Welcome to your 'dead language' lesson! Latin is the basis for all the 'romance' languages - Spanish, French, Italian, plus a few more - and lends a lot of sounds to English, so the pronunciation is not all that difficult. We're using 'Church' or 'Ecclesiastical' pronunciations, which are closer to what you might hear in a religious service today. Marlowe was probably somewhere closer to the original pronunciation, but that mixed with the fact that Elizabethan English sounded quite a bit stranger than we might suspect means that it would be very difficult for modern audiences to follow along.
Let's just give them a taste of Latin, shall we, instead of beating people over the head with a dead language? Cheers.
* * * * *
Let's just give them a taste of Latin, shall we, instead of beating people over the head with a dead language? Cheers.
* * * * *
Since
English borrowed its alphabet from Latin, the pronunciation of individual Latin
letters is close to that of English. The differences are mainly the vowels and
a few consonants.
Vowels
Long
|
Short
|
A
as in father
|
A
as in Dinah
|
E
as in they
|
E
as in met or pet
|
I
as in machine
|
I
as in pit or hit
|
O
as in note
|
O
as in off
|
U
as in rude
|
U
as in put
|
The
distinction between a short or a long A is how long the vowel is actually
pronounced. The long A is simply held longer than a short A, Ahhhhhhh versus
ah.
Diphthongs
ae
- as "ay" in say
|
au
- as "ou" in house
|
oe
- as "ay" in say
|
Consonants
Consonants
are "hard", but some consonants take a hard form in front of some
vowels and a soft form in front of other vowels:
These
consonants are hard before a, o, u, au
|
And
these are soft consonants before ae, e, oe, i:
|
C
= k as in cot
|
C
= ch as in chain
|
CC
= kk as in accord
|
CC
= tch as in catchy
|
SC
= sk as in tabasco
|
SC
= sh as in sheep
|
G
= g as in go
|
G
= soft g as in gentle
|
GN
= "ni" as in onion (ny like sound)
|
|
TI
- when followed by a third vowel becomes a tsee sound, as in tsetse fly
|
Sometimes
one will see a "j" in Latin. Technically Latin has no letter J. It
was introduced in the 13th century or thereabouts to differentiate between the
vowel i and the consonant i. The consonantal i is like our y. "Major"
in Latin is pronounced as MAH-yor. Until this last century, most printed Latin
texts used the j to indicate the different sounds. Today the j's are usually
replaced with the more classical i's.
Syllables
Every
Latin word has as many syllables as it does vowels or diphthongs. (Diphthongs
are double vowels which form one sound. The most common Latin diphthongs are
ae, oe, and au.) Unlike English, which has silent letters, in Latin each
consonant, vowel and diphthong is pronounced separately. Peccata is
thus pronounced pec-ca-ta and not pec-a-ta. Tuum is
pronounced tu-um (too-um), and not as toom.
Accents
The
rule for where the accent or stress in a Latin word goes is also straight
forward. If the word has only two syllables, the accent always falls on the
first syllable. For example, amo is pronounced as AH-moe,
not ah-MOE. If the word has three or more syllables, then where the
stress is applied depends upon whether the syllable second to the last has a
long vowel or not. If the second to last syllable has a long vowel in it, then
the accent is placed on that syllable. If the second to the last syllable has a
short vowel, then the previous syllable (the third syllable from the end). For
example, peccata is pronounced pec-CAH-ta, since the a in the second syllable
is long, but nomine is pronounced NOH-mi-neh, since the i of the second
syllable is short.
*
* * * *
Tips:
-
C is always hard, as in "cat." cum (with) = koom
-
G is always hard, as in "goal." ago (I drive) =
ah-go
-
S is always a voiceless "s" sound as in "snake." spuma (foam)
= spoo-ma
-
R is always rolled. This sound doesn't exist in most
English dialects, so beginners can pronounce this as they would normally say
"R."
-
If C appears before ae, e, oe, and i, pronounce it ch as in chain (instead of a
hard c as in cat).
-
In the same context, G is soft as in gem instead of hard as in goat.
-SC
becomes sh as in sheep instead of sc as in scold.
-
CC becomes tch as in catchy instead of cc as in accord.
-
XC becomes ksh instead of ksk.
-
Enunciate to keep the sounds distinct. For example, Classical Latin
"t" is always pronounced clearly as a hard "t," never softening
to a sloppy "d" sound.
-
GN is always pronounced as the "ni" in onion.
-
TI followed by any additional vowel is pronounced as the "tsy" in
patsy.
Exception:
TI is still pronounced "tee" if it is at the start of a word, or if
it follows s, x, or t.
-
Pronounce your 'v' as the modern 'v', and 'h' is always the 'h' sound. Don't be
thrown off by combinations like 'ch' and 'th' – ‘c’ sounds like ‘ch’, remember.
Pronounce the first consonant just as you normally would (hard 'c' or hard 't',
respectively) and then the huffy 'h' sound.
Learn nihil and mihi. These two words are pronounced as though
the h were a k: nikil and miki.
Double
consonants are pronounced twice: reddit (she gives back) is
"red-dit," not "re-dit".
Another
look at dipthongs:
· AE
as the word eye. saepe (often) = sai-peh
· AU
as the word ow. laudat (he praises) = low-daht
· EI
as in ray. eicio (I accomplish) = ay-kee-oh
· OE
as in oil. poeta (poet) = poi-ta
In
all other vowel combinations, pronounce the vowels as separate
syllables. tuus(your) = tu-us
*
* * * *
Other
pronunciation help:
The
Latin lines from Faustus' speech on pages 3 and 4 can be heard here: http://curculio.org/?p=917
- this webpage also includes a few other lines with sound clips.
Veni
– VEH-nee
Consummatum
est - con-sum-MA-toom est (this is 'con' as in
'pros and cons', not 'cohn'.)
Homo,
fuge! – HO-mo FOO-jeh
Terminat
hora diem; terminat auctor opus.
– ter-mee-NAHT
HOR-a dee-EM; ter-mee-NAHT AWK-tor O-pus.
*
* * * *
I
will keep working on a transcription of the spell on pg. 6 - in the meantime,
Mr. Spaulding has a video from the Globe's production of Doctor Faustus. Check
it out!
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