Courtesy : Bachelor of Science Microbiology (CBM) – Chemistry, Botany, Microbiology Library
Vowels
Simple vowels
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | iː ɪ | ʊ uː | |
| Mid | eː ɛ | ɔ oː | |
| Open | a aː |
In Classical Latin, ⟨U⟩ did not exist as a letter distinct from V; the written form ⟨V⟩ was used to represent both a vowel and a consonant. ⟨Y⟩ was adopted to represent upsilon in loanwords from Greek, but it was pronounced like ⟨u⟩ and ⟨i⟩ by some speakers. It was also used in native Latin words by confusion with Greek words of similar meaning, such as sylva and ὕλη.
Classical Latin distinguished between long and short vowels. Then, long vowels, except for ⟨I⟩, were frequently marked using the apex, which was sometimes similar to an acute accent ⟨Á É Ó V́ Ý⟩. Long /iː/ was written using a taller version of ⟨I⟩, called i longa “long I”: ⟨ꟾ⟩. In modern texts, long vowels are often indicated by a macron ⟨ā ē ī ō ū⟩, and short vowels are usually unmarked except when it is necessary to distinguish between words, when they are marked with a breve ⟨ă ĕ ĭ ŏ ŭ⟩. However, they would also signify a long vowel by writing the vowel larger than other letters in a word or by repeating the vowel twice in a row.[54] The acute accent, when it is used in modern Latin texts, indicates stress, as in Spanish, rather than length.
Long vowels in Classical Latin are, technically, pronounced as entirely different from short vowels. The difference is described in the table below:
| Latin grapheme | Latin phone | modern examples |
|---|---|---|
| ⟨a⟩ | [a] | similar to the last a in part (/paɹt/) |
| [aː] | similar to a in father (/fɑːðəɹ/) | |
| ⟨e⟩ | [ɛ] | as e in pet (/pɛt/) |
| [eː] | similar to e in hey (/heɪ/) | |
| ⟨i⟩ | [ɪ] | as i in pit (/pɪt/) |
| [iː] | similar to i in machine (/məʃiːn/) | |
| ⟨o⟩ | [ɔ] | as o in port (/pɔɹt/) |
| [oː] | similar to o in post (/poʊst/) | |
| ⟨u⟩ | [ʊ] | as u in put (/pʊt/) |
| [uː] | similar to ue in true (/tɹuː/) | |
| ⟨y⟩ | [ʏ] | does not exist in English; as ü in German Stück (/ʃtʏk/) |
| [yː] | does not exist in English; as üh in German früh (/fʀyː/) |
This difference in quality is posited by W. Sidney Allen in his book Vox Latina. However, Andrea Calabrese has disputed that short vowels differed in quality from long vowels during the classical period, based in part upon the observation that in Sardinian and some Lucanian dialects, each long and short vowel pair was merged. This is distinguished from the typical Italo-Western romance vowel system in which short /i/ and /u/ merge with long /eː/ and /oː/. Thus, Latin ‘siccus’ becomes ‘secco’ in Italian and ‘siccu’ in Sardinian.
A vowel letter followed by ⟨m⟩ at the end of a word, or a vowel letter followed by ⟨n⟩ before ⟨s⟩ or ⟨f⟩, represented a short nasal vowel, as in monstrum [mõːstrũ].
Diphthongs
Classical Latin had several diphthongs. The two most common were ⟨ae au⟩. ⟨oe⟩ was fairly rare, and ⟨ui eu ei⟩ were very rare, at least in native Latin words. There has also been debate over whether ⟨ui⟩ is truly a diphthong in Classical Latin, due to its rarity, absence in works of Roman grammarians, and the roots of Classical Latin words (i.e. hui ce to huic, quoi to cui, etc.) not matching or being similar to the pronunciation of classical words if ⟨ui⟩ were to be considered a diphthong.
The sequences sometimes did not represent diphthongs. ⟨ae⟩ and ⟨oe⟩ also represented a sequence of two vowels in different syllables in aēnus [aˈeː.nʊs] “of bronze” and coēpit [kɔˈeː.pɪt] “began”, and ⟨au ui eu ei ou⟩ represented sequences of two vowels or of a vowel and one of the semivowels /j w/, in cavē [ˈka.weː] “beware!”, cuius [ˈkʊj.jʊs] “whose”, monuī [ˈmɔn.ʊ.iː] “I warned”, solvī [ˈsɔɫ.wiː] “I released”, dēlēvī [deːˈleː.wiː] “I destroyed”, eius [ˈɛj.jʊs] “his”, and novus [ˈnɔ.wʊs] “new”.
