Watch my update to this series of videos! THE IMMORTAL LANGUAGE: History of the Ecclesiastical & Classical Pronunciations of Latin, from Antiquity to the Present: ruclips.net/video/XeqTuPZv9as/видео.html 🦂 Support my work on Patreon: www.patreon.com/LukeRanieri 📚 Luke Ranieri Audiobooks: luke-ranieri.myshopify.com 🤠 Take my course LATIN UNCOVERED on StoryLearning, including my original Latin adventure novella "Vir Petasātus" learn.storylearning.com/lu-promo?affiliate_id=3932873 🦂 Sign up for my Latin Pronunciation & Conversation series on Patreon: www.patreon.com/posts/54058196
I believe that sometimes you forget that multiple phonos can serve a single phonem and that some of the subtile differences between restituta and ecclesiastica might be explained like that. it would be nice to analyse what kind of mistakes young Caius Iulius used to make while learning to write correctly. e.g. like what happens for the Spanish betacism b/v confusion or like in pèsca and pésca in Italian that nobody really cares about outside of Tuscany or voice actors.
I'm from Poland. I think I was taught some kind of mix of both classical and ecclesiastical latin. I mean proununciation of "c", "h", "gn", "ci", "s" was Luke im classical latin. But "ae", "oe", "v" "-m" sounded like in ecclesiastical. Moreover we pronounce "u" in "qu" as [v] not [w] and "t" in "ti" as [t]. It was the same either on my high school or university. Maybe its some kind of Polish Latin?
Also as my university professor of Latin literature once stated ecclesiastical pronunciation is not Ahistorical it has a very firm historical and academical foundation it simply shows another time frame of the language
Also, there are national variants of ecclesiastical Latin that are very interesting and a part of national tradition. In German catholic masses, for example, Latin words are pronounced following almost exactly the same phonetic rules as German words are. In some aspects, it is closer to classical Latin than Italian church Latin is.
I'm partial to ecclesiastical because I can't get my brain to pronounce V as like W in English. Moreover I speak American English. Am I wrong for not having and English accent?
Me too! I really appreciate the traditional promounciation, but the ecclesiastical one is the one that overwhelms me and touches my heart at mass every Sunday.
I come from an Italian family and always loved how Italian sounded and because of this, Classical Latin always sounded weird and strange. Then I converted to Catholicism and I hear the very-Italian Ecclesiastical pronunciation and it is incredibly beautiful.
@@michaelm-bs2er I was raised without any religious instruction at all as both my parents had long since fallen from the faith by the time they married (by a justice of the peace). We only went to church if a family member had a first communion or something which was very rare. I was an atheist and for awhile very anti-Christian before I converted. All of my grandparents are first generation immigrants which is why I say Italian family since they came over so recently. (Grandma was very upset that my parents didn’t have me baptized). My parents’ first language was Italian and they still speak it all the time :-)
@@michaelm-bs2er No problem. It’s funny, too, my dad at the same time as I converted (unbeknownst to either of us) reverted back to the Catholic faith. He definitely had some guts there. It isn’t easy coming to the conclusion that for decades you have lived falsely.
i've never hear old church slavonic being spoken. i understand the yugoslav language, mostly with dalmatian dialect, so i wonder if i would understand anything.
Ah, finally! I have been so disappointed to see people teaching Ecclesiastical pronunciation, but for some godforsaken reason using English long and short vowels instead of proper Romance vowels. So, I've been using the Calabrese vowel system in Ecclesiastical pronunciation all on my lonesome since I started studying Latin in earnest a few months ago.
I learned classical Latin at school but use ecclesiastical Latin at church. I like both pronunciations with a slight preference for ecclesiastical Latin because of the way it sounds and also of course because it's the language of my Church.
As a Catholic and a linguist, I found your video fascinating. I am currently going to a Traditional Latin Mass and I love learning the latin prayers. One thing that helps me learn them is figuring out what each word means. Another bonus of the Latin prayers is that because it is a sacred language, demons are more afraid of them according to exorcist Father Chad Ripperger and others.
As much as I like the idea of staying faithful to Classical Latin, I prefer the ‘crispier’ sound of Liturgical Latin. I just can’t get behind the docile sounding W and Y in place of V and J, among others
Interesting. To me Latin with the w and y and k for v/j/c doesn't sound 'docile' and sounds more like... well... a language... I guess because it is. Ecclesiastical pronunciation sounds clunky to me.
Classical Latin "c" and "g" are much "crisper" than their Ecclesiastical mutations. As a non-Christian, the very word "Ecclesiastical" sticks in my craw. Christianity was one of the major factors in the demise of Roman civilisation.
@@DieFlabbergast that with the nearly complete outsourcing of combat roles to Individuals from the provinces, the overbearing power of the praetorians, and the absolute weakening of meaningful checks and balances in roman governance. Honestly, old and magnificent rome was pretty much long gone in spirit by the time christianity became popular.
which is bullshit because if you read dante's latin it's ok but if you read classical poems (which is majority of the things studied in latin) another example of the position "a pecora" of Italy towards the pedophile vatican mafia
@@toffonardi7037 I Don't think that in this case any "a pecora" with the Italian church is involved. Instead many professor in Italy are socialist or communist, not exactly the people who put them self "a pecora" for the church 😂. Simply ecclesiastical Latin was the pronunciation used for centuries in the academic contest. So is normal that it was chosen for school: think for example to this practical reason: if ecclesiastical Latin is studied by most of the people, it would be easy find professor to teach it. Instead if you use classical Latin, who is know by few people, it will be difficult for the school system find professor capable of teaching it
@@fabioviti7384 No non è quello che intendevo. Ho scritto il commento tempo fa, e visto che il commento a cui ho risposto non c'è più, non mi ricordo bene il contesto. Ma che credo, nel commento eliminato, avesse detto che la scuola ha scelto la pronuncia scolastica, che è quella ecclesiastica, perché i professori di mettono "a pecora" per la chiesa. Io gli ho risposto che dubito della cosa visto come molti professori di lettere sono comunisti e di altre ideologie di sinistra, ai quali la chiesa non sta certo simpatica. Semplicemente la pronuncia ecclesiastica, o scolastica, è stata scelta, perché ormai da secoli è quella usata per insegnare il latino
I had hard times understanding latin mass in Vilnius. Gloria in ekstselsis, I guess it's a lithuanian pronounciation rather than german, since "c" is "ts" in lithuanian.
@@milanfanas "Gloria in exstselsis" spoken, is exactly the German pronounciation. The typical pronounciation of "c" is "k" in Germany, but not in this case.
@Milan Fanas As a German I have to tell you that German C is indeed pronounced like TS in front of Ä, E and I (and probably would be in front of Ö and Ü if it ever ended up there) - And that is carried over into the German ecclesiastical pronunciation of Latin. Also TI+AnotherVowel is pronounced as TSI+TheOtherVowel in both German and German ecclesiastical Latin and AE, OE and UE become the umlauts rather than diphthongs. There may be more, but I have never systematically learned this, have only been tought how to sing parts of one mass in ecclesastical pronunciation once. (At school we we just pronouce Latin like whatever comes to mind, given that we are only really expected to understand what we read, not to ever actually say much)
Thank you so much for this! I direct a Gregorian Schola and am involved in the Traditional Latin Mass movement, the snide downlooking of some classical advocates is ignorance at the worst. Consider, I'm someone who (in fact most who use Ecclesiastical pronunciation are) using Latin outside of the Ivory tower, in the real world where ordinary people are exposed to it, having E pronunciation criticized by academics who often can only decode rather than actually read it is insulting.
I grew up here in UK with the tridentine mass then, when I went to secondary school at age 11, began learning Latin with the 'proper' pronunciation. What fun we youngsters had using classical pronunciation in Mass and choir, and church pronunciation in Latin classes! Bortonius (Mr Borton, our Latin master) was not amused. Neither was Father (killer) Kilaki.
