09-24-2016, 10:36 PM
I really like the sound of the Classical Latin and I certainly prefer it to regional variants, but I must say that one thing bothers me.
I am no linguist myself and I only know as much Latin as I was able to learn in High School and University, but what about words where we have double /w/ or double /w/ with one sound between them - like Flavius. It is a bit hard to pronounce with classical latin, unless you do something like flah-wee-us, combining the v and i into "wee". If I am not mistaken, in Classical Latin "wee" would be much shorter, not as in Pee-Wee Herman, although I have no idea how to write it down, but such way would see you rushing the "wee" to finish it with "us". This particular word sounds much more natural with "v" - full-vee-us, albeit again the "vee" should be short too in this case, and it sounds much easier to pronounce, at least for me, than full-wee-us with rushed "wee".
It gets even weirder with words like flāvus or corvus. Are these supposed to be pronounced flah-woos and cor-woos? Why the double /w/?
Am I the only one who finds classical pronunciation quite odd in this case?
I am no linguist myself and I only know as much Latin as I was able to learn in High School and University, but what about words where we have double /w/ or double /w/ with one sound between them - like Flavius. It is a bit hard to pronounce with classical latin, unless you do something like flah-wee-us, combining the v and i into "wee". If I am not mistaken, in Classical Latin "wee" would be much shorter, not as in Pee-Wee Herman, although I have no idea how to write it down, but such way would see you rushing the "wee" to finish it with "us". This particular word sounds much more natural with "v" - full-vee-us, albeit again the "vee" should be short too in this case, and it sounds much easier to pronounce, at least for me, than full-wee-us with rushed "wee".
It gets even weirder with words like flāvus or corvus. Are these supposed to be pronounced flah-woos and cor-woos? Why the double /w/?
Am I the only one who finds classical pronunciation quite odd in this case?
(-) Emil Petecki
