Talk:Latin phonology and orthography

A Medieval Latin Pronunciation Problem

In the Section entitled "Medieval Latin", there is a poem and a transcription:

   Pange lingua gloriósi
   Córporis mystérium,
   Sanguinísque pretiósi,
   quem in mundi prétium
   fructus ventris generósi
   Rex effúdit géntium. 

When I read the poem aloud, I realized that I did not pronounce every word the same as in the transcription. Specifically, I did not shift the "ti" in "gentium" to "tsi". I read it aloud several times and "gentsium" just sounds wrong, even while "pretsiosi" and "pretsium" sound fine. What gives?

Then I remembered that in the transition to Italian, that "pretium" formalizes this sound change into "prezzo", but "gente" retained the original pure "t". So I have to wonder if there are some cases in which the existence of a preceding vowel or consonant (the "n" in "gentium" in this case) stops this "ts" change from occurring? I can't bring any academic arguments to the table, but having spoken Latin since before Vatican II (early 60s) and Italian for nearly that long, perhaps I can have the right to just question when things sound wrong... —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mccalpin (talk • contribs) 20:22, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Italian gente is not derived from Latin gen. pl. gentium, but from acc. sg. gentem. So the pronunciation of the Italian gente is not related to the medieval pronunciation of gentium. If you pronounce pretium as pretsium (or precium), then there is no reason why you shouldn't pronounce gentium as gentsium (gencium). The only position (for this pronunciation manner) which prevents ti from shiftins is after 's' (e.g. in caelestium ti should be pronounced, not tsi).

I admire you speaking Latin for so long, but I am afraid, that your pronunciation customs have no authority, as you are not a native speaker. Mamurra (talk) 13:49, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

Mamurra, I thank you for your response. However, you did not address the fundamental issue - pretium did shift to prezzo in all cases, while gente did not shift to genze or gezze. Well, of course not...but are we positive that "gentium" had the same sound shift as "pretium"? That is, do you have any empirical evidence that "gentium" and "pretium" were necessarily pronounced the same way?

I do not mean this as an argumentative question, but as a serious question...just how do we know that "ti" was always pronounced "tsi", or are we just applying a rule that actually didn't exist in Late Latin?

William J. 'Bill' McCalpin (talk) 05:33, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure that the pronunciation example titled "'Italianate' ecclesiastical pronunciation" is not meant to be a historical reconstruction, but is simply the modern Italian pronunciation. --Alatius (talk) 10:58, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

Well, William said "Late Latin" though; while the Italianate pronunciation section certainly is what it says (the ecclesiastical/modern Italian pronunciation), it's pretty certain some change of that sort must have happened at some stage in Latin, because it's reflected in most (if not all) Romance languages as well as Italian. --LjL (talk) 12:09, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

Nothing to do with having an "n" before the "t"; "gentem" simply has an "e" after "t", not a semivocalic "i" + vowel. That's what triggers the change in Italian. A hypothetical accusative singular "gentium" would most definitely become "genzio". --LjL (talk) 12:09, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

Myriad systems??

Troublesome statement:

Myriad systems^{[dubious – discuss]} have arisen for pronouncing the language — at least one for each language in the modern world whose speakers learn Latin^{[citation needed]}.

While the statement correctly indicates that there are millions of ways to mispronounce Latin, mispronouncements aren't systems proper, they're most usually system violations. I would actually guess that there use to be approximately one way to pronounce a Latin borrowing per language, which is not the same as pronunciation habits in Contemporary Latin ― a foreign language to everybody, having its own independent pronunciation rules. ... said: Rursus (bork²) 15:01, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

That couple of sentence is a conglomerate of weasel words. Toning it down and removing tags, but feel free to re-add them if you still don't find it satisfactory and undisputed. LjL (talk) 15:22, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

simple questions

Wondering why the ae in trōiae [ˈtroːj.jă.e] is not a diphthong, and why Gāius [ˈɡaː.i.us] is three syllables. Details like this aren't covered that I see. kwami (talk) 09:21, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Where do you get the information that "Troiae" is three syllables? I'm surprised by that. I've included information about "Gaius", although I haven't explained "why", but I guess the answer is just "because" :P LjL (talk) 13:40, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

The transcription in this article has three syllables for trōiae. Perhaps it's just an error? I'll adjust the transcription; please correct me if I get it wrong. (Someone noted the same problem below.)

As for gāius, I just wanted to make sure that it wasn't an error too. Given that reicit is [ˈrejjikit], might gāius be something like [ɡaːjjijjus]? kwami (talk) 18:23, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Where in the article does it show Troiae with three syllables? In the example IPA transcription from the Aeneid it doesn't divide anything in syllables, and I didn't see it anywhere else...

As for Gaius, I don't have sources, but I think there is no reason to even remotely suspect it might be [ɡaːjjijjus]; it's simply that the "i" is being used as a plain vowel, but normal Latin orthography (without "j") has no way to distinguish these two usages. With "reicit" one is simply assuming it's equivalent to "rejicit" because of the etymology, re+ieci. I think I stumbled upon a source for that today but I passed it by without noting it down.