Many years ago I casually said “curriculum vitae” in what I now realise was the Ecclesiastical Latin pronunciation, having spent years in a cathedral choir. The haughty private school kids - ironically one of whom was an Italian speaker - mocked me for it. If only I’d known to defend myself.
Right! That’s the important thing. Both pronunciations have their place, which overlaps pretty much everywhere, and should be enjoyed by all. The only place they don’t overlap is in historical dramas: Classical Roman movies should use Classical, and Renaissance Italy shows should use Ecclesiastical. Otherwise today it doesn’t really matter.
@@reneemargaretmcconahy6881 The correct Anglo-Latin pronunciation of vitae is /ˈvaɪtiː/. /ˈviːteɪ/ would be an imitation of Italian Ecclesiastical. I've noticed that English speakers nowadays either attempt to imitate an Italian Ecclesiastical, or a reconstructed Classical pronunciation, and it sounds very inauthentic. RIP Anglo-Latin.
As someone who was taught the ecclesiastical pronunciation at a Catholic school and primarily works with scholastic and liturgical Latin texts, I appreciate this defense.
@@toffonardi7037 Much better? It's almost identical to classical pronunciation. Differences are so little that you can speak in both languages and someone knowing either one would understand you anyway
@@toffonardi7037 I said almost. Saying it's _much_ better is nonsense. If Ecclesiastical pronunciation is shit, then what is English pronunciation? Or German pronunciation?
As an Indian, I favour the Ecclesiastical Pronunciation, but that's probably because of my Catholic upbringing. Words like "regina", "coeli" and "tentationem" sound really odd to me when pronounced with a the Classical Pronunciation. My understanding is that only some Ecclesiastical bibliographies suggest to mute the letter 'h', so words like "hortus" need not be confused with "ortus". Fascinating presentation! You inspire me to learn the language. 😊
My beginning French teacher said if we knew Latin it would help in learning French; that started my learning of Latin. I thought I was learning the Ecclisiastical way but after seeing your chart it looks like I'm pronouncing it the Classical way with two exceptions: The soft ge, gi, ce, ci, just because it makes learning Romance languages easier, AND it does sound more pleasant to the ears. Thank you for this information.
As a Catholic thank you. The Latin language is very much alive in the church. The Latin Mass communities are growing while the vernacular are shrinking. All Vatican documents are in Latin, to the church Latin is useful as a "dead language" since it is not used it does not change.
For a detailed explanation of the Roman rite: homily of the 3rd Sunday in Lent 'three years ago' at SSPX Florida - on RUclips..Around the minute 53 - to be precise.
Latin is - officially - not a dead language, as it is officially used in the Vatican, no matter how many people actually talk in Latin there. As a consequence Latin is perfectly legal for radio amateurs to use on the air, whereas ancient greek is not.
It has value for Music. I don’t think certain works would sound right using the restored classical pronunciation. I cannot imagine Carmina Burana in Cicero‘s Latin. It also seems to have a more natural sound for those of us who are native speakers of a romance language.
That is because the writers of the Carmina Burana wrote without any reference to Classical vowel length or prosody, and therefore words don't that scheme. The same goes for trying to read ancient poetry with so-called Ecclesiastical vowels, the metrical structure of the poem is lost. Of course the Italianate pronunciation sounds more natural to a speaker of a Romance language, as both are derivative of Vulgar Latin if by different routes; nevertheless, to someone with any familiarity with Ancient Greek, Sanskrit, or Classical prosody, the restored pronunciation makes far more sense.
Maybe it depends on context. The Italianate or Ecclesiastical pronunciation, in common with the other national pronunciations, makes more sense for Medieval Latin poetry or texts in that they were composed by people with no knowledge of the ancient pronunciation. Besides, these texts differ from Classical Latin in ways other than phonology. Even something as old as the Vulgate has odd constructions that don't reflect Classical usage, and the Mass has its own Late Latin traits.
I just found this channel--it is so fascinating! As a speaker of 6 languages, I am still disappointed that I never took latin (isn't interesting how people also say they "took latin" rather than saying they "speak latin?"). But I love his latin (this You Tuber), who speaks with such an authentic Italian accent and cadence. It makes me want to pick it up as a hobby! A huge compliment as I m hard to inspire these days, lol!
I appreciate this, because I would like to learn to speak Latin. I studied it for reading in college. I personally have no interest in using the classical pronunciation for a few reasons: 1) I prefer the sound of Ecclesiastical Latin; 2) I am a Catholic Theologian, so Pronouncing the ‘Church’ way just makes more sense, and 3) I actually use Ecclesiastical Latin pronunciation regularly. My parish has a Latin Mass that I attend most weeks. Additionally, I like to pray other prayers in Latin, and they were all taught with ecclesiastical pronunciation. Since The Catholic Church still actually uses the Latin language (even if less than before), we should at least not attack her pronunciation, since she is at least keeping it in some sense as a living, spoken language. Even in the 20th Century Catholic theologians from different countries would speak to each other in Latin, including at Vatican II. And seminary courses were often taught in Latin.
Great video, as always. Also, fantastic editing and use of pop culture references: "Restored classical users may feel an internal conflict." cue Kylo Ren agonizing about whether or not to kill his father. a+ content.
There is a parallel situation in Hebrew. There is the Zionist Israeli Hebrew pronunciation that is very popular among modern Orthodox Jews around the world. But most Jews are Ashkenazi and their grandparents grew up with a very different pronunciation. And ultra Orthodox Jews today cling to their original Ashkenazi pronunciation. So Orthodox Jews today are divided by the choice of how to pronounce Hebrew. The Israeli Hebrew is based on the pronunciation of the Jews who were expelled from Spain, which is simple and more ancient sounding. No Jews today use ancient pronunciation. Also, since the Babylonian exile, some 2400 years ago, Aramaic has become insepratable from Hebrew to this very day. Even Israeli Hebrew has Aramaic deeply imbedded in it.
The interesting part is that modern varieties of Hebrew generally underwent the same sound changes as the areas they came from, so all western dialects influenced by Latin have /w/-->/v/ (like Latin), while the dialects of the Middle East and Africa continued to have /w/. The Ashkenazic pronunciation has all the German consonant shifts like final /t/-->/s/ while the Sephardic dialects often have [β] instead of [v] for intervocalic /b/ (like Spanish). I have used this fact when confronted by Hebrew "purists" who insist their pronunciation is the only "correct" one.
@@TyranAmiros Great reply! I figured you can say all European Jews, Ashkenazi and Sepharadi, have in common bet/vet, vav and tzade. Syrian Jews traditionally pronounce waw as vav, just like European Jews, even though in Arabic they say waw, like all other Arabic speakers. "V" doesn't even exist in Arabic, so the Syrian Jews were really going out of their way to pronounce "vav." It seems that some Jews in the Levant in ancient times developed the w to v, parallel to European developments. The Ashkenazi thav to sav has to have been brought to Europe from the Levant, because th in Germanic languages turns to d, not s. Th turning to s is only Middle Eastern, so Ashkenazi sav must be very ancient! Who knows from which particular location it came? Maybe Galilee? Maybe Judea? Maybe Syria? European tzade is really interesting! What ancient language had tz in it? It must be that Tet, Tzade and Kuf were pronounced as ejectives, like in Amharic. Tzade preserves this, because European Jews were not exposed to Arabic. Pronouncing these three letters like in Arabic, seeped into Mizrahi Hebrew during the Middle Ages. What do YOU think?
