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Basics of Latin - A Guide to the Latin Language: Alphabet, Pronunciation, and More - Derek Cooper | zondervan | YouTubeToText
YouTube Transcript: Basics of Latin - A Guide to the Latin Language: Alphabet, Pronunciation, and More - Derek Cooper
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welcome latin comrades
i'm so glad that you've decided to join
me in the study of latin
i can already tell that you are a smart
sophisticated and savvy individual great
things are in store for both of us and i
can't wait to begin this course
with you we're going to start latin with
the very
basics the alphabet pronunciation
and accents we've got to take to heart
what thomas aquinas once said
parlos error in principio magnoses
a small mistake in the beginning is a
big one
in the end that's why i'm going to provide
provide
in this first session a general overview
of latin
getting these things right in the
beginning goes a long way
infinite in the end although i know
you're eager to
dive into the endless pull of latin
awaiting us
we have to first wait in before swimming
but don't worry
we'll get there this first session is
going to have a slightly different
format than the others our main agenda
right now is to figure out how to
pronounce latin
in a consistent way when you've
sufficiently learned the basics that i discuss
discuss
here you're ready to pass go collect
200 denarii and proceed to the next
order of business
which is the genius of the latin language
language
okay let's start with the roman alphabet
according to isidore of seville 7th century
century
spanish bishop there are three things
associated with each letter of the alphabet
alphabet
nomen figura and
protestas isidor explained that
a letter's nomen or name refers to how
it's called
a letter's figura or shape to
how it's formed and a letter's potestas or
or
meaning to how it's signified
take the first letter of the latin
alphabet for example
it's norman is a or ah
it's figura is the particular shape that
squiggly line
and its potestas indicates its meaning
now because english uses the roman alphabet
alphabet
you're already familiar with the nomen figura
figura
en potestas of each letter in the alphabet
alphabet
so there's nothing more to say here
other than congratulations
on achieving your first latin milestone
well done latin is identical to
english when it comes to the alphabet
there's vowels
and there's consonants all the letters
are written from left to right
and there's also combinations of letters
that make distinct
sounds pretty easy right although the
pronunciation of latin is
obviously different from english there's
lots of similarities between them
here's the latin alphabet in upper and
lower case
do you see anything missing i sure do i
notice that latin doesn't have the letter
letter
w and the letters k y and z
don't appear very frequently also
latin has two letters called glides that
sometimes appear as vowels
and sometimes as consonants pretty cool
the two glides are i and you
when the latin letter i acts as a consonant
consonant
it can be represented as j or i
in a pretty similar way when the latin letter
letter
u acts as a consonant
it can be symbolized as v or u
now i'll be the first to admit that this
can be confusing
at least it was for me but will soon get
used to it
and by the way the variation and spelling
spelling
doesn't affect the meaning of the word
it has the same meaning
and the same pronunciation speaking of which
which
let's turn our attention to
pronunciation now believe it or not
there's no universal way to pronounce latin
latin
instead pronunciation varies according to
to
time period geographic region content focus
focus
and personal preference the most common
systems of pronunciation
are what i'm going to refer to as first classical
classical
second ecclesiastical and third
national let's start with the first
classical pronunciation takes as its model
model
educated roman authors who live roughly from
from
the first century bc to the second century
century
a.d because each of these people has
been dead for i don't know
2 millennia advocates of this pronunciation
pronunciation
use ancient writings to reconstruct how
latin was
arguably spoken by these educated
classes of romans according to many
scholars this
reconstructed model is the closest that
we can get to the actual pronunciation of
of
roman latin so if you want to speak
latin like cicero then classical latin
is your best bet
next we have ecclesiastical latin
ecclesiastical pronunciation doesn't try to
to
imitate how latin was spoken 2 000 years ago
ago
for the most part it's the type of pronunciation
pronunciation
used by the roman catholic church
located in the vatican
to many ecclesiastical pronunciation
sounds like latin with an italian accent
so if you want to speak like thomas
aquinas then i recommend
the ecclesiastical pronunciation
all right finally we have a third category
category
national pronunciation generally follows
the pronunciation
of a person's mother tongue so this
could be
english italian french esperanto
you name it when it comes down to it
a national pronunciation is the easiest
way to pronounce latin
because you simply pronounce letters
like you would in your native language
and you don't concern yourself with
other more standardized ways of speaking latin
latin
so if you want to speak like the guy
living across the street from you
then a national pronunciation is the way
to go
okay let's look at a simple example
john 1 1. in the beginning was the word
and the word was with god
and the word was god first
the classical pronunciation
in principio eret verbum et verbum ered
did ed notice that my v's sounded like
w's and the c was a hard c like in english
english
k that's classical latin
this is going to be different from the ecclesiastical
ecclesiastical
pronunciation for instance
did you notice that the v's sounded like
v's in english and the c was like a
c h or cha sound in other words
it sounds like italian doesn't it last
let's pronounce this sentence according
to a
national pronunciation now this one is
going to hurt
i'm going to do an american national pronunciation
pronunciation
in principio eret verbum at verbum eret apodeom
apodeom
et deus eret verbum
that was scary it sounded a bit
like latin and cowboy boots but you get
the picture
national pronunciation sounds like english