LjL (talk) 20:53, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Trōiae was transcribed [ˈtroːjjăe], which is three syllables because it has three vowels: [oː], [ă], and [e]. kwami (talk) 21:52, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

That was simply a mistake. No one is seriously arguing that the ending "-ae" should be disyllabic. --Alatius (talk) 10:58, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

This whole discussion puzzles me, as neither Troiae nor Gaius are three syllables - in Ecclesiastical or Medieval Latin. In both cases, the "i" has become a glide like the consonantal "y" in English. Would it be appropriate to mention this in the section that shows "Gaius" as three syllables ("Ga -i-us")? Otherwise, those of us who grew up speaking Church Latin might wonder what this was all about. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mccalpin (talk • contribs) 20:09, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

For that matter, I don't think the trisyllabic pronunciation Gā-i-us is very common amongst speakers who use the reconstructed classical pronunciation either, either because they are not aware of the original pronunciation or because they don't bother with such minute pedantry. But that section doesn't deal with the pronunciation used today. --Alatius (talk) 10:58, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

Rising diphthongs

In the Classical pronunciation example, all the "ae" diphthongs are represented as [ăe], but isn't this suggesting a rising diphthong (since that seems to be the IPA diacritic for "extra-short") when those diphthongs were actually always falling [1] (either [ai̯] or [ae̯], using the kind representation that Diphthong uses)?

Actually, [ăe] would be two vowels with hiatus, not a diphthong. Corrected to simple [aj] per comments above. It's possible Latin distinguished [j] from [i̯], in which can we'd need to be more precise. Were aea and aia distinct, say across a word break: ae a vs. a ia, in set phrases where the words are run together? Or would they both be geminate [ajja]? kwami (talk) 18:38, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Uhm, I don't know about that (IIRC Vox Latina says something about that but only in passing and without any degree of certainty), but while in the example phonetical transcription using [j] is probably alright, I'm not a fan of using it in when denoting phonemic values of the diphthongs... because it would mean you're not really analyzing them as diphthongs to begin with - after just saying they are. And if you keep in mind that they soon developed into something where there was something short of a full [i] as the falling element (rather [e] or similar), eventually resulting in monophthongization... putting [j] kind of puts the opposite idea across, i.e. that it wasn't that prone to lenition/assimilation. LjL (talk) 20:58, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

If we avoid /j/, how do we decide between /ai̯/ and /ae̯/? (Not an objection, just a question.)

I disagree that /aj/ implies they weren't prone to lenition, though you are correct that /aj/ would not be a true phonemic diphthong--but then we're back to my question above: is /aj/ distinct from /ai̯/ in Latin? kwami (talk) 22:00, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Well no I guess it doesn't imply it, just kinda suggests it subtly.

About /ai̯/ vs /ae̯/, I'd choose /ae̯/ for the following reason: sources suggest that the change in spelling from AI to AE that occurred in the Republic reflected a change in pronunciation occurring at the same stage. So if we pick AE in the plain text (and I'm sure we would, as that's what virtually everyone uses to spell "classical" Latin nowadays), it makes sense to "match" that to a phonetic rendering for the same historical period, i.e. /ae̯/.

LjL (talk) 22:39, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Interesting that something that subtle would be reflected in the orthography, unless maybe there was a contrast between aea [ae̯.a] and aia [aj.ja]?

We have a fair number of Classical Latin transcriptions in Wikipedia, and I've never seen one that used /ae̯/. If we use that here, wouldn't we want to convert the other articles too? kwami (talk) 23:39, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Look, you keep hinting to this contrast between [ae̯.a] and [aj.ja] - I would be delighted to be able to say whether there is such a contrast or not, but I don't know. Honestly I kind of doubt anyone knows for sure, Vox Latina certainly seems uncertain when it comes to such really subtle things.

You may have a point that if the other articles (and I suspect quite a bit of the literature) use [ai], it might be better to just use that. That's a valid point also because I think none of the sources in the article actually go as far as saying that [ai] evolved into exactly [ae], but just that the tongue position was lowered, that the articulation was more relaxed, or other such vague phrashings.

At the end of the day, I'm pretty neutral on whether to use [ai] or [ae], there's decent arguments for both. There's one source (don't remember which right) that says it was probably pronunced "exactly" like American English [aɪ], that might be another decent in-between choice.

