Latin in Passion of the Christ

we list veritas claudio whoa what is that accent the 2004 film the passion of the christ features spoken latin and aramaic but how is the latin in this film let's explore that together i'm luke and this is polymothy [Music] passion of the christ was rather famous for using dialogue exclusively in these ancient languages the movie was marketed as being rather realistic in several aspects but how is the latin well the latin spoken is more or less correct for standard latin with respect to its grammar and vocabulary latin as we know it of course is founded in the classical latin of the first century bc through the second century a.d and since these events take place in the first century ad then the latin we hear should look pretty much like normal standard latin and it does but it doesn't sound like latin from that time period and that's because they use the ecclesiastical pronunciation of latin the ecclesiastical pronunciation contrary to what some believe did not evolve during the roman empire the ecclesiastical pronunciation is an innovation that happened under the carolingian holy roman empire in the 9th century a.d something like the ecclesiastical pronunciation would not exist in this time period see this video about the immortal language of latin to understand more about this but the ecclesiastical pronunciation is just as beautiful as any other pronunciation of latin it was used deliberately by the filmmakers because their audience was going to be primarily catholic and the traditional italian pronunciation or rather the ecclesiastical pronunciation is most familiar to people associated with the church so that makes sense as a decision what would we expect to hear instead of the ecclesiastical pronunciation we'll talk about that today that said let's analyze the latin spoken by pontius pilate in his conversations with jesus as well as with his wife claudia or should i say claudia claudia claudia eat it pontius pilate utters the first words vos is essentially how he says it what stands out to me is the rather openness of the o and the shortness of the e hmm i wonder where he's from the actor playing jesus jim caviezel is american and aspects of his native english pronunciation are rather clear in his version of the ecclesiastical pronunciation for example he says something closer to they met instead of demet or we have a diphthongization with the a like an english word they because most speakers of english don't have a pure e or a sound tip teaches he also says ipso and this particular trait of making an o diphthong especially at the ends of words is actually something i still have as a part of my own accent and say italian and occasionally also in latin but i'm working on it so i would read this in the ecclesiastical pronunciation as teachers the h is not normally pronounced in the ecclesiastical pronunciation although for pedagogical reasons some still try to use it so this isn't exactly incorrect it's just a choice now you might say well the character of jesus here is not a native speaker of latin so it's okay for him to have an accent absolutely in fact probably all of these characters that we see if they're speaking in latin could be not native speakers and so they have an accent that's different that's fine but as we've already established they're using the ecclesiastical pronunciation of latin this is not a historical pronunciation of latin in this time period so it doesn't matter already and we're just nitpicking anyway also should they be speaking greek well they could now some have said it's not realistic for jesus to be speaking in latin because ancient greek was the language that was spoken in this part of the roman empire both latin and ancient greek were the two languages of the roman empire and in this part of the empire in the east indeed ancient greek was the much more common lingua franca so how is it that this character of jesus is actually able to speak latin well whether he acquired it practically or through divine means is kind of beside the point here he's speaking the language that pontius pilate knows best or at least that's what this character seems to think i would guess because he's not speaking in aramaic even after pontius pilate speaks in aramaic with him that's a very courteous thing to do with people who speak other languages and the language of the roman military even in the eastern roman empire after the fall of the western roman empire for a while was still latin and ultimately of course again this movie is for a catholic audience so while given the choice between two ancient languages for the romans between greek and latin they chose latin and that seems like a very reasonable choice given their intent more traits of native english speakers are visible in jim caviezel's voice here for example he says tb instead of db if you're interested in supporting this channel i have a series on patreon for my kenatiani supporters where i talk about specific aspects of latin pronunciation including how to change this particular habit going from katapa to kataruka he puts a glottal stop in between the two e vowels and that is not a trait of latin it would be ali and when he says de me we can hear a a slight diphthong ization which is something that most english speakers have when we speak say italian spanish latin and so forth so in the ecclesiastical pronunciation i would prescribe something a bit more like this in the ecclesiastical pronunciation most of the time speakers will leave open the e and o vowels