Latin Phonology

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Latin Phonology

• The Sounds of Latin
• 13 September 2004

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Vowels

• macron line over a vowel, e.g., a, indicating a
  long vowel sound
• short mark arc over a vowel, e.g., a,
  indicating a short vowel sound
• a a as in ago
• a a as in father
• e e as in left
• e a as in late

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Other Vowels

• i i as in hit
• i ee as screen
• o o as in often
• o o as in hope
• u u as in put
• u u as in jute

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Diphthongs

• Two vowels blended, e.g., ea in eat
• ae y as in by
• au ow as in now

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Consonants

• g always hard, as in go, never as in gem
• i as a consonant, y as in yes
• In the late Middle Ages, the letter j came to
  replace the consonantal function of i, such that
  Julius would be pronounced, Yoo-lee-us
• r trilled (roll the tongue, a bit like the sound
  of a growling dog)

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Other Consonants

• s s as in sing, never the z sound as in is
• u w as in wine, when used as a consonant after q
  and followed by a vowel, and sometimes after s
  or g
• v w as in wine
• When the characters u and v became distinguished,
  u functioned as a vowel, while v functioned as
  the consonant

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Latin Grammar
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Declensions

• Groupings of nouns with similar endings
• There are 5 declensions in Latin. (We will cover
  the first and second. We might start the third.)

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Parts of a Noun

• Base
• Case Ending
• See pp. 3-4

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Case

• Feature of a noun that helps to identify the part
  of the sentence in which the noun is functioning.
• Cf. Eng. I and me. I is in the subjective case.
  I can only be a subject or predicate nominative
  (subjective complement). Me is in the objective
  case and can be a direct object, indirect object,
  etc.

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Abbreviations

• E.g. ? exempli gratia, for example
• I.e. ? id est, that is
• Etc. ? et cetera, and the other things