When I want to listen recreations of ancient romans speaking Latin, I want to hear Classical Latin. When I want to listen to Medieval and Church writings read aloud, or sung, I want to hear Ecclesiastical Latin. The real question is, which of both do I prefer to be used in modern times excluding those two previous considerations? I prefer Ecclesiastical Latin. It just sounds better to me. Classical Latin seems a bit rougher, it needed a few adjustments in pronuntiation that were provided by Ecclesiastical Latin.
I wonder if classical latin sounded so rough because formal high class speech required maximum clarity. At least for me personally a language becomes harder to understand the softer it is.
I love Ecclesiastical pronunciation. It's so beautiful ❤️. Also love that "Italianizing" pronunciation from the 4th century you showed. That's be nice to see more widespread. Yes, shamelessly biased.
We started to learn ecclesiastical in our homeschool because that was what was provided to us in our curriculum bundle. It was really great for a time, but my oldest became hung up on cases and we were at a stand still. So we began again with a younger Latin curriculum to try and really master the understanding of case endings. I’m doing so we switched curriculum and found classical to be the most produced curriculum so we started again but with classical. I like both and see no reason why we should explore both if attempting to master one.
When I started learning Latin at school in 1978 we started in the ecclesiastical pronunciation, as well as having to speak Latin in class. After a few months the rule changed, and we had to switch to classical pronunciation and conversion exercises were no longer done. I must say it felt strange at the time, these few months were enough to start loving the ecclesiastical pronunciation, even though I can not really use it, being used to the classical variant. Thanks for sharing this video!
Your Latin accent has a very Italian quality to me, very soft and musical. I have been studying ecclesiastical Latin for several months. I am Catholic had been a cantor at our Cathedral. I had intended just learning prayers in Latin, but fell in love with the language. I tried several methods but ended up using primarily your recommendation of Lingua Latina Familia Romana: the text, the companion book, the exercisebook and the teacher’s guide/answer book. Hackett Publishing also offers MP3’s for sale on Amazon music in either the classical or ecclesiastical pronunciation, which I purchased. My goal is to be able to read St. Augustine’s book on the Trinity in Latin and more.
It's a very interesting video. I can draw a similarity to my own heritage language, Armenian. In the church's liturgy we use Classical Armenian which dates to the 5th century AD. There are two standardized modern "dialects" of Armenian (compared to some other linguistic groups, they might be called "languages"), Eastern and Western. While the Eastern Dialect preserves a pronunciation closer to the Classical, the Western Dialect has diverged (primarily in terms of the consonants, which underwent a major shift in the Medieval period). Yet, throughout the Ottoman Empire period and in the Armenian Diaspora, for hundreds of years now the Divine Liturgy (Mass) has been sung and recited in the (less Classically correct) Western dialect pronunciation. The official status the Western dialect had in cosmopolitan Constantinople, and the fact that the church was suppressed in the Eastern Dialect region (Soviet Armenia), while it flourished in the Diaspora, has, I think added to the nostalgia and even simply the normality of pronouncing Classical Armenian in the Western pronunciation. To my knowledge there is no real major movement to pronounce Classical Armenian in the true Classical pronunciation, and in fact there are still controversies as to how it was pronounced in the 5th century. So, we are still in the stage where the "Ecclesiastical Pronunciation" is the norm.
9:54 As a Brazilian Portuguese speaker with European Portuguese relatives, I'm fairly certain we *do* pronounce qu as /kʷ/ (in those cases we do not pronounce it as /kʲ/, of course) like "quadrado" /kʷɐ·ˈdɾa·du/. I say this because I very consciously round my lips before starting to speak this word. I cannot speak for other Romances, but I would imagine that Catalan ought to have it, too? They have a phonology which is curiously similar to ours, even if the morphology is quite different. I don't think we use /gʷ/ or /ŋʷ/ for "gu" or "ngu", though, so I make no defense of its rarity in Europe or any kind of phonemic consistency in my idiolect, mind you.
Duuuuuude, i was think the same, i thought i was imagening things cus i was possibly over conscious about how i'm speaking it, but i totaly do speak that K(w) sound PLUS the G(w) too like the "gu" in "linguiça". AND another thing, that "um" at the end of a word that the "m" is dropped for a nasal sound, we also do that but with the ending in "am" we dont say the "m" and the "a" sound nasal( with a little bit of "u" together), the word "compram" we pronounce as "co(u)m-pr-ã(ū)"
Same is true in Italian, except in tuscany, in the area where I live the q sound is more like a intermediate, between a hard k and a soft c followed by u, unless after a vowel where it becomes a hard k.
I think that both pronunciations have their reason to exist. When reading Caesar we should use the classical one, when reading De Vulgari Eloquentiae from Dante the ecclesiastical one.
Isn’t people saying you should use Classical pronunciation like some Russian guy telling me I should speak English like the old Anglo-Saxon method because that is what some old English king spoke?
Jacob Cantrell thanks for the comment. To answer your question: not really. Anglo-Saxon is a completely different language from Modern English; they are not mutually intelligible, and use completely different grammar, as well as phonology. Latin is the language of the Classical Authors from 100 BC to 200 AD roughly, as well as every author thereafter who accurately imitated their style. That is why using a pronunciation system of that period allows for a deeper exploration of the texts. Contrary to common belief, Ecclesiastical Pronunciation of Latin does *not* represent a natural evolution of Latin phonology. The natural pronunciation of Latin by the end of the Western Roman Empire was already very similar to modern Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese: final consonants had largely been removed, and the case system endings had mostly merged; diphthongization of e>ie, o>uo etc had all taken place. Latin was written the same way in the 500-800 AD period as in Classical times, just as today, but the pronunciation had totally diverged, just as Modern English spelling is largely representative of the spelling of Middle English (the Great Vowel shift, etc.) 800 AD: as part of a Classical Latin revival, Charlemagne hires Alcuin to create a standardized pronunciation of Latin in the Holy Roman Empire, because the sound of Latin in Spain, Italy, France was no longer easily intelligible - the written language was the same, as was the grammar, but the phonology was as all over the place. Thus Alcuin made a spelling pronunciation: every letter gets pronounced, and each letter has one pronunciation value. This Carolingian pronunciation was basically the same as the current scholastic Restored Classical Pronunciation common today in schools outside of Italy. So what happened? Over the centuries the Carolingian/Restored pronunciation of Latin diverged to attain some similarities with the countries’ languages where it was used. Thus traditional Italian pronunciation - originally an innovation by an Englishman based on the British Received Pronunciation of Latin of the 8th century, instituted by a Frankish king, remains beloved, I think ironically, as the “native” sound of Latin in Italy. 😂 So no, it’s nothing like pronouncing Modern English with Old English phonology. There’s nothing wrong with using Ecclesiastical Pronunciation of course to speak Latin. Why not? It’s perfectly intelligible with Restored Classical. But any claims to historical “naturalness” or authority therein needs to be heavily filtered.
@@polyMATHY_Luke .....Mr. Ranieri, I'm confused. I'm looking also at a video you posted seven months after this one, "Ecclesiastic Latin versus Classical Pronunciation History", in which you say at the 28:29 point, (here is a link to that video: ruclips.net/video/XeqTuPZv9as/видео.html ), "A classicizing pronunciation is both legitimate and historically consistent with how Latin has been treated over the millennia; whether the FIRST classical [restored] pronunciation [you show an image of Charlemagne in his court at Aachen], which is what we call the Ecclesiastical pronunciation or [whether we are considering] the MODERN Restored Classical pronunciation, which is a very accurate reconstruction of First century B.C. urban Latin." Now, in this comment you've made, here, in this thread, you indicate that the Italianate (Ecclesiastic) pronunciation diverged a bit from the Carolingian Restored-Classical pronunciation (as all of the regional pronunciations of Church Latin did) in the centuries through the Middle Ages. So, here is my straight forward question: Do we know what the Carolingian Restored-Classical pronunciation sounded like (basically)? ....And, more to the point, which of the two modes of pronunciation that are prominent today -- Ecclesiastic-Italianate or modern Restored-Classical -- is more similar to the Carolingian Restored-Classical mode?
