Latin phonology and orthography
Latin phonology continually evolved over the centuries, making it difficult for speakers in one era to know how Latin was spoken before then. A given phoneme may be represented by different letters in different periods. This article deals primarily with modern scholarship's best reconstruction of Classical Latin's phonemes (phonology) and the pronunciation and spelling used by educated people in the late Roman Republic. This article then touches upon later changes and other variants. Knowledge of how Latin was pronounced comes from Roman grammar books, common misspellings by Romans, transcriptions into other ancient languages, and  from how pronunciation has evolved in derived Romance languages. Latin orthography is the spelling of Latin words written in the scripts of all historical phases of Latin from Old Latin to the present. All scripts use the Latin alphabet, but conventional spellings may vary from phase to phase. The Latin alphabet was adapted from the Old Italic script to represent the phonemes of the Latin language. The Old Italic script had in turn been borrowed from the Greek alphabet, itself adapted from the Phoenician alphabet. The Latin alphabet most resembles the Greek alphabet around 540 BC, as it appears on  the black-figure pottery of the time. Letterforms. The forms of the Latin alphabet used during the Classical period did not distinguish between upper case and lower case. Roman inscriptions typically use Roman square capitals, which resemble modern capitals, and handwritten text often uses old Roman cursive, which includes letterforms similar to modern lowercase. Letters and phonemes. In ancient Latin spelling, individual letters mostly corresponded to individual phonemes, with three main exceptions: In the tables below, Latin letters and digraphs are paired with the phonemes that they usually represent in the International Phonetic Alphabet. Consonants. This is a table of  the consonant phonemes of Classical Latin. Those in parentheses are marginal or have a debatable status as phonemes, and those marked with an asterisk are only found in Greek loanwords in educated pronunciation, except for some instances of /kʰ/. See the notes below for further details. Vowels. Monophthongs. Latin has ten native vowels, spelled "a", "e", "i", "o", "u". In Classical Latin, each vowel had short and long versions: and . The long versions of the close and mid vowels "e", "i", "o", "u" had a different vowel quality from the short versions, so that long were similar to short (see  following section). Some loanwords from Greek had the vowel "y", which was pronounced as by educated speakers but approximated with the native vowels "u" and "i" by less educated speakers. Long and short vowels. Each vowel letter (with the possible exception of "y") represents at least two phonemes. "a" can represent either short or long , "e" represents either or , etc. Short mid vowels and close vowels were pronounced with a different quality from their long counterparts, being also more open: , , and . This opening made the short vowels "i, u" similar in quality to long "ē ō" respectively. "i, ē" and  u, ō were often written in place of each other in inscriptions: Short most likely had a more open allophone before and tended toward near-open . Short and were probably pronounced closer when they occurred before another vowel. was written as in inscriptions. Short before another vowel is often written with , as in , indicating that its quality was similar to that of long and is almost never confused with "e" in this position. Adoption of Greek upsilon. "y" was used in Greek loanwords with upsilon Υ. This letter represented the close front rounded vowel, both short and long: . Latin did  not have this sound as a distinctive phoneme, and speakers tended to pronounce such loanwords with in Old Latin and in Classical and Late Latin if they were unable to produce . An intermediate vowel sound (likely a close central vowel or possibly its rounded counterpart ), called , can be reconstructed for the classical period. Such a vowel is found in , , (also spelled , , ) and other words. It developed out of a historical short , later fronted by vowel reduction. In the vicinity of labial consonants, this sound was not as fronted and may have retained some rounding, thus being more similar if not  identical to the unreduced short : . It was sometimes spelled by the Claudian letter Ⱶ ⱶ. Vowel nasalization. Vowels followed by a nasal consonant were allophonically realised as long nasal vowels in two environments: Those long nasal vowels had the same quality as ordinary long vowels. In Vulgar Latin, the vowels lost their nasalisation, and they merged with the long vowels (which were themselves shortened by that time). This is shown by many forms in the Romance languages, such as Spanish from Vulgar Latin (originally ) and Italian from Vulgar Latin (Classical Latin ). On the other hand, the short vowel and were  restored in French and from and ("e" is the normal development of Latin short "i"), likely by analogy with other forms beginning in the prefix "in-". When a final "-m" occurred before a plosive or nasal in the next word, however, it was pronounced as a nasal at the place of articulation of the following consonant. For instance, was written for in inscriptions, and was a double entendre, possibly