Rome fell in the year 476. The microphone wasn't invented until the 1870's. That's quite a gap. And yet we still know how the old Romans pronounced
their Latin. Prove it? Okay! Catholic school. Literature class. My teacher is Father, uh... let's call him
Father F. A fellow language-head himself, Father F has a much fuller experience bar
than me. Respect. It's first thing in the morning, and that
schoolroom sunlight is barely starting to flip the activation switches in my brain. Languagey words drift in from across the class. "Consonants", "Italian", "pronunciation"...
up goes my sensor. One kid's over there talking with the father. Best I can recall, it went like this. "So, uhm, how do we know what Latin sounded
like? I always thought Caesar's quote was vennee
veedee veechee, but some Latin student told me v's were w's and c's were k's." "Hah, no. Cmon, can you imagine any good Italian saying
wennee, weedee, weekee?" I'm sitting there, sure this is wrong somehow. See, my first linguistic obsession was reading
up on how Latin became the Romance languages. So why was I suddenly speechlessly tongue-tied? Well, young self, it took years, but I'm back
to help. We think we know what Caesar's Latin sounded
like, and that wasn't it. We know because, well, sometimes they told
us. Quintilian was a smart guy from Roman Spain
who moved to Rome, managed to survive the off-the-wall Year of the Four Emperors and
then founded a school of rhetoric. Also, he hated the letter k. "So k, I think shouldn't be used at all...
the letter c keeps its strength before all the vowels." If he's saying c always made a k sound, that means it didn't have that second soft pronunciation it does in English or Italian. But that's one grammarian's say-so. Things
could look different when all the evidence comes in. Which is exactly what one Czech
linguist claims about the letter "r". Your Latin textbook says it's a trill. She argues
it's a tap ("eddeh", "re"). We're just going to have to piece the evidence
together ourselves, starting with ancient authors writing in "good" Latin. The first
clue they give us is the alphabet, which was meant to fit Latin sounds. You hear that,
English?!? So when they wrote words differently, like
ÁNVS, ANVS and ANNVS, it's a face-value hint that they they said them differently. Meaning
that long "aah", which sometimes has this little "apex", doesn't sound the same as short
"ah". And double consonants don't sound like single consonants. In the hands of Virgil the epic poet, that
see-'n-say alphabet is jammed into a precise structure: poetic meter. From that meter we
can figure out which syllables are long and which are short, which helps confirm which
vowels are long and which ones are short. So some i's, sorry, "ee"'s, are longer than
other "ee"'s. But go look for short "ee" on inscriptions
and you'll find something interesting. Or won't find. Because right where it's supposed
to be, there could be an "É" instead. Why? Well, it makes sense IF short "ee" wasn't
only shorter than long "eeee" but it also had a different sound, a sound closer to "é",
kind of "ihh". Romans left even more clues when they marched
right into foreign language territory and got raided by Germanic tribes. Linguistic
raids. "We're all taking words, guys! What do you want?" "Oy! Bring me back some wine!"
"I want a wall!" Yep, those are Latin words. And bad accents. And they make it look like
v's were w's at the time, something we'd already be suspicious of from poetry and word pairs. So yes, good Latin was spreading, but back
home the Roman rabble was busy turning it bad! Good Latin writers noticed though, and
even included characters speaking the bad Latin, the sermo vulgaris, especially for
a good laugh. But bad Latin can still be good evidence.
Down in Pompeii, before the tragedy, a random guy comes along and graffitis the place to
make sure we'd forever know that he stopped here with his brother. He does something vulgar
though. He drops the h in the word "here". Ah, just a little mistake, right? Later you find a very dusty, very old book
full of cranky corrections, telling you that the word for old is "vetulus" not "veclus",
to say "hostiae" not "ostiae", and "hermeneumata" not "erminomata". Come on, people! Get it
together! Looks like the Pompeii bros weren't the only ones dropping their aitches. These mistakes are an interesting kind of
proof. I mean you probably wouldn't beg me to stop dropping my h's unless people were
indeed dropping their h's. But what was once linguistic heresy eventually
turned into Romance... languages. These all have something to teach us about Latin. Wait, how can new languages be evidence for
a dead one? Take Spanish or Italian e. It comes from Latin "e", but it also comes from
short "i" and not long "i". Kind of like those inscriptions! It's even more evidence for
short "ih" versus long "eeee". Also, sí. Not... no, the LETTER c. The Romance
languages still love it, but before e's and i's it makes a soft sound. Except in Sardinian.
So while good Italians say vincere, in Sardinian, conquering is vìnchere. Now Romance palatalization
is another story, but historical linguistics says these languages are whispering at us,
"Latin c always sounded like k, but most of us changed." They're thumbs-upping Quintilian. See, younger self, all of this is why when
Romans talked about conquering, they said ['wɪnkærɛ], and why Caesar's phrase was
/we:ni:/, /wi:di:/, /wi:ki:/. Now before you go around enforcing reconstructed
pronunciation on us, getting the pope to speak like a real Caesar, think about Latin's living
history. This was but one part of the story. A pretty amazing one though. Stick around and subscribe for language.
This video was kind of confusing, I think it was made for people who are already kind of familiar with Latin.
TIL I have a wedding anus on my hand.
ITT: People who think they know Latin better than the linguist who made the video.
I studied latin for 2 years and all I remember is Lupum Capra timet.
NativLang always makes an interesting video.
all i wanted was to hear him read a text in latin but noooooo
I took Latin in school for 7 years and keep myself semi-fit by reading the Aeneid over and over again (mixed success). But I know these verses very well:
hint: when reading these epics as verses, you often do not read words as written but contract syllables of adjoining words to fit the meter. Weird at first but if you master the vocabulary, grammar and this way of reading, you are set to dive into Latin however deep you wish. These make a very good foundation to attack any author.
Like here: you don't read the syllables in braces:
More here: http://members.aon.at/latein/Verse.htm. It's actually really fun to listen to when a skilled, practiced reader recites it. Kind of like a song.
But TL;DR this is why I am a bit skeptical of the video's statement that linguists could solely infer lengths of syllables from the meter. I think he's giving the verses' meter too much credit (not a linguist though).
If Latin changed back then, then we can change it now. I'm very ok with keeping to say it Veni Vidi Vici