@@MrJm323 and Luke, in addition to this, we know how the Catholic Church did well the job of keeping everything we have from the first centuries until this day, like the Holy Scripture copied by hand, and documents, clothes of saints of the first centuries, et coetera. And in Rome the influence of the Latium, which became the language of the Imperium, probably influenced the accent too. Despite of this, we use to consider the influence of the italian in pronunciation of latin, but not the more evident: the latin was the one which originated the italian in that historical and cultural context. And history and culture is a very important part of the accent, is part of the identity of a people. That's because I think this is the way the famous latin writers used to pronounce. But like in english there are many accents, and here in Brazil there are a lot of accents different of Portugal's portuguese, and in Italy there are lots of dialects, there is no an only way to pronounce a language of a such huge territory like Roman Empire.
Both are beautiful, both are historical, both kept the pulse of human connection alive in their times. Both languages persuaded, wooed, censured and quarreled on behalf of the irrepressible passions that must be set free.
As a Traditionalist Roman Catholic, your videos and both channels help me a lot with my Latin Also, yeah, I actually prefer Ecclesiastical Latin more since that is how I hear my Masses and say my prayers and my chants and hymns at Church.
Being born of Immigrant Italian parents( who insisted on English at home) I learnt Dialect and Italian at age 7 during a funeral visit to Italy ( 9 months with kids my own age in a small town) made learning essential. At church, Ecclesiastical Catholic Latin ( with an Irish accent) was the Rule.. as it was when I studied Latin at High School...until in Yr.10 we had a Cambridge Classics Graduate who introduced us the Classical Latin ( much to the chagrin of the Religious Latin Teachers. Anyway, I survived Latin at school, could read De Bello Gallico in Original, and used Latin in my Medical Studies. Later, in my mid-twenties, I went to an Italian university, and for entry, had to be reasonably fluent in Italian...3 months with a middle school teacher got me through the entry exam...thanks to my Knowledge ofthe Dialect ( two of the Examiners were fluent Dialect speakers) So with that, and a friend who was a Teacher of High School Latin ( in Italy) taught the Italo- Ecclesiastic version, but privately declaimed Cicero in the classical style...v== w, c==k, etc. I now, at 74, am still grasping literary Latin, in the classical style. Another lifetime, maybe?
I have to say, as I professionally work with Latin everyday (from a linguistic point of view... unfortunately, we are not speaking it at the office :-P), I am more and more mixing the Ecclesiastical/Italian pronunciation (my "native" one) with a "rigorous" reconstructed Classical-like one. I am not caring about any differences anymore. The fact that I have to do with Latin from all time periods and places at once is not helping me :-P Sometimes I feel like Salvatore from the Nome della Rosa ("The Name of the Rose") by Eco, if you happen to know him XD
The most brilliant defense of Ecclesiastical Latin pronunciation! And by the best Pronuntiatio Restituta speaker I have ever come across! One thing I have been wanting to ask you as I watched your videos, is how do you su´ggest practising the correct pronuntiation for short and long vowels. I have realised how important it is, however, I haven't been able to find a logic behind it so as to find out by deduction when it's not indicated in a text (or when I write a sentence myself). And many texts (maybe most), do not have macrons! Gratias tibi ago!
I really like the sound of the ecclesiastical latin and I really enjoy it when in mass and church. Still, as new Latin learner, I prefer the classical restored pronunciation. I think it has a lot to do with having Spanish as my native language. Pronuntiatio restituta feel more natural for me. Hehehe I think I'll try to have a Hanna Montana policy... The best of both worlds
As a Brazilian (that speaks the Rio de Janeiro Portuguese pronunciation), the Ecclesiastical form feels the most natural to me, as all the sounds are practically the same (with very few exceptions, like the ce, ci, ge and gi).
haha, thanks to "tempus est iocundum" in the background, I could not concentrate on your argument but kept singing that catchy tune in my head :D oh oh, totus floreo!
(OVerall language/linguistics geek here) I speak English and French. I am originally from New Orleans, half-Cajun and half New Orleans Creole, and I grew up with bits and pieces of both from the different sides of the family. I took French in high school because I wanted to speak more, and because I spoke some, it was easy. My first French teacher was an elderly missionary who had originally learned/spoken extremely conservative "academic" French, but had lived for years (as in four decades) in francophone Africa and had picked up the accent. My second French teacher there spoke and taught us "modern" Parisian French. In college, my French teacher was from Romania, and so I picked up a bit of a ROmanian French accent as well. The upshot of it all is when I speak French, I sound like I'm from barely-defined "somewhere else." Especially with r's. This taught me how important the timbre of a specific language and accent is. French sounds harsh to a number of people, and my accent sounds particularly harsh to them. For example, people who speak Spanish. My best friend grew up bilingual in English and Spanish, but later also learned French (very important for he and I to communicate at parties where nearly everyone spoke English, Spanish, or both) as well as Italian, Japanese and a few other languages. (He's one of those guy with the enviable ability to learn languages so easily, he can do it as a hobby.) I moved to Texas and started to have to learn a bit of Spanish when I worked for the state, essentially enough to tell them who I was, where I was calling from, and that I was about to get a translator. My friend helped me with pronunciation and prosody for it, and he said I was overall understandable, but I was actually speaking Spanish with a *French* not English accent, and thus, he said, "You sound like you're really, really angry at everyone." Ecclesiastical Latin has it's own sound, and thus it's own place. It's a language reform, not a corruption. There is, in my very descriptive vs proscriptive, no way to "corrupt" a language, only to complain about the way it evolves. We have evidence of people complaining in historical Latin about people mispronouncing said Latin. ("Can't tell a mouth from a bone.") But on a practical boots-on-the-ground level back then, I'm sure there were people saying "He is corrupting our language!" but just as many saying "Oh, he's from Carthage, apparently." IT's the same thing today: We should spend less time complaining about the minute details of how we pronounce a vowel or consonant, and more time communicating. A language is not dead until it *stops* evolving. Then it becomes of tool for silencing rather than speaking. If I learned to speak Latin on a regular basis (rather than bits of scientific language as I do now) I would still be dealing with my brain telling me to use swallowed and guttural r's, and to nasalize sounds that simply don't exist in whatever non-French, non-English language I'm speaking. But would I be "corrupting the language?" Nah, I'd just be "from New Orleans, apparently." But it would be better than to be too intimidated by purists to speak it at all. Great video.
So what you're saying is: if I use those two classical pronunciation diphthongs, as well as those four ecclesiastical pronunciation affricates, I can be hated by both classical/ecclesiastical speakers, understood by even less people, be even less accurate to any historical region's Latin pronunciation, but sound more cool overall? Count me in. (And hey, double the hate = double the comments on each RUclips video, so it's really just a net gain :P) Jokes aside, great video! I know some languages (like Japanese) have plenty of words that are pronounced the same way, though those are at least written with different kanji; I don't know if the 'h' is excluded from written ecclesiastical Latin as well as spoken, but I can certainly see it making some words more context-heavy. I find it difficult to grasp which spoken Japanese words mean what sometimes when trying to listen (or reading when written in kana), so I can see that potential downside for ecclesiastical as well. But yeah, definitely agree that the affricates sound really nice. Thanks again for the very informative talk; I didn't know anything about what an affricate or fricative was, or what the precise pronunciation differences between the two were, before watching this.