LjL (talk)

There was certainly a contrast between AEA (like in Aeaea, the island) and AIA (like in Traianus), as Romans themselves tell us that intervocalic 'i' is doubled; so it is actually 'ajaja' but 'trajjanus'. However, the intervocalic position is somehow a special case. Otherwise, where 'i' is followed by a consonant, the 'ai' cluster forms two syllables (like terra-i frugifera-i in Martial), whereas 'ae', with few exceptions (mostly loan words, like 'a-er', with long 'e') is normally one syllable. Just a note. Mamurra (talk) 11:42, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

So phonemic /ai̯a/ vs /aia/, /ai̯k/ vs /aik/, phonetic [aja] vs. [ajja], [ajk] vs [aik]? kwami (talk) 18:30, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

gu + vowel

I have one source that seems to indicate that gu before a vowel became /gw/ rather than the expected /gu/. However, this doesn't seem to be discussed in our article. I'd like to know because it would affect syllabification. --EncycloPetey (talk) 18:27, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Why is /gu/ "expected" in that context? --LjL (talk) 20:06, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Because g is /g/ and u is /u/. --EncycloPetey (talk) 20:34, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Err... no? "U" is exceedingly often /w/ ("uiuus" /'wiwus/), and the article definitely mentions that. --LjL (talk) 20:38, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Yes, between vowels it is, and at the beginning of a word when followed by a vowel. I'm asking about the situation where it occurs after g but before another vowel, in a situation where my sources differ as to the pronunciation. Do you have any helpful information? --20:51, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Helpful? I don't know, I thought this was about the article - which has "Usually the semi-consonant v after q or g is still printed as u rather than v, probably because in this position it did not change from /w/ to /v/ in post-classical times", which to me implies a semivocalic pronunciation after "g". It's unsourced, that's true. This claims that "gu" is pronounced /gw/ only when preceded by "n", as in "sanguis". My dictionary agrees. --LjL (talk) 21:28, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Which dictionary? This does help with my case, since the specific word(s) I am dealing with have ngu in them. --EncycloPetey (talk) 22:24, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Castiglioni-Mariotti, Vocabolario della lingua latina, 3rd, Loescher, 9788820166502; but it really only "agrees" in the sense that it puts neither a brevis nor a macron on the "u", which normally means the letter is not a syllable nucleus, but it isn't entirely consistent in its usage. It's got a brevis sign on "puella" though, for instance. --LjL (talk) 22:50, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

These are the Indo-European labio-velar series: *kʷ becomes Latin qv, and *ɡʷ becomes Latin gv (though *ɡʷʰ I think becomes just v), so it's not surprising that v-vowel after g and q would behave differently than after p or other consonants. Or is that not the question here? kwami (talk) 06:53, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

I actually meant to say that the fact it's got a breve sign on "puella" but not on "sanguis" reinforces the idea it's doing it for a valid reason, even though it seems to be a bit inconsistent in other cases (mostly by just not putting any sign on vowels that are "obviously" syllable nuclei and, I guess, "obviously" short or long - obviously for the dictionary, that is, not quite for me). --LjL (talk) 13:16, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

This is not "gu + vowel" but "ngu + vowel" which "consonantizes" the "u". BTW. a dictionary putting no quantity sign on a vowel is no information, as some quantities are uncertain or simply unknown. Mamurra (talk) 12:33, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

I see... it does seem to do it a bit frequently, though. --LjL (talk) 13:05, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

Generally, dictionaries mark vowel quantities and do not mark syllable quantities, as these are usually obvious (for natural length) or follow some constant rule (for positions). Maybe this is your case. My remark above was about the difficult questions of words, in which the real vowel quantity is undeterminable. Mamurra (talk) 10:54, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Pronunciation of 'suauis'

The Latin adjective SVAVIS originates Italian soave which is trisyllabic (so.a.ve). My guess is, it was prononunced /su'a:wis/ (not /'swa:wis/), that is, it is a counterexample. Please provide a cite or change the example.--79.44.191.36 (talk) 21:42, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

I had my doubts about that claim, too (being Italian it did seem weird). However, 1 and 2 --LjL (talk) 21:46, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

That guess is wrong, "suauis" was disyllabic, with both "u" being semivowels. Such semivowels were sometimes vocalized (e.g. disyllabic "sol-uit" shows trisyllabic variant "so-lu-it"), but I can't find any single instance of that for "suauis". In any case, ancient Latin poetry constitutes stronger evidence than modern Italian pronunciation. Mamurra (talk) 14:56, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

I don't think that Italian "soave" is trisyllabic: the "oa" is pronounced as a diphthong on one syllable. At least, that's how I pronounce it. It is true that the "o" has more of a vocalic character than an English "w", and it is perfectly possible that the first "v" in "svavis" also had a more vocalic character than our "w", but still falling well short of forming a separate syllable. Alternatively the phoneme has become more vocalic than it was. Either way, the evidence that "svavis" had only two syllables is overwhelming. JamesBWatson (talk) 10:49, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

The aspirated plosives

Th, Ph and Ch were not exclusive to Greek loanwords. Not in the classical period anyway. They appear in a number of words of non-greek origin such as lachrima, pulcher, triumphus, bracchium, Carthago, sepulchrum and others. I've gone and fixed this, with a note on these sounds' peculiar status in Latin phonology. Szfski (talk) 11:18, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