Old Latin had more diphthongs, but most of them changed into long vowels in Classical Latin. The Old Latin diphthong ⟨ai⟩ and the sequence ⟨āī⟩ became Classical ⟨ae⟩. Old Latin ⟨oi⟩ and ⟨ou⟩ changed to Classical ⟨ū⟩, except in a few words whose ⟨oi⟩ became Classical ⟨oe⟩. These two developments sometimes occurred in different words from the same root: for instance, Classical poena “punishment” and pūnīre “to punish”. Early Old Latin ⟨ei⟩ usually changed to Classical ⟨ī⟩.
In Vulgar Latin and the Romance languages, ⟨ae oe⟩ merged with ⟨e ē⟩. During the Classical Latin period this form of speaking was deliberately avoided by well-educated speakers.
| Front | Back | |
|---|---|---|
| Close | ui /ui̯/ | |
| Mid | ei /ei̯/ eu /eu̯/ | oe /oe̯/ ou /ou̯/ |
| Open | ae /ae̯/ au /au̯/ |
Syllables
Syllables in Latin are signified by the presence of diphthongs and vowels. The number of syllables is the same as the number of vowel sounds.
Further, if a consonant separates two vowels, it will go into the syllable of the second vowel. When there are two consonants between vowels, the last consonant will go with the second vowel. An exception occurs when a phonetic stop and liquid come together. In this situation, they are thought to be a single consonant, and as such, they will go into the syllable of the second vowel.
Length
Syllables in Latin are considered either long or short. Within a word, a syllable may either be long by nature or long by position. A syllable is long by nature if it has a diphthong or a long vowel. On the other hand, a syllable is long by position if the vowel is followed by more than one consonant.
Stress
There are two rules that define which syllable is stressed in the Latin language.
- In a word with only two syllables, the emphasis will be on the first syllable.
- In a word with more than two syllables, there are two cases.
- If the second-to-last syllable is long, that syllable will have stress.
- If the second-to-last syllable is not long, the syllable before that one will
- be stressed instead.
- Orthography
- Main article: Latin alphabet
- The Duenos Inscription, from the 6th century BC, is one of the earliest known Old Latin texts. It was found on the Quirinal Hill in Rome.
- Latin was written in the Latin alphabet, derived from the Etruscan alphabet, which was in turn drawn from the Greek alphabet and ultimately the Phoenician alphabet. This alphabet has continued to be used over the centuries as the script for the Romance, Celtic, Germanic, Baltic, Finnic and many Slavic languages (Polish, Slovak, Slovene, Croatian, Bosnian and Czech); and it has been adopted by many languages around the world, including Vietnamese, the Austronesian languages, many Turkic languages, and most languages in sub-Saharan Africa, the Americas and Oceania, making it by far the world’s single most widely used writing system.
- The number of letters in the Latin alphabet has varied. When it was first derived from the Etruscan alphabet, it contained only 21 letters. Later, G was added to represent /ɡ/, which had previously been spelled C, and Z ceased to be included in the alphabet, as the language then had no voiced alveolar fricative. The letters Y and Z were later added to represent Greek letters, upsilon and zeta respectively, in Greek loanwords.
- W was created in the 11th century from VV. It represented /w/ in Germanic languages, not Latin, which still uses V for the purpose. J was distinguished from the original I only during the late Middle Ages, as was the letter U from V. Although some Latin dictionaries use J, it is rarely used for Latin text, as it was not used in classical times, but many other languages use it.
- Classical Latin did not contain sentence punctuation, letter case, or interword spacing, but apices were sometimes used to distinguish length in vowels and the interpunct was used at times to separate words. The first line of Catullus 3, originally written aslv́géteóveneréscupidinésqve (“Mourn, O Venuses and Cupids”)
- or with long I as
- lv́géteóveneréscupꟾdinésqve
- or with interpunct aslv́géte·ó·venerés·cupidinésqve
- would be rendered in a modern edition asLugete, o Veneres Cupidinesque
- or with macronsLūgēte, ō Venerēs Cupīdinēsque
- or with apicesLúgéte, ó Venerés Cupídinésque.
- A modern Latin text written in the Old Roman Cursive inspired by the Vindolanda tablets, the oldest surviving handwritten documents in Britain. The word Romani (‘Romans’) is at bottom left.
- The Roman cursive script is commonly found on the many wax tablets excavated at sites such as forts, an especially extensive set having been discovered at Vindolanda on Hadrian’s Wall in Britain. Most notable is the fact that while most of the Vindolanda tablets show spaces between words, spaces were avoided in monumental inscriptions from that era.