I had a dispute with a Franciskan Padre , who was visiting us back in the day, about k over c in my pronunciation of words and text. It was about the word "ecce" )))
Thank you for speaking of Ecclesiastical Latin so positively! I studied Latin at a Catholic high school (who never mentioned the reconstructed pronunciation of Classical Latin, btw) and this is the pronunciation I've stuck with. CL doesn't sound natural to me. I also speak Italian, French, Spanish and Arabic. Most languages have a rhythm and a "feel" to it and to me CL doesn't feel or sound natural. I'm open minded though, and since I've retired, I've been spending a lot of time reviewing Latin. It's a great language!
Hi James! I'm glad you liked the video! Yeah, I think the problem is a lot of CL pronunciation folks usually have very strong American or German accents; an Italian who does a reconstructed Classical Latin pronunciation, like my friend ad colleague Stefano Vittori, sounds more natural than even the best Ecclesiastical speakers; have a listen to these videos where you can hear his voice: Petronius, Cena Trimalchionis on his channel: ruclips.net/video/khiootdwfok/видео.html On my podcast Legio XIII where we discuss the chronology of the transition of the various CL phonemes into the Italian/Ecclesiastical: ruclips.net/video/yJZmT7w0zeA/видео.html This video of mine, after I received some helpful coaching from Stefano, is news reported in the fast news style of modern Italians: ruclips.net/video/sxz89u2FKpM/видео.html So the effect is that, it's not a CL pronunciation that probably bothers you, it's the ignorance of the CL speaker on how to eliminate non-Latin elements of pronunciation, especially consonant and vowel qualities, as well as and most importantly intonation and rhythm.
4:00 - But she has what Americans would perhaps call a very minor speech impediment and we Italians call "la R leggermente moscia" ;) That is, hers is not standard Italian R and not a regional variation. A percentage of people have it; nothing wrong with that; it sounds slightly nerdy and/or cute to many of us.
You and I are of like mind in esteem of the Modern Italian reading of Latin. What you say resonates with me, about the need to welcome diversity in studying together a tongue spanning so much spacetime. I also wholeheartedly agree with you about the need, no matter the reading scheme, to safekeep the phonemic information by vowel length. Moreover I thank you for this referenceable phonemic comparison between Cæsarian and Church Latin. If I may show another outlook: I first delved into Latin while gripped by her offspring tongues, for I love French and often find Spanish handy. The softening of stops in the Church reading ere the front vowels calls them back, and so lately I have grown fond of its consonants, forwhy I also find myself more naturally favoring the Late Empire vowels. Maybe I'll even find Latin handy, if not better than nothing, should I get lost in Italy, hahæ!
I like your conclusion. I study the Ecclesiastical, but I actually keep the Classical h and ae. Who is going to barge into my house and tell me not to?
Okay, I finally got around to watching this video. I see both as equally legitimate pronunciations of Latin, but obviously prefer RC when speaking... I personally think Ecclesiastical Latin sounds "wrong" when spoken. For some reason I don't really like the sound of it when spoken, it sounds like a bad mashup of Latin and Italian to me, rather unpleasant to my ear. However I recognize it's kinda been spoken that way for longer than RC has, and I think Classical sounds "wrong" when sung, as I prefer Ecclesiastical in liturgical and sung Latin. Not sure if anyone will read this or why I feel the need to post my opinion (I don't think either are illegitimate pronunciations) but here it is, it could change in the future
I have a question for you that I hope you'll answer: I sing Gregorian chant in my church choir. We've had several choir directors. I was taught that ecclesiastical Latin pretty much follows modern Italian though there may be some regional differences. The question came up last weekend as to the pronunciation of descendentibus from the Introit for the 6th Sunday after Pentecost: Dominus fortitudo plebis suae . . . This occurred in the sentence: assimilabor descendentibus in lacum. I was told that that it should be pronounced descendentz-ibus, instead of descendent-ibus. I wasn't sure about this one. I'd never noticed it before. Your opinion would be much appreciated.
Hello Luke! I learned ecclesiastical Latin in Hungary where we pronounce the word "Cicero" as "tsitsero", where the "TS" sound is similar to the English "caTS"…;. We pronounce "mutatio" as "mutaatsio" (mutáció in Hungarian orthography). We pronounce Latin letters according to our own Hungarian way. Somebody told me it is of Austrian Habsburg Catholic influence. do you know why German/Austrian and Hungarian ecclesiastical Latin sounds so similar if not due to this historical influence? Can there be a more profound lingusitical reason? My priest teachers always laughed at the Italian ecclesiastical pronunciation and considered it a CORRUPTION OF THE WORST KIND. HE said to us: "The way Italians pronounce ecclesiastical Latin makes them sound like the chirping of. worthless sparrows, where as we Hungarians are REAL men, for we do not make the "c" sound soft and flexible. He thought that the best Latin pronunciation was preserved in Hungary and Germany. He did not prove his point. Can there be any truth in this statement? Thank you for your great job! !!!!!!!!!! Bye, David Zelnik from Hungary
Szia! Hahah. That’s utter nonsense. The traditional Italian pronunciation of Latin was made the Ecclesiastical pronunciation in 1910. Hungarians should feel free to use their traditional pronunciation if they wish, of course. But this ridicule for it is so silly. (The Hungarian pronunciation is just the German pronunciation, by the way, same as in Poland). The fellow you mentioned is completely wrong about the history. I explain the whole history of the language in the video “The Immortal Language” ♥️ 🇭🇺
...still need to improve my Latin in all regards, especially Ecclesiastical pronunciation. I've argued with friends over what accent is best -- Anglicized is usually accepted as worst, one of my friends says a Spanish Latin accent is best, and I say French is just to annoy everyone... I eventually found out that Classical Latin sounds the worst for pronouncing Ecclesiastical texts, especially if its in Gregorian chant... It's kind of comical and out of place there. Still, I will try to learn it for non-liturgical contexts in my... planned... attempts at becoming fluent in Latin.
I have studied Latin while reading and speaking it in the ecclesiastical pronunciation. Since I study ancient Greek too and I really like languages I wandered what changes had the languages made in the centuries. So I learned Byzantine pronunciation of ancient Greek and Classical pronunciation of Latin, I find the diphtongs ae and oe sounding better like e, but the guttural c and g are better as k and g and v is better pronounced like semiconsonant u (w in English most of the time, like water) and h to be actual h, not silent. So that's opinion of an Italian speaker
Very interesting video! There are a couple of side notes that I believe are important to be added: 1) We must remember that there was no one pronounciation of Latin even in the classical period. The prononciation of the élites (the senators, like Cicero, Plinius et al.) was one thing, the prononciation of the plebs was different for sure. At the same exact moment in time. Not just that. Also the prononciation differered based on the region. Latin spoken in Rome was one thing, spoken in the provinces, it was different. One thing that we know for sure, and we know this from a text by Horatius (if I remember correctly), is that Tuscans used to pronounce the "C" consonant exactly like modern day Tuscans do, that is, they aspire it. It sounds like an "H" at best, or is even completely eliminated, for example, the word "carica" (which today means "load", but in ancient Latin was a type of fig fruit), in Tuscany would sound like "hariha" or even "aria", both now AND then! Which is remarkable, I believe! 2) I believe that in everyday spoken Latin, even in the classical period, the prononciation of some letters, such as the diphtong "AE" was not as neatly articulated as most speakers of restored latin prononciation do today. I believe that in the everyday talk, a word like "Familiae" was not spoken as "FA-MI-LI-A-E" like restored Latin speakers of today do, I think that the two vowels flow was very much a continuous "AE" rather than a distinct "A-E" - a sound that was probably a hybrid of the two, until with the times the less important one was dropped, for the universal law of linguistics that states that all words tend to evolve to their simplest most significant form ultimately; and this meant, for the words like "familiae" or "rosae", that the flowing diphtong ultimately let the less significant vowel (the A) drop in favour of the more significant one "E", which signifies the plural.