I am not sure if one is entitled to light-heartedly describe all of these words as "native Latin words"; bracchium is from βραχίων; triumphus from θρίαμβος via Etruscan, and lachrima from δάκρυμα (all three of them were borrowed into preclassical/old Latin). Plus, from a strictly historical/diachronic viewpoint, even the rest of the words might not be considered native, since they don't have an IE etymology. I do understand what you are saying and I agree with your proposal about a disambiguation, but I find the phrasing you used a bit ambiguous. --Omnipaedista (talk) 12:32, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

That's largely irrelevant. By the classical period, there's no reason to think that most Romans would have seen lachrima or triumphus as foreign words anymore than native English speakers think of words like froth, move, chair, skirt, candle, they or sky as Norse or French words. Even if that weren't the case, Latin-speakers clearly didn't aspirate these words simply to mimic their counterparts in Greek, since if they had done so, they wouldn't have added an aspirated ch where the original Greek word had no aspiration (i.e. as if the Greek cognate were δάχρυμα) or refrained from rounding front vowels where they are rounded in Greek (as if the Greek form were were δάκριμα.) This is an entirely different (and, yes, native) phonological process from the conscious imitation of Greek sounds in learned words like pyramidum and Philtrum.

Moreover, the fact that a word cannot be found to have any discernible ancestor in a proto-language doesn't necessarily make it a borrowing or in any meaningful way "non-native." (c.f. American English words like wacko, okay, howdy, bogus, clobber, malarkey, gizmo, bonkers and doodle.) More to the point, the fact of having been borrowed into some earlier stage of a language in no way prevents that word from being subject to the language's native phonological rules in later periods. Diachronic evidence is irrelevant when evaluating what was, essentially, a synchronic phenomenon specific to the classical period.

In any event, even if all the above weren't true, your argument still wouldn't hold up since sepulchrum *does* have a PIE etymology: *sep- "to honor (one's dead)" "to handle skillfully" (c.f. Sanskrit saparyati,' Greek ἑπειν)

In sum, I don't really see your point. Szfski (talk) 13:42, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

I don't disagree with any of the above (and of course you are right about sepelire and ἕπειν); I didn't defend an opposite opinion. All I was trying to say (but obviously didn't express it adequately --sorry for being needlessly arduous) is this: the term "native" by itself might cause ambiguity in the minds of readers who are unaware of the difference between the synchronic and the diachronic levels of description (but know about the etymologies of these words), and thus it might be desirable to add an additional characterization to the adjective (as it appears in the text); for example: e.g.: "native Latin words" --> "synchronically native words" (unless of course, the consensus is that such a change would be überpedantic, and therefore unnecessary). --Omnipaedista (talk) 16:21, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

hmm you may be right. Let me see if I can phrase it better. Szfski (talk) 22:30, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't now how relevant is this to "aspirated plosives", but out of your examples, "lacrima", "pulcer" and "sepulcrum" are better written without h. Abuse of aspirates is affectionate for classical times (see Quintilian's remarks on that), and later such writing gets more common because "h" in later times gets silent. Mamurra (talk) 16:35, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

I take it you mean "an affectation in Classical time";) garik (talk) 16:42, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

This is a descriptive, rather than prescriptive, article. Therefore notions of "abuse" of sounds or which sound is "better" than another are irrelevant to the topic at hand. In any event, the use of aspirated stops in native Latin words of non-greek origin was not a purely graphical phenomenon, nor was it an affectation. It represents an actual change in popular Roman speech habits, for which there exists a fair amount of evidence. For example, such words were often transliterated in Greek in ways that suggest an aspirate pronunciation (e.g. πουλχερ, ανχορα, σεπουλχρον). Some grammarians describe this as a phenomenon of popular speech, such as Cicero (Or. 160) when he says "usum loquendi populo concessi" to describe his acceptance of the fact that stops in non-greek words can be aspirated. Moreover, this is an entirely different phenomenon from the hypercorrection described in Catullus 84, since this aspiration occurred regularly even in vulgar Latin words borrowed into Celtic languages, as evidenced by Welsh hefys and Breton hiviz from Vulgar Latin *chamisia (had the original borrowed word been the more standard camisia, we would expect *cefys to occur in Welsh, just as we have cadwyn and ceffyl from vulgar Latin catena and caballus.)

The silencing of H did not apply to instances of H in digraphs representing aspirates. "Ph" became later /f/ in all environments (c.f. french Triomphe, Spanish Triunfo.) Likewise, a uvular, glottal or velar fricative very often occurs as a reflex of Ch in vulgar Latin words when borrowed into languages that had them.