when they're stressed regardless of length and close all of the when they are not in stressed syllables this is an imitation of the phonology of italian where the mamma regula is that every time there is a letter e or letter o that is a or o it is closed in quality it's not e or o when it's unstressed and this actually could be a plausible model for the sound of ancient latin which segues into what is the ancient pronunciation of latin well that is known as the classical or restored pronunciation of latin it's not actually necessarily one specific prescribed thing because we have three centuries to deal with by definition it is the sound of native speakers of the language or really good l2 speakers who lived in those three centuries naturally there was plenty of variety and what we can actually learn about it means that there are different possibilities the most important aspect of it though is that there is no phonemic distinction between qualities of vowels whether long or short the important difference between the vowels is that they will be long or short for the a and the o i usually use mid vowels but you can open them if you want into a and o or close them to e and o depending on your preference it's really not that important that said i always maintain phonemic vowel length even in the ecclesiastical pronunciation because as i mentioned the ecclesiastical pronunciation is extremely artificial again see the immortal language video to learn more about that artificial isn't bad it's artificial to speak an ancient dead language isn't it and thus to truly appreciate the nature of the language especially its best literature we absolutely need to know phonemic vowel length so this is why i prescribe it in my own pronunciation of ecclesiastical latin tb and so both phrases in the restored classical pronunciation of latin well naturally it's not the cheese but the keys and the h is pronounced but in a phrase like this between vowels that h might vanish so here's how i would read it back in 2004 the only time i saw this movie the whole way through in the movie theater i just assumed that all the actors who were playing romans were italian but let's listen to this pontius pilot and see if we can figure out where he's from something that stands out to me is that whenever there are consonant clusters or geminated consonants this actor is not giving those syllables a longer period of time and that is a fundamental characteristic of the ancient sound of latin as well as the ecclesiastical pronunciation for example he says something like proposuisem instead of wissem he also says question instead of questioning so in ecclesiastical pronunciation i would say something like that and the only difference for the classical pronunciation would be to say why stionem instead of it so of course he says the classical pronunciation is he doesn't sound very italian to me at all we'll have to figure out where he's from because it's interesting so the long vowels are of course essential in latin pontifices and in the classical pronunciation the only difference is going to be pontifice instead of pontificis mihi also could have that sound of the aspiration or the h sound but also in classical latin it was frequent for that word mihi to be contracted into simply me volunteering says again mundo oh he has that diphthongization which is again highly characteristic of native english speakers and restored classical the gn is either gana [Music] [Music] i don't understand the last word that he seems to be saying though it sounds like he's saying ergo rexest s is you are estes he is [Laughter] another characteristic of english speakers is not to pronounce um with an u but as an this is not actually a part of the pronunciation of latin in any time period despite what sydney allen seems to presume although it's possible it but it seems incredibly unlikely for this century for various reasons just watch my other videos and you'll find out why so instead of testimony if you want to learn more about the pronunciation of the letter v watch this video and see how it changed through the centuries [Music] and here he says something close to omnes instead of omnes he says a very open ah sound characteristic of his american english instead of omnes [Music] and also he says instead of which would be better especially for ecclesiastical pronunciation but really all latin omnes so in the classical pronunciation of latin final m is indeed not a true consonant certainly not before vowels blending happens of the vowels between words when there is a final m involved and a vowel follows in the next word [Music] another aspect of the restored classical pronunciation is the retracted s watch this video please we list veritas claudio guidas veritas claudia oh now i have some idea of where he must be from claudia so this velarized pronunciation of the l la this is a characteristic especially of slavic languages and in fact i looked him up and i found that this actor is bulgarian so that's why his l sounds like this i would venture to guess that he and probably most of the actors didn't get any kind of specific training and phonology they just spoke ecclesiastical latin with their native phenology so we have a good sense of a bulgarian accent in a way that this pontius pilot is delivering his lines so with ecclesiastical pronunciation i would say veritas claudia and the only difference with restored classical pronunciation is where it has instead of veritas yeah [Music] this actress whose first name also happens to