Every language has a different national pronunciation of "their" latin. Hearing english native speakers distort ecclesiastical latin sends shivers down my spine in absolute horror. Just like when they try to speak french. They can't do that either. Just like the other way around, for that matter. People have national accents, depending on their native tongue. So one standardised classical latin accent is not a bad idea. It makes it easier to understand eachothers latin.
Hey, Luke, is it bad that I couldn't hear/understand some sounds you were making? For example, I couldn't distinguish at all the differences you were making in the s sounds. I feel that I'm going to end up speaking with a combination of both classical and ecclesiastical pronounciations 😅
I have no intention of ever learning either form of Latin, but ... yeah, I think the ecclesiastical accent is just really pretty. I like to play Hildegard of Bingen's music on flute, and when I read it, I think in the ecclesiastical accent just because it's more like Italian, and I'm in it for the music and not for the classical historical stuff. (She was born in 1098, and who knows what version of Latin she spoke in her area of what's Germany today.) Been binging your videos, and it's all very interesting.
@@polyMATHY_Luke oh thank you for your answer! nonono, i didn't want to complain or so, 😊 I just found it interesting because in my German dialect, we use the apico-alveolar trill "r" _(so the Italian "normal" r)_ which is considered special in Germany, and when I switch to Standard German, I also change my pronunciation of "R" in order not to sound weird 😅 So i thought there might be something like that in Italian, just the other way round. But now I know that's not the case. Thanks a lot 😉👍
I had a choral director once who loved Latin pieces written for the church. These were written with the intent to be sung using Ecclesiastical Latin pronunciation. He didn't understand the pronunciations very well and found a Classical Pronunciation guide to help him. Being an amateur choir from the American Southeast, neither he nor they were very good at pronouncing either. It drove me crazy hearing single vowels sung as unintentional diphthongs among other inconsistencies.
When I took Latin in high school about 50 years ago (I was *terrible* at it!) our teacher made a point of trying to teach the classical pronunciation. In particular, I remember that c's, as in "Cicero", were supposed to be pronounced as "k" rather than "s". I don't see that in your chart though -- did I miss something? (Also, I don't see anything ahistorical about Ecclesiastical Latin -- it was the living language of the Catholic Church for over a thousand years).
Well, in any form of Latin, since even Ecclesiastical/Italian pronunciation recognises /h/ (you'll hear Luigi Miraglia saying /hoc/ for "hoc"), I will generalize this for all pronunciations: mihi as /mi.hi/ or /miː/ nihil as /ni.hil/ or /niːl/ And also Italian/Ecclesiastical has /mi.ki/ and /ni.kil/.
@@polyMATHY_Luke Yes, it was really the /k/ pronunciation I was asking about. It's almost universally practiced and (as far as I can see) only for those two words and not for other instances of intervocalic h. It always struck me as the strangest thing about ecclesiastical pronunciation. I wonder if there's manuscript evidence for this pronunciation (e.g., a scribe inserting a c or k).
I've got the same story, but for me the other prununciation is the central European (Tsitsero, Tsézar ... gn read as g+n; sc as s+ts or s+k, long vowels and accents observed, h pronounced, ge gi like in the resotred one....etc) which is the traditional one for Czechs, Austrians, Germans, Poles, Hungarians, Ukrainians, Southern Slavs etc etc. :) Here the Ecclesiastic pronunciation still sounds exotic.
@@polyMATHY_Luke And for me as well our traditional pronunciation always sounded somewhat "nicer" and more "epic" ... Carmina Burāna in these parts are usually sung with it (and probably the Orff's original theatrical performance used that pronunciation as well), the Christmas carols too... [But otherwise, for philological purposes, the restored pronunciation, with, if possible 'as restored phonetics as possible', is the way for me, as for you.]
Provo a scrivere in italiano, sapendo che Lei lo conosce, professor Ranieri. Da cattolico, mi fa sempre sorridere ascoltare le Messe in latino celebrate in Germania od in Austria sentendo frasi come "Seqvvenzia Sancti Evanghellii"
Watch my update to this series of videos! THE IMMORTAL LANGUAGE: History of the Ecclesiastical & Classical Pronunciations of Latin, from Antiquity to the Present: ruclips.net/video/XeqTuPZv9as/видео.html
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I believe that sometimes you forget that multiple phonos can serve a single phonem and that some of the subtile differences between restituta and ecclesiastica might be explained like that. it would be nice to analyse what kind of mistakes young Caius Iulius used to make while learning to write correctly.
e.g. like what happens for the Spanish betacism b/v confusion or like in pèsca and pésca in Italian that nobody really cares about outside of Tuscany or voice actors.
Hi polyMATHY,
What’s the name of the music group in the very first seconds of this video?
Thank you very much
Kind regards
I'm from Poland. I think I was taught some kind of mix of both classical and ecclesiastical latin. I mean proununciation of "c", "h", "gn", "ci", "s" was Luke im classical latin. But "ae", "oe", "v" "-m" sounded like in ecclesiastical. Moreover we pronounce "u" in "qu" as [v] not [w] and "t" in "ti" as [t]. It was the same either on my high school or university. Maybe its some kind of Polish Latin?
how many ppl in the world these days actually speak latin
Hi, what's the Song name that was played on 0:51? It's sounds very epic.
Also as my university professor of Latin literature once stated ecclesiastical pronunciation is not Ahistorical it has a very firm historical and academical foundation it simply shows another time frame of the language
Ecco Eco Good way of putting it. That’s what I was thinking but didn’t know how to articulate it
Also, there are national variants of ecclesiastical Latin that are very interesting and a part of national tradition. In German catholic masses, for example, Latin words are pronounced following almost exactly the same phonetic rules as German words are. In some aspects, it is closer to classical Latin than Italian church Latin is.
I'm partial to ecclesiastical because I can't get my brain to pronounce V as like W in English.
Moreover I speak American English. Am I wrong for not having and English accent?
Also, this way we don't have to pretend that an E is an I when saying Caesar's name.
@@str.77 ?
I am italian, is this something english people have to do?
Ecclesiastical Latin is what you have to use to banish demons. The classical kind doesn't work.
Hoc est verum! Daemoni in domo mea non absunt! 😂😂😂
Classical latin invokes the ancient Roman gods instead.
@@KillerQueen-gx4vb This guy gets it.
So one variety banishes demons, the other variety invokes them
@@digitalbrentable exactly. Neopagan cringe is demonic.
I'm a traditional roman Catholic and I say this video is gold!
Me too! I really appreciate the traditional promounciation, but the ecclesiastical one is the one that overwhelms me and touches my heart at mass every Sunday.
Since I'm Sardinian I'm more interested in the Classical one, since our language sounds more similar to that
I looooove Sardinian. Parli nuorese?
@@polyMATHY_Luke I'm glad that you love it ahah! I speak logudorese, but I do know nuorese too
That’s why you prefer the classical one! Poitta candu ddu chistionant parint tottus e cabesusu :-)
@@funkydrops Ahah abberu gasi paret!
@@viperking6573 nendudiddu!
I come from an Italian family and always loved how Italian sounded and because of this, Classical Latin always sounded weird and strange. Then I converted to Catholicism and I hear the very-Italian Ecclesiastical pronunciation and it is incredibly beautiful.
Just curious if I can ask. You come from an Italian family but converted to Catholicism? What religion were you born into?
@@michaelm-bs2er I was raised without any religious instruction at all as both my parents had long since fallen from the faith by the time they married (by a justice of the peace). We only went to church if a family member had a first communion or something which was very rare. I was an atheist and for awhile very anti-Christian before I converted.
All of my grandparents are first generation immigrants which is why I say Italian family since they came over so recently. (Grandma was very upset that my parents didn’t have me baptized).
