From: Christophe Grandsire (christophe.grandsire@free.fr)
Date: Fri Dec 29 2000 - 11:42:44 EST
En réponse à Zebuleon <zebuleon@peoplepc.com>:
> This may seem a stupid question but I know very little about latin.
> In the dictionary I have it will mark the short and long vowels in a
> word. but in many words it will mark some but not all the vowels. How
> or what then is the proper way to pronounce the vowels that are not
> marked are they considered long or short or something else. when a
> word has both a long and short vowel marked and a third unmarked what
> is the default pronunciation. Any remarks would be helpfull.
>
Well, as far as I can remember, in Classical Latin the length of some vowels was
determined more by prosodic features than by the word they belonged to. Those
vowels could be long as well as short, depending on the position of the word in
the sentence and its surrounding (in Classical Latin, even prose had to sound
like poetry :) ). Also, as far as I know it's common to leave the vowels of
suffixes unmarked for length in dictionaries and grammars (my own grammar of
Latin does this, but fixes the problem in its chapter about poetry). Anyway, in
Vulgar Latin as well as in the Classical Latin actually spoken, vowel length
distinctions disappeared quite quickly, all stressed vowels becoming long, while
unstressed ones became all short. So you see, the picture is quite complex, and
no answer as for a "default" pronunciation can be given.
I hope I helped.
Christophe.
http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr
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