LATIN BLOG!
Yeah, that’s basically what this blog is about—explaining and working with classical Latin and that sort of thing.
But there’s no reason I can’t talk a little about myself, first! My name is Jean K, and I’m a Freshman in a Liberal Arts college in Wisconsin (I’m not saying where though—don’t want any internet stalkers. XD) I’m taking 5 classes this semester, Eastern European Folk Tales (Awesome class :D), German 200; German Literature, Drawing 150; People and Expressions, The Criminal Mindset (Psych class) and Latin 103, which is where the blog comes in!
What should we go over first—pronunciations? There’s not much difference when it comes to consonants (though there isn’t a ‘J’ proper in the Latin alphabet—so my name would be Iean!). A very big difference is that ‘V’ is pronounced as a ‘W’. So it’s more a wery big difference! Sorry, sorry. Bad pun.
Then we get into vowels (ooh-er). The thing about vowels in Latin is that they’re always consistent, though they’re either ‘long’ or ‘short’. Long vowels are marked by macrons. Since I can’t figure out how to use macrons on the keyboard, I’m just going to use accents for now, like é. Okay? Super.
Starting with a, short a is as in the end of Dinah. Long a, á is more like the a in father.
Then comes e, of course, short sounds like the e in pet. Long, é is more like in they.
I, when short, sounds like pin. When long, í sounds like the í in machine.
O, when short, sounds like orb, or off. Ó is more like clover.
U is as in put, when short. But when it’s long ú sounds like rude.
Y doesn’t have an equivalent sound in English, but if you know French it sounds like the u in tu or if you know German, the u in über.
Now we have diphthongs. There are six diphthongs, each two vowel sounds collapsed together. So you get ae as in ai as in aisle. Then there is au as in ou as in house. After that is ei which is just like in reign. Eu is another sound found in Latin, and sounds like the two letters slid together rapidly. Oe is like oi out of oil, or just ‘oi!’. Ui is similar to eu in that there aren’t any good equivalent sounds in English. It’s not usually used in Latin anyway, so you can generally just say the vowels separately! :D
Just a quick note on syllabification rules, but only quick, because it’s not very interesting…
When dividing words into syllables:
1) Two vowels next to each other or a vowel and a diphthong are separated.
2) A single consonant between two vowels goes with the second vowel.
3) When two or more consonants go between two vowels, generally only the last consonant goes with the second vowel.
And on adding an accent:
1) In a word with two syllables, the accent goes with the first syllable.
2) In a word of the or more syllables, the accent goes on the next to last syllable if it’s long, or on the syllable before that if it’s short.
That’s the boring business out of the way XD. Next time, we can learn some words and some wonderful grammar rules! Thanks for reading, and valéte!
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