Okey-dokey. This question may be a little oddball, but it's really bugging me, and hopefully someone out there can help me. My undergrad degree is in music, and the course of study I followed had a strong emphasis on choral and vocal music. As part of our studies, we (all of us students) took courses in diction in French, Latin, Italian, German, etc. In general, we used (because we were singing) church, or what our instructors referred to as Italianized, Latin because that's what most of the composers of those pieces had in mind - the pieces were in Latin, they were written to be performed in a church, etc. The notable exceptions were pieces performed in (what they called) Germanized Latin, which made sense since those composers were German...they'd most likely have "in their ear" Latin pronounced with a different accent. Now...on a personal level, the Italianized Latin thing always made sense to me, because Latin is to (modern) Italian what Old English is to English...There were certain differences - the church Latin we were taught to sing used only "open" vowels, where modern Italian uses both "open" and "closed" vowels (what we call "short" and "long" vowels). What does this have to do with homeschooling? Well, I'm looking through our Latin text for next year, and the pronunciation of some of the consonant combinations makes no sense to me at all. They not only bear no relationship to anything I learned in college (which would be okay, we weren't learning to converse in or read Latin), but it also bears little resemblance (that I can see) to the Italian I heard spoken the summers I lived in Italy. Sooooo.....what's the deal? Does anyone know the different types of Latin and can explain (or direct me to a resource explaining) the differences? Thanks for reading all this!
There is an ecclesiastical pronunciation and a classical pronunciation. The first is what you generally hear in music and is what's used in church. The other is the pronunciation you would've heard in actual Roman times.
Wars rage about Latin pronunciation! In school, I was taught that "Veni, vidi, vici" is pronounced "venny, viddy, veachy". I've heard another teacher claim that it should be "wenny, widdy, wicky". Since it's a language no longer spoken, there is no definitive right or wrong. It's the same with the language of my ancestors: Cornish. I've seen at least ten different versions of the Lord's prayer in Cornish. Since no one speaks or writes the language today, there is no definitive right or wrong. Even among active languages, there are disputes. The Welsh have incorporated English words, but the purists invent new Welsh words and try to push them out. The French have incorporated English words, but the purists try to rid their language of them too. The language of the masses is often different from the "official" language. Is "aint" a real word? Are Southerners wrong to pronounce 'vehicle' as veehickle? Do the French pass out when Chicago residents say 'Dez Planes' for 'Des Plaines'? Personally, I would teach Latin as a read language only, not a spoken language.
The truth is that nobody knows. There are no audio recordings, so it's impossible to know. It might be more accurate to say that it's what historians, for whatever reason, believe is most likely to have been heard.
Well, let's just say traditionally, the ecclesiastical is your first example, and the classical is the second example. For the record, in all the years I did Latin--- and in the current texts we use--- no one has ever claimed a 'correct' pronunciation; they just specify that there are 2 types and one is more often associated with the Catholic Church while the other is more often associated with earlier classic pronunciations. In the two years of linguistics I had, we did find that there is a more than strong reason to believe that the classic pronunciations are pretty accurate. It would take forever to explain why, but it doesn't matter. Neither pronunciation is ever considered wrong in any of the circles I've been in...just different.
You know, when I was in France thirty years ago, they tried to teach me the "proper" way to say "grenouille" or FROG. I was at a camp sort of setting, with people from all over France. NONE of them said it the exact same way, but they were all in agreement that the way *I* said it was "wrong", lol! So if we can't agree with a now-spoken language, how can we agree on pronunciation of a dead one?
I also majored in music (instrumental emphasis, but lots and lots of choral experience). I'm teaching the classical version for homeschooling, but I still catch myself using the sounds I learned in choir. I want my kids to be familiar with both, but to have one as their primary. The reason I use classical is that it's what is most often used in colleges. Not that my kids are destined to be Latin scholars or anything. I just know they're more likely to encounter the classical than ecclesiastical in any classes or competitions they choose to do in the future, even at the middle school level. It's also what all the private schools around here use.
Thanks all. This was really helpful. That was a large part of my concern. I never studied Latin (other than diction studies in college) and wasn't sure which pronunciation might be more helpful in the long run.
