Appendix talk:Latin pronunciation

I cannot understand this table. It seems to contain a mixture of IPA and other symbols with no indication of which is which

Y

I'm curious why y is transcibed here as [ʏ] rather than [y]. w:en:Latin spelling and pronunciation doesn't indicate that the vowel, when pronounced differently from i and u, was lax rather than tense. Erutuon (talk) 00:17, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

I'm curious about that too. The Wikipedia article does cite a book called Vox Latina—a Guide to the Pronunciation of Classical Latin, which sounds promising. I'll take a look at it the next time I'm at the library and see what it says about the pronunciation of y. —Mr. Granger (talk • contribs) 01:40, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

Well, I've taken a look at Vox Latina, which says, "During the classical period, however, both the Greek sound and the letter y were adopted in educated circles. For both short and long vowels the sound had the [ü] quality of the French u in lune or German ü in über." (It does note, though, that y was pronounced as u or i in colloquial speech.) In light of this, I'm going to change the transcription on this page from [ʏ] to [y]. —Mr. Granger (talk • contribs) 18:55, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

problems and errors in diphthong info

See this discussion for details. --Espoo (talk) 12:00, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

Phonetic descriptions

I noticed that this article gives the phonemic description of each Latin letter, but not phonetic descriptions, which can differ. For example, the phonemic description of short i is /i/, whereas the phonetic description of short i is [ɪ]. Phonetic descriptions occur alongside phonemic descriptions of Latin words in Wiktionary articles themselves, so I fail to see why they shouldn't be discussed here. Joseph Yanchar (talk) 16:00, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

Open vowels

As seen at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_spelling_and_pronunciation#Long_and_short_vowels , "short mid vowels (/e o/) and close vowels (/i u/) were pronounced with a different quality than their long counterparts, being also more open: [ɛ], [ɔ], [ɪ] and [ʊ]." Why these open vowels are not shown here at the wiktionary pronunciation appendix? According to wikipedia (in english and also in german), ɔ and ɛ should be indicated in the table for short "o" and "e", for instance. Max51 (talk) 04:55, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

In many ways the pronunciation appendix is incomplete. I think the reason for using /e i o u/ rather than the opener versions is because the appendix is only presenting phonemic, not phonetic notation. However, due to the Roman Latin vowel system, it doesn't actually make sense to use /e i o u/ as phonemic notation. But whatever, it's the convention here on Wiktionary. I'll do some work updating the page. Eru·tuon 20:51, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

@Erutuon Thanks. I'm not really used to the distinction between phonetics and phonology. Considering that there is a distinction between large and short vowels in the writing system (by the use of the macron), don't you think that this distinction could be reproduced in a broad transcription (phonemic)? (by your comments on the topic below, I guess the answer would be yes). I want to use Classical Latin pronunciation transcriptions on Portuguese Wikipedia's articles, and I use en.wiktionary as a source. In Portuguese, particularly, we have a clear distinction between open and close "e" and "o", so that it would be worthy remarking at transcriptions. Max51 (talk) 03:04, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

@Max51 Hm, I guess I was unclear. Yes, long vowels should be marked with the length symbol [ː] in both phonemic and phonetic notation (ā, ē, ī, ō, and ū are transcribed as /aː eː iː oː uː/ or [aː eː iː oː uː]).

The only debatable question is whether to transcribe e, i, o, u as /e o i u/ in phonemic transcription but [ɛ ɔ ɪ ʊ] in phonetic transcription, or to use the symbols ⟨ɛ ɔ ɪ ʊ⟩ in both phonemic and phonetic notation. Showing the vowel quality in the phonemic transcription implies that the vowel quality of short and long e, i, o, and u is a phonemic feature along with vowel length, and I think that may be true (that vowel quality and length are both phonemic features), but others will disagree. (Hope I'm making more sense this time...) Eru·tuon 04:01, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

While vowel quality was probably a cue to phoneme identity in the front vowels, it may not have been a cue in the back vowels. Eastern Romance, in the wider sense include the dialects of Southern Italy, generally merged /o/ and /o:/ and /u/ and /u:/. It's also worth noting that the early, 'rustic' monophthongisation of /ae/ yielded a vowel that merged with /e:/, whereas the late and ultimately complete monophthongisation of /ae/ yielded a vowel that merged with /e/. --RichardW57 (talk) 05:30, 6 January 2019 (UTC)

Narrow transcriptions generated by Template:la-IPA

I just saw a thread in a linguistic group where people were commenting unfavourably on Wiktionary's representation of <qu> as [kᶣ], and it's very true that this level of detail is not exactly universally agreed upon. If we're going to have narrow transcriptions like this, I really think we should be referencing what reconstruction of Classical phonetics we're subscribing to, probably in a central place that we can be linked to. Angr, do have an opinion? —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 17:22, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

I'm not a big fan of narrow phonetic transcriptions in Wiktionary entries to begin with, and even less so when they're reconstructed rather than attested. I wish {{la-IPA}} would generate only a phonemic transliteration. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 17:37, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

That's a position I would definitely be on board with. @Erutuon, I'm so meta even this acronym, Mr. Granger, Joseph Yanchar Would you be okay with removing them? Feel free to ping anyone else who would want to have a say. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 18:10, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

I support removing the phonetic transcriptions. As a rule, I think we should avoid narrow phonetic transcriptions for long-extinct languages like Classical Latin—there's too much uncertainty. —Mr. Granger (talk • contribs) 19:20, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

