure of Latin verse clear even to the beginner.
Because it makes the connection of Latin words with their Greek cognates plain at once, and renders easier the study of Greek, of the modern Romance language, and of the science of Comparative Philology.
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