For sources see Archivum Linguisticum, X (158), 110 ff. along with Allen, W.S. Vox Latina p 26-27. For data on Celtic see Archaeologia cambrensis Vol IV, Series IV, pp 359. Szfski (talk) 19:15, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

I think what Mamurra may be referring to in part is that the article says this allophony resulted in "standard [written] forms" such as pulcher, lachrima, gracchus, triumphus. While this article is descriptive, "standard" by definition includes prescription, so the question is whether the allophony was prescribed and whether the spelling indicating the allophony was considered "correct" or whether it was just a common mispelling. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 05:16, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

That depends on the word in question, and the particular grammarian you're looking at. Cicero, for example, came to accept Pulcher, Carthago, Triumphus and Cethegus as "proper" but wouldn't stand for Otho, Chorona or Sepulchrum in either speech or writing. Of these, I believe Marius Victorinus only mentions Pulcher as acceptable. The grammarians in general show a fair amount of disagreement in the matter, but it seems fair to say that the general practice was to represent the allophony graphically in certain words such as Carthago and triumphus to such a degree that they became the standard forms, at least in the inscriptions and papyri from the 1st century B.C. onward. Allen speculates that this may ultimately be due to a residual Etruscan substratum. Szfski (talk) 06:44, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Ah, that's pretty much how I interpreted it. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 15:55, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

@garik: you're right, I wanted to say something more like "pretentious" (sorry, English isn't my native language and sometimes I make horrible errors). In any case, I see no etymological (nor any other) justification for "h" at least in lacrima (< gr. dakry) and sepulcrum (< sepelio > *sepulculum or such, no aspirate). I am also in doubt about "pulcer". If the spelling with "h" is purely ortographical thing, does it belong to phonetics? Mamurra (talk) 14:09, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Mamurra, I can't shake the feeling that you didn't read my most recent post here. At least, not very carefully. As I said, the aspiration of consonants such as the /kʰ/ of lachrima does not require any justification, etymological or otherwise. It was a purely synchronic process that, unlike the learned aspiration of words like cithara or theatrum, did not depend on the word's etymology. Moroever it was *not* a purely orthographical phenomenon, as Cicero (Or. 160) and others explicitly state, and modern scholars such as W.S. Allen confirm. Szfski (talk) 16:59, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

That's possible that I don't understand your point. But you at least seem mistaken with the reference to Cic. Or. 160: Cicero explicitly states there that "lacrima" is commonly pronounced without aspiration, and he also is doing that: "usum loquendi populo concessi" (as to pronunciation of pulcher, Cethegus, triumphus, Carthago) "Orcivios TAMEN et Matones, Otones, Caepiones, sepulcra, coronas, lacrimas dicimus, quia per aurium iudicium licet". So I admit I don't understand, why lacrima or sepulcrum underwent inclusion into a discussion of aspirated plosives... Mamurra (talk) 12:59, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Traditional Orthography

In the "traditional orthography" for the Virgil passage there are now a number of accents. What's the rationale behind these (and I suppose I should say is there a citation for them)? I presume the acute accent is supposed to indicate the stress in the case of words with suffixed -que which the reader might otherwise be doubtful about, but if so it's clearly wrong in the case of "Lavináque" where the stress has to be on the first syllable. --rossb (talk) 11:40, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

Upper/lower case

There is a bit of a natural inaccuracy here I am trying to correct. The classical Romans used their block or their cursive; our "lowercase" (a renaissance term) was not known. The tables begin by making a point to employ block. Then in the notes we slip into lower case representations, a natural enough mistake. Where we are trying to use graphemes - the ones the Roman used - I am putting over to block if not that already. Where we are simply referring to Latin words using any script I let the lower case stand. Phonological representations of course have their own representations in lower case.Dave (talk) 16:04, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Changes by aeusoes1

My friend! Those are a lot of changes to hit us with all at once. You seem to have some knowledge of linguistics. Some, I say. I'm surprised you are in this Latin article because Latin is not in your repertory. I can say that because you are asking for references on things that are standard to Latinists and asking for clarifications of things that are clear to Latinists. Nevertheless an experienced editor with a linguistics background is not to be brushed off. I am sure we might benefit by some professionalism. First, I note that you have gone ahead and done this without discussion. Some of your tags call for discussion. I will in fact ask you for discussion. But, everything in its time. Here are some questions, which anyone may take up and answer. I say questions, I mean questions; that is, they are not rhetorical but are a request for data so that I may assess what you say. This is obviously going to be a long slow process but you have thrown your hat in the ring and I think we should go through it. Otherwise it will be on Wikipedia for a long time as a bad article until the sysadm's have to start calling for experts. I can put little bits of time on a regular basis.Dave (talk) 22:38, 31 October 2009 (UTC) PS I see from your user page you are begging off until December 28. And yet you have enough time for major changes to the article. Perhaps you may spare us a little time so that I may understand you. Otherwise I will have to decide these questions in my favor, and that would be a shame, as I like to understand people if I can.Dave (talk) 22:47, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

There's very little substance that I actually altered. There was an "other orthographic

Sometimes little things are big things when it comes to readability, so I see them as more "substantial". Right now substantial to me means amount of work required to check accuracy and format. Your unsubstantial is my substantial, but no conflict. Analogous.Dave (talk) 23:50, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

notes" section that ended up, for the most part, covering ground that was already discussed. The OGN about C and K sort of contradicted the footnote on it so I merged them and put in a cite request on the matter of dispute. There were a few places where I altered the wording,

I don't see the dispute. C replaced K. What is disputable or unclear about that? see next question when I get it typed. I think you must mean something else.

often to clarify that letters aren't pronounced but rather represent pronunciations. Otherwise, all I did was use single chevrons (‹›) whenever discussing graphemes or letters, make correct distinctions between phonemes (in /slashes/) and phones (in [brackets]).