for . Diphthongs. "ae", "oe", "au", "ei", "eu" could represent diphthongs: "ae" represented , "oe" represented , "au" represented , "ei" represented , and "eu" represented . "ui" sometimes represented the diphthong , as in and . The diphthong  ei mostly had changed to "ī" by the classical epoch; "ei" remained only in a few words such as the interjection . If there is a tréma above the second vowel, both vowels are pronounced separately: "aë" , "aü" , "eü" and "oë" . However, disyllabic "eu" in morpheme borders is traditionally written without the tréma: 'my'. In Old Latin, "ae", "oe" were written as "ai", "oi" and probably pronounced as , with a fully closed second element, similar to the final syllable in French . In the late Old Latin period, the last element of the diphthongs was lowered to , so that the diphthongs were  pronounced and in Classical Latin. They were then monophthongized to and respectively, starting in rural areas at the end of the Republican period. The process, however, does not seem to have been completed before the 3rd century AD, and some scholars say that it may have been regular by the 5th century. Vowel and consonant length. Vowel and consonant length were more significant and more clearly defined in Latin than in modern English. Length is the duration of time that a particular sound is held before proceeding to the next sound in a word. In the modern spelling of Latin , especially in dictionaries and academic work, macrons are frequently used to mark long vowels: , while the breve is sometimes used to indicate that a vowel is short: . Long consonants were usually indicated through doubling, but ancient Latin orthography did not distinguish between the vocalic and consonantal uses of "i" and "v". Vowel length was indicated only intermittently in classical sources and even then through a variety of means. Later medieval and modern usage tended to omit vowel length altogether. A short-lived convention of spelling long vowels by doubling the vowel letter is associated with the poet Lucius Accius. Later  spelling conventions marked long vowels with an apex (a diacritic similar to an acute accent) or, in the case of long i, by increasing the height of the letter (long i); in the second century AD, those were given apices as well. The Classical vowel length system faded in later Latin and ceased to be phonemic in Romance, having been replaced by contrasts in vowel quality. Consonant length, however, remains contrastive in much of Italo-Romance, cf. Italian "ninth" versus "grandfather". A minimal set showing both long and short vowels and long and short consonants is ('anus'), ('year'), ('old woman '). Table of orthography. The letters "b", "d", "f", "h", "m", "n" are always pronounced as in English , , , , , respectively, and they do not usually cause any difficulties. The exceptions are mentioned below: Syllables and stress. Old Latin stress. In Old Latin, as in Proto-Italic, stress normally fell on the first syllable of a word. During this period, the word-initial stress triggered changes in the vowels of non-initial syllables, the effects of which are still visible in classical Latin. Compare for example: In the earliest Latin writings, the original unreduced vowels are still visible. Study of this vowel reduction , as well as syncopation (dropping of short unaccented syllables) in Greek loan words, indicates that the stress remained word-initial until around the time of Plautus, in the 3rd century BC. The placement of the stress then shifted to become the pattern found in classical Latin. Classical Latin syllables and stress. In Classical Latin, stress changed. It moved from the first syllable to one of the last three syllables, called the antepenult, the penult, and the ultima (short for 'before almost last', 'almost last', and 'last syllable'). Its position is determined by the syllable weight of the penult. If the  penult is heavy, it is accented; if the penult is light and there are more than two syllables, the antepenult is accented. In a few words originally accented on the penult, accent is on the ultima because the two last syllables have been contracted, or the last syllable has been lost. Syllable. To determine stress, syllable weight of the penult must be determined. To determine syllable weight, words must be broken up into syllables. In the following examples, syllable structure is represented using these symbols: C (a consonant), K (a stop), R (a liquid), and V (a short vowel), VV  (a long vowel or diphthong). Nucleus. Every short vowel, long vowel, or diphthong belongs to a single syllable. This vowel forms the syllable nucleus. Thus has four syllables, one for every vowel (a i ā u: V V VV V), has three (ae e u: VV V V), has two (u ō: V VV), and has one (ui: VV). Onset and coda. A consonant before a vowel or a consonant cluster at the beginning of a word is placed in the same syllable as the following vowel. This consonant or consonant cluster forms the syllable onset. After this, if there  is an additional consonant inside the word, it is placed at the end of the syllable. This consonant is the syllable coda. Thus if a consonant cluster of two consonants occurs between vowels, they are broken up between syllables: one goes with the syllable before, the other with the syllable after. There are two exceptions. A consonant cluster of a stop "p t c b d