be claudia does a great job here basically what she says works for both classical and ecclesiastical pronunciations [Music] [Music] she sounds great of course italians have an excellent base phonology for speaking latin and by definition ecclesiastical accent sounds essentially just like italian phonology anyway in the restored classical pronunciation it would be si non vis verita so the emphasis here that i place is of course on the long and short vowels and syllables that's the most important part of latin pronunciation [Music] do you want to know my truth claudia in bulgaria i'm sorry i'm just kidding in bulgaria we have different truths just i love the bulgarian language by the way i know it very little but i can definitely recommend the channel monogrossia if you want to hear more of that wonderful language so ecclesiastical pronunciation veritas um he puts a glottal stop between that's not necessarily a characteristic of bulgarian but he's probably doing it to try to make his speech very clear of course it comes off as extremely unnatural in fact his intonation throughout shows that he doesn't seem to understand latin which is fine these are just actors it sounds a little off the way he's delivering his lines but also this whole scene and discussion is um it's a great piece of theology but it's such an unusual discussion it's hard to imagine this being an organic conversation that two people would actually have most of the time so maybe that's part of the reason rebellion he says shio it sounds a lot like she to me and this might be because of the particular oral posture of the o in bulgarian which might be a little bit closer to with respect to my ear which is more tuned to the way that italians normally render those vowels now the final m is not a solid thing in latin period that is causing illusion to happen with final m while being a necessary trait of course of classical pronunciation it really belongs in any pronunciation of latin because if we put it there it's this kind of artificial thing it can have an academic purpose but it's really just not how the language works if we want to read the literature that's how the literature works final m just when there's a vowel that follows they blend together that's the nature of it just like any two vowels in junction between words so i usually include that in my ecclesiastical pronunciation i understand if you don't feel like doing that though um [Music] actually a pronoun and it means whoever or whatever you wish of two options the adverb here would be utralibet or utrolibet ecclesiastical and classical pronunciations would be basically identical here except for the retracted s so here's my classical version with claudia if you want to know more about the pronunciation of caesar i talk about it in this video and of course about how the a e i pronunciation of classical latin changed to a in ecclesiastical pronunciation and then a soldier whose name i think is cassius comes in and he says this he says the translator is specifically saying not domine but domne because this is even attested in pompeii check out this awesome bracelet the less formal version of this word dominus had already become domnus regularly so this is a nice touch it's actually kind of historical of course the pronunciation in general is not at all but this particular word choice is nice it's probably the actor just messed up the vowel there which is fine but where do you think this actor is from hellmuth three guesses where he's from so rather typically of italians and also actually something that uh was occurring for some speakers of latin even in this time period was confusions of where to put the h sound he says heyum instead of so that's interesting of course again this is not a historical pronunciation of latin but um i like it i think it sounds great supplements so in the restored classical pronunciation of latin i would deliver his lines like this so that is some of the latin that can be heard in passion of the christ which pronunciation of latin do you prefer and why let me know in the comments also you may be interested in the original source material for the passion of the christ and for that i recommend my trilingual recitation of the gospel of john available on my audiobook store the audiobook comes with the text in the original greek with side by side translations in latin and english and audiophiles in all three languages both the greek and the latin text have all the long vowels marked indispensable for learning the essential pronunciation and grammar of both languages this is a tool i have used to improve my knowledge of both of the ancient languages and you may find it useful as well find my audiobook store at lucraniary.com i hope you enjoyed this check out the other videos where i have reviewed the latin in movies and games and entertainment thanks so much for watching and subscribing [Music] you

Channel: polýMATHY

Views: 92,517

Keywords: polýMATHY, luke amadeus ranieri, luke ranieri, polymathy, barbarians netflix review, latin pronunication, classical latin pronunication, ecclesiastical latin pronuncation, classical vs ecclesiastical pronunciation, ecclesiastical vs classical pronunciation, classical vs ecclesiastical latin, correct latin, mel gibson, passion of the christ, the passion of the christ, passion of the christ latin, the passion of the christ latin, gospel of john, passion of the christ film, aramaic

Id: yv2U1SwfhFE

Length: 24min 29sec (1469 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 26 2021