My parents’ first language was Italian and they still speak it all the time :-)
@@erravi interesting background. Most people don't have the guts to stick up for what they believe in like your folks did. Thank you
@@michaelm-bs2er No problem. It’s funny, too, my dad at the same time as I converted (unbeknownst to either of us) reverted back to the Catholic faith. He definitely had some guts there. It isn’t easy coming to the conclusion that for decades you have lived falsely.
@@erravi It happens.It wasn't easy for me to abandon Islam and become an atheist either.I even had to ease out and be agnostic for a while.
Classical Latin: "I'm correct."
Ecclesiastical Latin: "I'm epic."
Old Church Slavonic: Enters building.
Kanon Pokajanen is soooooo beautiful ❤️
JAKOŽE
@@ivandugandzic6273 For me, the classical sounds more epic turning the soft c into k.
i've never hear old church slavonic being spoken. i understand the yugoslav language, mostly with dalmatian dialect, so i wonder if i would understand anything.
@@ausetano as an Italian, it sounds really weird, I really prefer the ecclesiastical pronunciation
Ah, finally! I have been so disappointed to see people teaching Ecclesiastical pronunciation, but for some godforsaken reason using English long and short vowels instead of proper Romance vowels. So, I've been using the Calabrese vowel system in Ecclesiastical pronunciation all on my lonesome since I started studying Latin in earnest a few months ago.
Thats great! Keep it up!
Are you Calabrian? Your name doesn't appear to be Calabrian.
@@sampaonni7592 I'm not, this is a Latinization of my name. Calabrese here refers to linguist Andrea Calabrese.
@@RFxSukhoi I have been confounded by his surname, yet again. He needs to change his surname to stop this happening.
@@sampaonni7592 It's painfully obvious for me.Aaron James becomes Aaron Iacomus.
I learned classical Latin at school but use ecclesiastical Latin at church. I like both pronunciations with a slight preference for ecclesiastical Latin because of the way it sounds and also of course because it's the language of my Church.
As a Catholic and a linguist, I found your video fascinating. I am currently going to a Traditional Latin Mass and I love learning the latin prayers. One thing that helps me learn them is figuring out what each word means. Another bonus of the Latin prayers is that because it is a sacred language, demons are more afraid of them according to exorcist Father Chad Ripperger and others.
Latin is a sacred language? How so? Like what makes it sacred? Tradition?
@@jemts5586 1. It is one of the languages on top of the cross of our Lord. 2. It is the official language of the Catholic Church.
@@jemts5586 Yes, tradition. It's been used for over a thousand years as the language of the liturgy.
@@firemaiden Salve soro Catolicae
I love Fr Ripperger
As much as I like the idea of staying faithful to Classical Latin, I prefer the ‘crispier’ sound of Liturgical Latin. I just can’t get behind the docile sounding W and Y in place of V and J, among others
Interesting. To me Latin with the w and y and k for v/j/c doesn't sound 'docile' and sounds more like... well... a language... I guess because it is. Ecclesiastical pronunciation sounds clunky to me.
OTOH, k and g sound crispier to me than ch and dzh
J is pronounced /j/ in ecclesiastical pronunciation as well
Classical Latin "c" and "g" are much "crisper" than their Ecclesiastical mutations. As a non-Christian, the very word "Ecclesiastical" sticks in my craw. Christianity was one of the major factors in the demise of Roman civilisation.
@@DieFlabbergast that with the nearly complete outsourcing of combat roles to Individuals from the provinces, the overbearing power of the praetorians, and the absolute weakening of meaningful checks and balances in roman governance. Honestly, old and magnificent rome was pretty much long gone in spirit by the time christianity became popular.
In Italy, at school, we learn latin in ecclesiastical pronuntiation. We call that: "Pronuncia scolastica"
which is bullshit because if you read dante's latin it's ok but if you read classical poems (which is majority of the things studied in latin) another example of the position "a pecora" of Italy towards the pedophile vatican mafia
@@toffonardi7037 I Don't think that in this case any "a pecora" with the Italian church is involved. Instead many professor in Italy are socialist or communist, not exactly the people who put them self "a pecora" for the church 😂.
Simply ecclesiastical Latin was the pronunciation used for centuries in the academic contest. So is normal that it was chosen for school: think for example to this practical reason: if ecclesiastical Latin is studied by most of the people, it would be easy find professor to teach it. Instead if you use classical Latin, who is know by few people, it will be difficult for the school system find professor capable of teaching it
@@francescoboselli6033 so you're saying that... it's called scolastica because it's teached in school... that's... the whole... point
@@fabioviti7384 No non è quello che intendevo. Ho scritto il commento tempo fa, e visto che il commento a cui ho risposto non c'è più, non mi ricordo bene il contesto.
Ma che credo, nel commento eliminato, avesse detto che la scuola ha scelto la pronuncia scolastica, che è quella ecclesiastica, perché i professori di mettono "a pecora" per la chiesa.
Io gli ho risposto che dubito della cosa visto come molti professori di lettere sono comunisti e di altre ideologie di sinistra, ai quali la chiesa non sta certo simpatica.
Semplicemente la pronuncia ecclesiastica, o scolastica, è stata scelta, perché ormai da secoli è quella usata per insegnare il latino
Fun fact: in Lithuanian universities, we use German pronunciation style: ascendit is proncounced as "astsendit".
lol
As a German I can read the "Restored Classic" 1:1 with my mother tongue.
I had hard times understanding latin mass in Vilnius. Gloria in ekstselsis, I guess it's a lithuanian pronounciation rather than german, since "c" is "ts" in lithuanian.
@@milanfanas "Gloria in exstselsis" spoken, is exactly the German pronounciation. The typical pronounciation of "c" is "k" in Germany, but not in this case.
@Milan Fanas As a German I have to tell you that German C is indeed pronounced like TS in front of Ä, E and I (and probably would be in front of Ö and Ü if it ever ended up there) - And that is carried over into the German ecclesiastical pronunciation of Latin. Also TI+AnotherVowel is pronounced as TSI+TheOtherVowel in both German and German ecclesiastical Latin and AE, OE and UE become the umlauts rather than diphthongs. There may be more, but I have never systematically learned this, have only been tought how to sing parts of one mass in ecclesastical pronunciation once. (At school we we just pronouce Latin like whatever comes to mind, given that we are only really expected to understand what we read, not to ever actually say much)
Thank you so much for this! I direct a Gregorian Schola and am involved in the Traditional Latin Mass movement, the snide downlooking of some classical advocates is ignorance at the worst. Consider, I'm someone who (in fact most who use Ecclesiastical pronunciation are) using Latin outside of the Ivory tower, in the real world where ordinary people are exposed to it, having E pronunciation criticized by academics who often can only decode rather than actually read it is insulting.
I grew up here in UK with the tridentine mass then, when I went to secondary school at age 11, began learning Latin with the 'proper' pronunciation. What fun we youngsters had using classical pronunciation in Mass and choir, and church pronunciation in Latin classes! Bortonius (Mr Borton, our Latin master) was not amused. Neither was Father (killer) Kilaki.
Haha yeah it’s good to know both and to be tolerant
Many years ago I casually said “curriculum vitae” in what I now realise was the Ecclesiastical Latin pronunciation, having spent years in a cathedral choir. The haughty private school kids - ironically one of whom was an Italian speaker - mocked me for it. If only I’d known to defend myself.
Right! That’s the important thing. Both pronunciations have their place, which overlaps pretty much everywhere, and should be enjoyed by all. The only place they don’t overlap is in historical dramas: Classical Roman movies should use Classical, and Renaissance Italy shows should use Ecclesiastical. Otherwise today it doesn’t really matter.
I would have expected the more surprising thing to have been that you didn't use the English pronunciation (/kəˈɹɪkjələm ˈviːteɪ/). ;)
As long as you don't use "alum" as the singular for "alumni", you are forgiven using any pronunciation you like.