g" followed by a liquid "l r" between vowels usually goes to the syllable after it, although it is also sometimes broken up like other consonant clusters. Heavy and light syllables. As shown in  the examples above, Latin syllables have a variety of possible structures. Here are some of them. The first four examples are light syllables, and the last six are heavy. All syllables have at least one V (vowel). A syllable is heavy if it has another V or C (or both) after the first V. In the table below, the extra V or VC is bolded, indicating that it makes the syllable heavy. Thus, a syllable is heavy if it ends in a long vowel or diphthong, a short vowel and a consonant, a long vowel and a consonant, or a  diphthong and a consonant. Syllables ending in a diphthong and consonant are rare in Classical Latin. The syllable onset has no relationship to syllable weight; both heavy and light syllables can have no onset or an onset of one, two, or three consonants. In Latin a syllable that is heavy because it ends in a long vowel or diphthong is traditionally called ('syllable long by nature'), and a syllable that is heavy because it ends in a consonant is called ('long by position'). These terms are translations of Greek ("syllabḕ makrá phýsei" = 'syllable long by nature') and ("makrà thései  = 'long by proposition'), respectively; therefore should not be mistaken for implying a syllable is long because of its position/place in a word" but rather "is treated as 'long' by convention". This article uses the words "heavy" and "light" for syllables, and "long" and "short" for vowels since the two are not the same. Stress rule. In a word of three or more syllables, the weight of the penult determines where the accent is placed. If the penult is light, accent is placed on the antepenult; if it is heavy, accent is placed on the penult. Below, stress is  marked by placing the stress mark before the stressed syllable. Iambic shortening. Iambic shortening or is vowel shortening that occurs in words of the type "light–heavy", where the light syllable is stressed. By this sound change, words like , , , with long final vowel change to , , , with short final vowel. Elision. Where one word ended with a vowel (including the nasalized vowels written "am em im um~(om)" and the diphthong "ae") and the next word began with a vowel, the former vowel, at least in verse, was regularly elided; that is, it was omitted altogether, or possibly (in the case  of and ) pronounced like the corresponding semivowel. When the second word was or , and possibly when the second word was , a different form of elision sometimes occurred (prodelision): the vowel of the preceding word was retained, and the "e" was elided instead. Elision also occurred in Ancient Greek, but in that language, it is shown in writing by the vowel in question being replaced by an apostrophe, whereas in Latin elision is not indicated at all in the orthography, but can be deduced from the verse form. Only occasionally is it found in inscriptions, as in for . Modern conventions. Spelling . Letters. Modern usage, even for classical Latin texts, varies in respect of "I" and "V". During the Renaissance, the printing convention was to use "I" (upper case) and "i" (lower case) for both vocalic and consonantal , to use "V" in the upper case and in the lower case to use "v" at the start of words and "u" subsequently within the word regardless of whether and was represented. Many publishers (such as Oxford University Press) have adopted the convention of using "I" (upper case) and "i" (lower case) for both and , and "V" (upper case) and "u" (lower case) for  both and . An alternative approach, less common today, is to use "i" and "u" only for the vowels and "j" and "v" for the approximants. Most modern editions, however, adopt an intermediate position, distinguishing between "u" and "v" but not between "i" and "j". Usually, the non-vocalic "v" after "q" or "g" is still printed as "u" rather than "v", probably because in this position it did not change from to in post-classical times. Diacritics. Textbooks and dictionaries usually indicate the length of vowels by putting a macron or horizontal bar above the long vowel, but it is  not generally done in regular texts. Occasionally, mainly in early printed texts up to the 18th century, one may see a circumflex used to indicate a long vowel where this makes a difference to the sense, for instance, ('from Rome' ablative) compared to ('Rome' nominative). Sometimes, for instance in Roman Catholic service books, an acute accent over a vowel is used to indicate the stressed syllable. It would be redundant for one who knew the classical rules of accentuation and made the correct distinction between long and short vowels, but most Latin speakers since the 3rd century have not made  any distinction between long and short vowels, but they have kept the accents in the same places; thus, the use of accent marks allows speakers to read a word aloud correctly even if they have never heard it spoken aloud. Pronunciation. Post-Medieval Latin. Since around the beginning of the Renaissance period onwards, with the language being used as an international language among intellectuals, pronunciation of Latin in Europe came to be dominated by the phonology of local languages, resulting in a variety of different pronunciation systems. See the article "Latin