I have to agree with the chevrons and those are xplained in another article. The public will not know why the chevrons but they can find out with a click and a read.Dave (talk) 23:50, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

It seems like I've done a lot more because I also eliminated spaces between bulletpoints, which messed up the way the track changes sees it. I did change the statement that length was

Well, I have not been through to where I was yet. I had not yet got beyond vowels (and I'm already starting to get bored with it). So, I'm not comparing what you did with the way it was, only checking, as it now seems, what YOU say. I do believe you are wrong there about the phonemic rather than morphemic. Length is often a just a phoneme but in this case it also is a morpheme. If you contrast those two words the only difference is the length of that one vowel and that changes the meaning, so it is a morpheme, and length there is morphemic, not vandalism. I'm the supposed "vandal" by the way.Dave (talk) 23:50, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

often morphemic to that it was often phonemic, which I'm was pretty sure was simply undoing unnoticed vandalism. Believe me, when I make substantive edits, I use sourcing.

Also, by the way, this article is geared towards a mass audience, not one of Latinists. So the two calls for sourcing I put were more of a request to improve the article rather than questioning the accuracy of the statements. Who knows, perhaps upon finding sourcing we'll find a better and more accurate way to word it. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]}

I recognize your edits as serious but your view is considerably ironic. I would have thought this article is one for linguists and you moved even further in that direction whereas the suppose Latinist articles are much easier to read and understand, in my view. In any case I am all for clarification so if you want a ref I can put it in there - but - no insult intended - you are not recognizing the refs that are there! On with the show.Dave (talk) 23:50, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

My point with C and K is that the two notes told two slightly different stories. I suppose it can seem obvious that words with kappa changed to have C; if Allen (2003) can be said to back that up, then we need only to move the citation to after that sentence.

Regarding length, if it can be morphemic then there needs to be an example to demonstrate that there is a "length" morpheme akin to other morphemes. Whether that's true, it is also true (and the example shows this) that length is phonemic for both consonants and vowels. What you describe as a morphemic contrast ("the only difference is the length of that one vowel and that changes the meaning") is actually a phonemic contrast, not a morphemic one.

At some point this article will be reviewed for good article status. If the references aren't clear enough, they'll point it out. I tend to go overboard with references when I edit (see Russian phonology, Catalan phonology, and Spanish phonology for some examples). — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 00:21, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

The small caps question

Do you have a reason for going over to small caps? I ask that because some of your small caps are smaller than lower case; for example, c. Roman square letters are fairly large graphemes. They did not have any lower case and the size of the square letters depended on the context. Would it not be clearer to use caps? Also, you left the caps in the consonant table. Are we doing this for consistency according to some standard or are we trying make things easy to read?What is your thinking here?Dave (talk) 22:38, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

In my edit today, I made some inconsistent usage of {{smallcaps}} to mark orthography (both in talking about graphemes and in examples), figuring if we decide to go against the smallcaps template it's easy to remove. I agree that when the Romans used block lettering, we should as well. I was unfamiliar with the smallcaps template before seeing it on this page, and I'm not sure which is more proper: {{smallcaps|text}} or {{smallcaps|TEXT}}, but I agree we should be consistent. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 23:10, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

If it OK with you then I think I will go back to Roman square letters - our caps- for those.Dave (talk) 23:21, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Replacement of K by C

Here is the statement I commented out:

"Words from Greek with kappa (‹Κ›) came to be represented with ‹c› instead."

Here is the preceding statement:

"However, in classical times, ‹k› had been replaced by ‹c›, except in a very small number of words."

At first I thought they were saying the same thing, but now I see the difference. The first statement would certainly need a ref if anyone had said it. It looks to me as though you made one up and asked for a reference on it. Off the top of my head I would say, this is in no way necessary and gives the wrong implication. C generally replaced K from any source, not because it was Greek. The whole alphabet was modified Greek. The Romans did not pick on Greek words for the replacement, they all were replaced. There is no point in that statement and it should come out. Where did you get it? If you got it from below, let's just take it out; it is wrong.Dave (talk) 00:05, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I got it from another part of the article. Perhaps someone was under the impression that, at some point, Greek loanwords with /k/ got the k spelling and Latin otherwise used C. If you say it's wrong, then we shall strike it down. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 04:50, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

He/she's right. C is normative in Latin for /k/ regardless of etymology, even where Latin uses special characters to otherwise mark the word's Greek origins (c.f. Cyclops, cyclus, centaurus, Theocritus from Κύκλωψ, κύκλος, κένταυρος, Θεόκριτος.) On the other hand, the rare list of words which did use an optional K grapheme includes many forms (such as Kalendæ) which have no Greek etymology. The letter C is in fact ultimately derived from the Greek Gamma Γ.Szfski (talk) 15:12, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Chevrons?