english
if you're an english speaker so
which system of pronunciation should you adopt
adopt
well traditionally i'd say that the
classical form
has been standard for those studying
roman latin
while the ecclesiastical form has been
customary for those studying
ecclesiastical latin
national latin by contrast isn't really
centralized almost by definition
obviously it's going to vary from region
to region
so if you're a native french speaker for
instance it's just going to sound like
french personally and this is just
my opinion i believe that any pronunciation
pronunciation
is acceptable as long as there's consistency
consistency
that stated i'm partial to ecclesiastical
ecclesiastical
or classical pronunciation since these
are fairly standardized
and i've used both in different places
and at different times
for example although i was originally
taught ecclesiastical pronunciation
years later i switched to the classical pronunciation
pronunciation
which is my personal preference so
when i say words in latin i will always
use the
classical pronunciation so you will get
very familiar with it
let's turn to vowels latin has the same
number of vowels
as english which is fantastic right but
latin also distinguishes between short
and long vowels traditionally
long vowels take about twice as long to
enunciate as short ones
so it's the difference between a short ah
ah
which is ah and along ah
which is ah but this is not a practice
that many people follow today
most people don't really bother with
distinguishing between
short and long vowels when speaking
now here's the tricky part how do you
know if a vowel is long
or short for the most part you only know
this because the vowel is depicted
as either having a line over the vowel
called a
macron or it doesn't
now if it has a line over a vowel it's long
long
if it doesn't have one it's short for
our purposes though
we don't need to concern ourselves with
this information
for the time being just know that a line
over a vowel indicates that it's long
which can help us better distinguish
different forms of words in certain circumstances
circumstances
two vowels come together to form only
one sound
it's called a very strange name
a diphthong seriously who makes up these names
names
perhaps someone who watches a lot of
science fiction or something i don't know
know
at any rate keep in mind that two vowels
appearing next to each other
often join forces and make one sound
instead of two now there are about
half dozen such combinations in latin
now depending on which pronunciation
model you adopt the pronunciation will be
be
slightly different so don't worry
now let's turn to consonants the
majority of consonants in latin are
pronounced as they are in english
the exceptions to this rule appear in
because english pronunciation varies from
from
region to region and country to country
my american accent
may or may not be helpful to you but for
the sake of an example
i'll briefly pronounce the letters all
the way
to the left of the chart which is the
classical pronunciation
i mentioned that all pronunciations are
acceptable and they are
even the ones that sound like matthew
mcconaughey's speaking latin
but in order to limit confusion i'll
only use the classical pronunciation here
here
beginning with the top left the letters
and letter combinations are
i'll just highlight two consonants
the c and the v
now classical pronunciation the c is
always hard in other words it's always
like the c
in cupcake which isn't a latin word unfortunately
unfortunately
as for the v it's always pronounced as a
w in english that is to say
like the w in water
wheel now before we
end this session i want to briefly
introduce just
one more item accents
the concept of accent is often
categorized according to
pitch or stress while a
pitch accent is increased by
articulating a syllable at a higher note
a stress accent is increased by using
greater force
now i readily admit that these two kinds
of accents are
easy to confuse so we're going to keep things
things
very basic every word in latin has one
place of stress
that is there's one syllable that you
pronounce with a little bit more force than
than
every other syllable for instance look
at this
word which means girl
how do you pronounce it well there's
three syllables
so the stress has to be on one of them
but which one is it pue la
is it pue la or is it puella
well it's actually the last example puella
puella
now how do i know that there are four
simple rules to learn
when it comes to where to put the latin
accent or stress
in a word here are the four most
in a word with only one syllable that is
that it's
monosyllabic or two syllables which is
di syllabic the stress is always
i will not include accent marks and
words with
two or fewer syllables since the stress
will always be
predictably known
second in a word with three or more
syllables that is that it is
polysyllabic the stress is on the second
to last or
penultimate syllable if that vowel is long
long
for example kogitare or
on the third to last that is the anti-penultimate
anti-penultimate
syllable if the second to last vowel is
short for example
this is because latin generally prefers
the accent to be
as far back as possible in a word
third in any word the accent will never
be further back than the
anti-penultimate romans had standards
after all
fourth in a word that receives the
the stress falls on the last syllable of
the word
for example filio turns into filioque
however because i'm such a nice man
i'm going to place an accent mark on
words with three or more syllables to show
show
where the stress is located and i'll
also include
a macron to designate the length of vowels
vowels
this is going to make things much easier
okay in conclusion we've learned
three things in this session first the latin
latin
alphabet second latin pronunciation
and third latin stress
what i recommend for you to do now is begin
begin
reading a latin bible or if you want to
get wild and crazy find
a latin passage from thomas aquinas or
augustine of hippo
and begin practicing your pronunciation
you can easily do this online now
you should aim for consistency but
don't be concerned at all if your pronunciation
pronunciation
isn't yet polished precise or
even pretty to listen to it's going to
take time
but we'll get there until next time
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