regional pronunciation" for more details on those (with the  exception of the Italian one, which is described in the section on "Ecclesiastical pronunciation" below). Loan words and formal study. When Latin words are used as loanwords in a modern language, there is ordinarily little or no attempt to pronounce them as the Romans did; in most cases, a pronunciation suiting the phonology of the receiving language is employed. Latin words in common use in English are generally fully assimilated into the English sound system, with little to mark them as foreign, for example, "cranium", "saliva". Other words have a stronger Latin feel to them, usually because of spelling features  such as the digraphs "ae" and "oe" (occasionally written as ligatures: "æ" and "œ", respectively), which both denote in English. The digraph "ae" or ligature "æ" in some words tend to be given an pronunciation, for example, "curriculum vitae". However, using loan words in the context of the language borrowing them is a markedly different situation from the study of Latin itself. In this classroom setting, instructors and students attempt to recreate at least some sense of the original pronunciation. What is taught to native anglophones is suggested by the sounds of today's Romance languages, the direct descendants of  Latin. Instructors who take this approach rationalize that Romance vowels probably come closer to the original pronunciation than those of any other modern language (see also the section below on "Derivative languages"). However, other languages—including Romance family members—all have their own interpretations of the Latin phonological system, applied both to loan words and formal study of Latin. But English, Romance, or other teachers do not always point out that the particular accent their students learn is not actually the way ancient Romans spoke. Ecclesiastical pronunciation. Because of the central position of Rome within the Catholic Church, an Italian  pronunciation of Latin became commonly accepted, but this was not the case until the latter part of the 19th century. This pronunciation corresponds to that of the Latin-derived words in Italian. Before then, the pronunciation of Latin in church was the same as the pronunciation as Latin in other fields and tended to reflect the sound values associated with the nationality of the speaker. Other ecclesiastical variations are still in use (e.g. Germanic pronunciations), especially outside the Catholic Church. The following are the main points that distinguish modern Italianate ecclesiastical pronunciation from Classical Latin pronunciation: The letters "b", "d , f", "m", "n" are always pronounced as in English , , , , respectively, and they do not usually cause any difficulties. The exceptions are mentioned below: In his "Vox Latina: A guide to the Pronunciation of Classical Latin", William Sidney Allen remarked that this pronunciation, used by the Catholic Church in Rome and elsewhere, and whose adoption Pope Pius X recommended in a 1912 letter to the Archbishop of Bourges, "is probably less far removed from classical Latin than any other 'national' pronunciation"; but, as can be seen from the table above, there are, nevertheless, very significant differences. The introduction to the "Liber  Usualis" indicates that Ecclesiastical Latin pronunciation should be used at Church liturgies. The Pontifical Academy for Latin is the pontifical academy in the Vatican that is charged with the dissemination and education of Catholics in the Latin language. Outside of Austria, Germany, Czechia and Slovakia, it is the most widely used standard in choral singing which, with a few exceptions like Stravinsky's , is concerned with liturgical texts. Anglican choirs adopted it when classicists abandoned traditional English pronunciation after World War II. The rise of historically informed performance and the availability of guides such as Copeman's "Singing in Latin  has led to the recent revival of regional pronunciations. Pronunciation shared by Vulgar Latin and Romance languages. Because it gave rise to many modern languages, Latin did not die"; it merely evolved over the centuries in different regions in diverse ways. The local dialects of Vulgar Latin that emerged eventually became modern Italian, Spanish, French, Romanian, Portuguese, Catalan, Romansh, Dalmatian, Sardinian, and many others. Key features of Vulgar Latin and Romance languages include: Examples. The following examples are both in verse, which demonstrates several features more clearly than prose. From Classical Latin. Virgil's , Book 1, verses 1–4. Quantitative metre  (dactylic hexameter). Translation: "I sing of arms and the man, who, driven by fate, came first from the borders of Troy to Italy and the Lavinian shores; he [was] much afflicted both on lands and on the deep by the power of the gods, because of fierce Juno's vindictive wrath." Note the elisions in and in the third line. For a fuller discussion of the prosodic features of this passage, see Dactylic hexameter. Some manuscripts have "" rather than "" in the second line. From Medieval Latin. Beginning of by Thomas Aquinas (13th century). Rhymed accentual metre. Translation: "Extol, [my] tongue , the mystery of the glorious body and the precious blood, which the fruit of a noble womb, the king of nations, poured out as the price of the world."