May I protest at the rash of angle brackets/chevrons that have recently disfigured this article. They're ugly, quite unnecessary, and meaningless to most readers. --rossb (talk) 15:00, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

  Sorry, I don't know what you're referring to...can you give us an example?
  William J. 'Bill' McCalpin (talk) 20:11, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

If you look at "Consonants" for example you'll see beneath the table: "‹c› and ‹k› both represent /k/" with the chevrons round the c and the k. And many more examples --rossb (talk) 20:18, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

They're used at orthography related articles like List of Latin digraphs, Spanish orthography, and Trigraph (orthography). They might be "ugly" to you, but AFAIK, that's how you do it I've also seen <angle brackets like these>. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 02:31, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

I can see both points of view. The chevrons mark a grapheme (I think it is an allograph), just as slashes mark a phoneme and brackets mark a phonological representation. Most people don't know any phonology, either. There is an issue of consistency. If we don't use grapheme markers why should we use the others? And yet this can hardly be a professional type article without some phonology. It's a tough question. I appreciate your chiming in, Ross. Let me try this. We already agreed not use small caps as that is very confusing. How about if we put a few footnotes in there to explain our usages and term? This might be done in two autogenerated sections, sources and footnotes, as I've seen done in and have added to some articles (a minority). I have not yet heard the Wikicops complain about that. If they don't like something they usually say so in regulative language. Let me see if I can find the code again. However, the question is by no means closed and certainly will spill over into other articles. Just how linguistic shall we get in linguistics articles? We don't want to mystify the public.Dave (talk) 05:26, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

PS. What a mess. I tried caps on the first table note. I better not go further until we get this resolved. The chevrons do not fit the caps so we have either to go over to genuine leather angle brackets, abandon the caps, or abandon the angles. For sure the public is not going to know that all we mean by the angles is that K alternates with C for /k/. Maybe we should wait for more comments. By the way much of those unreferenced notes are wrong and have to go. I suppose I could work on that. I'm staring at at least a dozen totally unreferenced Latin articles full of linguistics jargon that contains many errors. One thing at a time I guess.Dave (talk) 05:45, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't think the analogy wish slashes and brackets is valid.They're needed to signal that the characters in question are being used in a special way, as symbols to indicate the pronunciation rather than as ordinary letters: without them, the readers would be seriously confused (although I do wonder whether we explain the usage sufficiently in articles). But surely graphemes (including allographs) are just examples of letters of the alphabet, and don't need this extra marking off, which I still think is very ugly and detracts from the readability of the article. In other articles I've seen italics used in a similar context, and maybe this would work here. --rossb (talk) 07:57, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

In adding the chevrons, I noticed sentences like: In classical verse, the letter Z always counted as two consonants. The chevrons negate the need to say "the letter" in this context. Similarly, we use slashes and brackets not just to mark off pronunciations but also to eliminate the need to say "the labial element of the phoneme kʷ".

I honestly don't see how the chevrons make the article less readable. I can concede that it's often neutral (as slashes and brackets can be), but there are times when they can clarify or help reinforce that we're talking about spelling and not a word, such as in the first footnote under the consonant chart: "Misunderstanding of this convention has led to the erroneous spelling ‹caius›". Thus we make a distinction between words (in italics) and orthographic items (in chevrons). — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 08:23, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

We might want to add a footnote explaining what the brackets do. But whenever we deal with orthographic variants, we can potentially lose the reader if we don't dab. kwami (talk) 21:18, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Should we perhaps create a template like we do warning readers about IPA usage? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 01:48, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm quite unconvinced that "<Z>" is an improvement over "the letter Z". We should we writing articles for the general reader not the specialist. The slashes and brackets for pronunciation are necessary, but the chevrons are not, and I strongly feel that they have no place in this article. --rossb (talk) 07:35, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

If the general reader can understand slashes and brackets, I think they can get chevrons, so including them isn't an appeal to specialists. Do you say that slashes and brackets are necessary because conventions require them or because they're a lot more likely to disambiguate than the chevrons? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 18:53, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

If the general reader,particularly a reader who's seen other Wikipedia articles, or has used dictionaries, sees slashes and brackets, hey are quite likely to realise that it has to do with pronunciation, although they may not grasp the difference between phonemic and phonetic. The point is that by surrounding the letters with these characters we're marking them out as no longer letters of the alphabet in the ordinary way but as having a special function. So when they see chevrons they're quite likely to get confused and think that they've also got something to do with pronunciation. We're not here writing for the specialist but for the general reader, and I would strongly urge that the chevrons reduce the readability of this article rather than improving it, and should therefore be removed. --rossb (talk) 07:05, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

