From jfgannon@cloud9.net Wed Oct 24 18:29:38 2001 Received: from mailscan2.cac.washington.edu (mailscan2.cac.washington.edu [140.142.33.16]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.11.6+UW01.08/8.11.6+UW01.08) with SMTP id f9P1TZN89936 for ; Wed, 24 Oct 2001 18:29:35 -0700 Received: FROM mxu1.u.washington.edu BY mailscan2.cac.washington.edu ; Wed Oct 24 18:29:34 2001 -0700 Received: from russian-caravan.cloud9.net (russian-caravan.cloud9.net [168.100.1.4]) by mxu1.u.washington.edu (8.11.6+UW01.08/8.11.6+UW01.08) with ESMTP id f9P1TWw13960 for ; Wed, 24 Oct 2001 18:29:32 -0700 Received: from jfgannon (203-180.dialup.cloud9.net [168.100.203.180]) by russian-caravan.cloud9.net (Postfix) with SMTP id 93E0E28D31 for ; Wed, 24 Oct 2001 21:29:30 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: <00e401c15cf4$e17b14c0$b4cb64a8@jfgannon> From: "J.F. Gannon" To: References: <000501c15bcf$8ebea060$c327cecd@user> Subject: Re: Latin intonation (was: Tusculan system) Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2001 21:32:15 -0400 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.50.4133.2400 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.50.4133.2400 For a language to be living I would argue that it has to be the first language of some community of speakers. Doubtless there have been over the centuries many of the Roman clergy (among others) who have been fluent in a dialect that we may fairly call Latin, but provided only that we admit that it was, and is, if it still exists, as I suspect it does, an artificial dialect that was never anyone's first language. To the extent that they sounded alike, this is to be attributed to residence in Rome and imitation of local practice. I believe Pius X wanted all Roman Catholic Latinists to use a Roman pronunciation, i.e., as I would guess, lingua latina in bocca romana. Still it was the first language of none of them. Passionate latinists should establish a homeland of latin-speakers to produce a crop of speakers of Latin as a native language. But there are difficulties. Roman clergy will not be suited, because of their celibacy, for such a project. The political issues are in any case hard to resolve. And at the best the result will tell us nothing about Latin as it was spoken in antiquity. J.F. Gannon ----- Original Message ----- From: "Helma Dik" To: Sent: Wednesday, October 24, 2001 7:41 PM Subject: Latin intonation (was: Tusculan system) > > >On that point: there were probably a fair number of people in the early part > >of this century, in academia and the Catholic church, who spoke Latin well > >enough to use it as a living language. I wonder if any linguists studied > >their intonation patterns--what are called, I think, suprasegmentals. > > These sadly tend to be imported wholesale from the native language > (and surely even more so in earlier eras when there was less > awareness of reconstructed pronunciation). When it comes to > intonation, few learners are even aware of, and/or are able to > perceive and reproduce, differences between languages. And when you > emigrate, you start messing up the (word order and) intonation of > your native tongue. > > Anyway, back to intonation patterns of spoken Latin. Just play the > hilarious tape that was handed out at the APA a few years ago and > identify the countries of origin, or try saying to yourself, in a > heavy Swedish accent: > > Apud nooos Suecanos.. > > In French: > > miHI quiDEM videTUR.. > > Yeah. My Greek and Latin sound pretty Dutch too:-) > > HD > -- > Helma Dik > Dept. of Classics > University of Chicago > helmadik@midway.uchicago.edu > http://humanities.uchicago.edu/classics/ > .