@Μετάknowledge: Thanks for the ping. I can see the arguments for and against autogenerating phonetic transcriptions. There are some things that I think would be a big shame to omit mention of, e.g. vowel nasalisation in ⟨Vm⟩, the realisation of ⟨gn⟩ as [ŋn], etc. Can't we just tone down on the narrowness of the phonetic transcriptions? (@Max51, Espoo pings for this page.) — I.S.M.E.T.A. 21:10, 12 April 2015 (UTC) (@kc_kennylau, Tropylium, GianWiki, CodeCat pings for Template talk:la-IPA. — I.S.M.E.T.A. 21:14, 12 April 2015 (UTC)) (@JohnC5, Fsojic, Chuck Entz, EncycloPetey a few more pings. — I.S.M.E.T.A. 21:19, 12 April 2015 (UTC))

@Metaknowledge Also appreciate the ping. I agree with what I.S.M.E.T.A. (heh) says about nasal vowels and the nasal allophone of the g before n, and I'd also rather not omit phonetic transcription of e, i, o, u. In Classical Latin (meaning the educated Latin of Italy), long and short versions differed significantly in height, so that short i and u were similar to long e and o. Transcribing long and short e as /e eː/, without the phonetic transcription [ɛ eː], thereby implying that long e is closer to short e than to short i, would be misleading.

Regrettably, W. Sidney Allen seems to discuss the height difference in close and mid vowels, but not the phonemic analysis of the height difference: whether height was a phonemic feature along with length for close and mid vowels. There'd probably be a debate over that question if Latin were being described first-hand by modern linguists. Not sure if scholars besides Allen have written on this, but it's highly relevant to this discussion of how much phonetic detail to include. If height is a phonemic feature, then it has to be included in the phonemic transcription; if it isn't, it should only be in the phonetic one. And if height isn't included in the phonemic transcription, then the phonetic transcriptions should be kept, so as not to mislead readers. Perhaps short [ɪ ʊ] could even be changed to [e o], to more clearly show the similarity with long [eː oː]. Eru·tuon 02:50, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Given that in Eastern Romance /oː/ merged with /o/ rather than with /u/, reporting /u/ as [o] (and /o/ as [ɔ]) would be a bad idea. --RichardW57 (talk) 05:45, 6 January 2019 (UTC)

@RichardW57: I don't know, it's possible that Classical Latin and the variety of Latin that gave rise to the Eastern Romance languages had different vowel systems in some ways. But I am less sure of my comments above now. — Eru·tuon 06:47, 6 January 2019 (UTC)

/r/: [r] or [ɾ]

It would be nice if the IPA key contained info on the pronunciation of /r/ as that symbol represents an alveolar trill but it's often used for the alveolar tap due to ease of use. 186.31.172.0 15:14, 10 November 2015 (UTC)

"Dumb it down" for us non-linguists

As I am not a linguist, yet I conduct a lot of pronunciation research, I find the IPA keys on Wiktionary to be fairly unhelpful in that they don't provide phonetic equivalents. I have to keep referring back to the Wikipedia Latin IPA Help chart. Why can't something similar be provided here? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA/Latin

Ultimately, it is impossible to discuss pronunciation without a standardised set of symbols and terminology, and the linguistic community has largely settled upon the IPA. This isn't meant to be a key for those learning the IPA, but a page explaining Latin pronunciation, and IPA is a tool needed to do so. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 00:15, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

t͡ʃ

Some entries use Ecclesiastic Latin pronunciations which include the /t͡ʃ/ sound and link to this page which doesn't have that sound. For example: vicis. I don't know enough about wiktionary to know the right way to correct this. Subcelestial (talk) 16:33, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

Get rid of the lax vowels (ɪ, ʊ) for near close vowels (e̝ , o̝ )

Latin didn't seem to have lax vowels for short i and u, as proven by JN Adams and Andrea Calabrese; one can resort to polymathy's video on it. Could we see a change in the pronunciation guide to reflect this? LatinGuy87 (talk) 22:27, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

I strongly agree with you: this lax vowels' mistake has no reason to exist anymore. The same YouTuber, Luke A. Ranieri, made a deeper video in his channel Polymathy+ (not the same channel you mentioned): 2 hours of very well argued video. CarloButi1902 (talk) 23:10, 27 April 2023 (UTC)

JN Adams said no such thing whatsoever and Calabrese's view is that of a negligible minority in modern scholarship. And a random youtuber is not an academic source. Nicodene (talk) 00:56, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

Respectfully, Luke Ranieri isn't a "random" YouTuber, he has done tons of videos and research on Latin and to some degree Greek. Refer to his video on this subject matter.  LatinGuy87 (talk) 18:27, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

YouTubers are not academic sources. And I strongly encourage you to take anything that one says with a grain of salt. Nicodene (talk) 19:10, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

la-IPA ⟨ē⟩

There seems to be an issue where ⟨ē⟩ is represented as /e/ instead of /eː/ before consonants in broad transcription. ⟨ē⟩ is used by modern scholarship to exclusively transcribe /eː/ so the 'la-IPA' tag should be updated to represent this so as to, at the very least, not contradict the key on this appendix. I would do it myself but I'm not familiar with this aspect of Wiki editing. AethyrX (talk) 01:35, 19 November 2023 (UTC)

Can you give an example? la-IPA generates the following for cēna: "(Classical) IPA(key): /ˈkeː.na/, [ˈkeːnä] (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA(key): /ˈt͡ʃe.na/, [ˈt͡ʃɛːnä]". The Italianate pronunciation does not mark vowel length in the phonemic transcription because Italian and Italian pronunciations of Latin generally don't feature distinctive vowel length (with the caveat that, since "Ecclesiastical" Latin is really not one standard, some speakers may actually claim to distinguish short from long vowels). That isn't related to whether the following sound is a consonant or a vowel.--Urszag (talk) 02:32, 19 November 2023 (UTC)