I see what you're saying, but I don't agree that the chevrons are all that confusing. So far, you're the only one who'se brought it up and I assume that you yourself weren't confused but rather you believe a significant enough portion of our readership could be. Am I correct? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 07:32, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm concerned that the chevrons will just make the article off-putting to general readers. Those readers who have seen articles with slashes and brackets are quite likely to think that the chevrons are some further variation of pronunciation. I think I've already said that the slashes and brackets are a necessary evil: we need them to distinguish between letters of the alphabet and phonemic/phonemic symbols, which just happen, perhaps unfortunately, to use some of the same glyphs. But in the case of the chevrons they're really just saying that the letters of the alphabet are being used as letters of the alphabet. They're totally unnecessary, and make the article less readable, without as far as I can see giving any benefit. -- This last contribution was by me: I'd forgotten to log in. --rossb (talk) 19:27, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Well, we've both given our opinions on the matter and it doesn't look like we can solve it by butting heads. I can bring it up at the language reference desk. Should this be brought up somewhere else? It seems like an issue that would affect many more Wikipedia articles. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 18:29, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

As a follow-up, this is from a conversation at User talk:Kwamikagami#Angle brackets:

They're in the maths section of Unicode. I've just been checking Google Books, and many texts use either <...> or guillemots as an approximation, even though they call them "angle brackets". However, I did found this,[2] which uses true angle brackets for literal transliterations of Syriac, and closer to home this,[3] which makes the [x], /x/, <x> distinction. (Also here, here, here, etc.) So it seems pretty clear that when sources say "angle brackets" are used for this, they actually do mean "angle brackets", even if not all printers stock them.

So the convention is ubiquitous, even if it isn't universal. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 18:33, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Correction to my comment: there's a second set at U+2329/A, which are the non-math angle brackets. (They were deprecated and replaced for math use because of equivalence with CJK punctuation.) kwami (talk) 02:49, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Pronunciation Problems

The author of this page misinterpretation several statements from Vox Latina:

1) The assimilation of n to [m] takes place only in the preposition in before a word starting with labial. see p28 ¶1

2) n before f represents a labio-dental nasal [ɱ] p29 ¶2

3) I see no evidence for the pronunciation of qu as [k^ɥ] before front vowels on p17. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.74.184.7

Take a more careful look at Vox Latina.

The assimilation of n to m is indeed described as occurring with the preposition in, however it does not say anywhere that this is the only environment where such assimilation occurred. Moreover, on page 31, he cites inscriptional evidence and explicitly quotes Cicero and Velius longus for examples of /m/->/n/ in other environments.

On Page 29 Allen states that the same considerations apply to f as to s for preceding n, and uses this as an explanation for inscriptional forms such as cofeci, iferos for confeci, inferos. He then goes on to state that the labio-dental pronunciation existed as an artificial restoration of a previously dropped n.

On page 17, the penultimate paragraph cites Priscian (K. ii, 7) as stating that the "u element of qu when followed by a front vowel has a special quality like Greek υ (i.e. like the initial sound of French huit as contrasted with oui). In a footnote he confirms this for the classical period with inscriptional Greek spellings such as Ακυλιος and Κυιντιλιος for Aquilius and Quintilius, and κυι for qui as against κοα for qua.

Happy re-reading! Szfski (talk) 19:55, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

On point 1 /m/ -> /n/ in not the same as /n/ -> /m/ and to quote the silence of an author as proof seems like a bad case of reading between the lines. 64.131.187.175 (talk) 21:44, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Vowel Question

In the vowel chart the short vowels are given as [i], [e], [u], [o], but in the second bullet point it says that they should be [ɪ], [ɛ], [ʊ], [ɔ]. Which one is correct? 64.131.187.175 (talk) 14:36, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

When vowels appear between /slashes/, it means they represent phonemes. In this case, the phonemic representation for short vowels is slightly different from their actual phonetic realization. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 17:23, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

I am really sorry about my lack of linguistic skills, but can you explain this in difference in more detail please. If I understand correctly a Latin speaker would of perceived a [ɔ] as a short o and a [oː] as a long o. Is this correct? 64.131.187.175 (talk) 20:50, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, you are correct. However, we've chosen to represent the short o as /o/ when we're using the more abstract phonemic representation for a number of reasons. We discussed the matter a couple of years ago here. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 21:32, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Division of syllables

Currently, there is a discussion on Wiktionary, concerning the division of syllables, on whether a preposition can form a syllable with an initial vowel of a verb in compounds or whether the separate parts of compounds are kept distinct. It would be helpful if anyone had any more information or views on this issue. For the discussion on Wiktionary, see [4] further down. Caladon (talk) 09:13, 13 December 2009 (UTC)