If only they knew how silly "vitai" sounds.
@@reneemargaretmcconahy6881 The correct Anglo-Latin pronunciation of vitae is /ˈvaɪtiː/. /ˈviːteɪ/ would be an imitation of Italian Ecclesiastical. I've noticed that English speakers nowadays either attempt to imitate an Italian Ecclesiastical, or a reconstructed Classical pronunciation, and it sounds very inauthentic. RIP Anglo-Latin.
As someone who was taught the ecclesiastical pronunciation at a Catholic school and primarily works with scholastic and liturgical Latin texts, I appreciate this defense.
I'm glad! 😊 Also see this video: ruclips.net/video/XeqTuPZv9as/видео.html
Ecclesiastical latin is beautifull because it sings like italian, it has soul.....bascially you get the best from classical latin and italian in one
no, it's shit. classical is much better.
@@toffonardi7037 Much better? It's almost identical to classical pronunciation. Differences are so little that you can speak in both languages and someone knowing either one would understand you anyway
@@12_xu it s not identical, there are differences.
@@toffonardi7037 I said almost. Saying it's _much_ better is nonsense. If Ecclesiastical pronunciation is shit, then what is English pronunciation? Or German pronunciation?
As an Indian, I favour the Ecclesiastical Pronunciation, but that's probably because of my Catholic upbringing. Words like "regina", "coeli" and "tentationem" sound really odd to me when pronounced with a the Classical Pronunciation. My understanding is that only some Ecclesiastical bibliographies suggest to mute the letter 'h', so words like "hortus" need not be confused with "ortus".
Fascinating presentation! You inspire me to learn the language. 😊
My beginning French teacher said if we knew Latin it would help in learning French; that started my learning of Latin. I thought I was learning the Ecclisiastical way but after seeing your chart it looks like I'm pronouncing it the Classical way with two exceptions: The soft ge, gi, ce, ci, just because it makes learning Romance languages easier, AND it does sound more pleasant to the ears. Thank you for this information.
As a Catholic thank you. The Latin language is very much alive in the church. The Latin Mass communities are growing while the vernacular are shrinking. All Vatican documents are in Latin, to the church Latin is useful as a "dead language" since it is not used it does not change.
It's not a dead language but immortal and official language of the ancient Church
@Rob Scovell Unus Deus, una Ecclesia: Una vox, en secula secularum
For a detailed explanation of the Roman rite: homily of the 3rd Sunday in Lent 'three years ago' at SSPX Florida - on RUclips..Around the minute 53 - to be precise.
Latin is - officially - not a dead language, as it is officially used in the Vatican, no matter how many people actually talk in Latin there. As a consequence Latin is perfectly legal for radio amateurs to use on the air, whereas ancient greek is not.
latin died to become immortal
-Luke Ranieri
A solid like for transcending a divisive issue, or sailing past Cilia and Charybdis and asking what the fuss is about.
Haha thanks, Jesse!
It has value for Music. I don’t think certain works would sound right using the restored classical pronunciation. I cannot imagine Carmina Burana in Cicero‘s Latin. It also seems to have a more natural sound for those of us who are native speakers of a romance language.
That is because the writers of the Carmina Burana wrote without any reference to Classical vowel length or prosody, and therefore words don't that scheme. The same goes for trying to read ancient poetry with so-called Ecclesiastical vowels, the metrical structure of the poem is lost.
Of course the Italianate pronunciation sounds more natural to a speaker of a Romance language, as both are derivative of Vulgar Latin if by different routes; nevertheless, to someone with any familiarity with Ancient Greek, Sanskrit, or Classical prosody, the restored pronunciation makes far more sense.
Maybe it depends on context. The Italianate or Ecclesiastical pronunciation, in common with the other national pronunciations, makes more sense for Medieval Latin poetry or texts in that they were composed by people with no knowledge of the ancient pronunciation. Besides, these texts differ from Classical Latin in ways other than phonology. Even something as old as the Vulgate has odd constructions that don't reflect Classical usage, and the Mass has its own Late Latin traits.
I just found this channel--it is so fascinating! As a speaker of 6 languages, I am still disappointed that I never took latin (isn't interesting how people also say they "took latin" rather than saying they "speak latin?"). But I love his latin (this You Tuber), who speaks with such an authentic Italian accent and cadence. It makes me want to pick it up as a hobby! A huge compliment as I m hard to inspire these days, lol!
Thanks so much! You should learn Latin! Use this playlist of my videos: ruclips.net/video/j7hd799IznU/видео.html
2:21 Sancti Petri, Ora Pro Nobis ✝️🕊🇻🇦
Nice that you included the finale of "Man Of La Mancha" at the very end.
Haha thanks! I achieved that impossible dream with the Lucian Pronunciation of Ancient Greek: ruclips.net/video/Dt9z5Gvp3MM/видео.html
I appreciate this, because I would like to learn to speak Latin. I studied it for reading in college. I personally have no interest in using the classical pronunciation for a few reasons: 1) I prefer the sound of Ecclesiastical Latin; 2) I am a Catholic Theologian, so Pronouncing the ‘Church’ way just makes more sense, and 3) I actually use Ecclesiastical Latin pronunciation regularly. My parish has a Latin Mass that I attend most weeks. Additionally, I like to pray other prayers in Latin, and they were all taught with ecclesiastical pronunciation. Since The Catholic Church still actually uses the Latin language (even if less than before), we should at least not attack her pronunciation, since she is at least keeping it in some sense as a living, spoken language. Even in the 20th Century Catholic theologians from different countries would speak to each other in Latin, including at Vatican II. And seminary courses were often taught in Latin.
Great video, as always. Also, fantastic editing and use of pop culture references:
"Restored classical users may feel an internal conflict." cue Kylo Ren agonizing about whether or not to kill his father.
a+ content.
Hahaha thanks!! 😂
There is a parallel situation in Hebrew. There is the Zionist Israeli Hebrew pronunciation that is very popular among modern Orthodox Jews around the world. But most Jews are Ashkenazi and their grandparents grew up with a very different pronunciation. And ultra Orthodox Jews today cling to their original Ashkenazi pronunciation. So Orthodox Jews today are divided by the choice of how to pronounce Hebrew. The Israeli Hebrew is based on the pronunciation of the Jews who were expelled from Spain, which is simple and more ancient sounding. No Jews today use ancient pronunciation.
Also, since the Babylonian exile, some 2400 years ago, Aramaic has become insepratable from Hebrew to this very day. Even Israeli Hebrew has Aramaic deeply imbedded in it.
The interesting part is that modern varieties of Hebrew generally underwent the same sound changes as the areas they came from, so all western dialects influenced by Latin have /w/-->/v/ (like Latin), while the dialects of the Middle East and Africa continued to have /w/. The Ashkenazic pronunciation has all the German consonant shifts like final /t/-->/s/ while the Sephardic dialects often have [β] instead of [v] for intervocalic /b/ (like Spanish). I have used this fact when confronted by Hebrew "purists" who insist their pronunciation is the only "correct" one.
@@TyranAmiros Great reply! I figured you can say all European Jews, Ashkenazi and Sepharadi, have in common bet/vet, vav and tzade.
Syrian Jews traditionally pronounce waw as vav, just like European Jews, even though in Arabic they say waw, like all other Arabic speakers. "V" doesn't even exist in Arabic, so the Syrian Jews were really going out of their way to pronounce "vav." It seems that some Jews in the Levant in ancient times developed the w to v, parallel to European developments.
The Ashkenazi thav to sav has to have been brought to Europe from the Levant, because th in Germanic languages turns to d, not s. Th turning to s is only Middle Eastern, so Ashkenazi sav must be very ancient! Who knows from which particular location it came? Maybe Galilee? Maybe Judea? Maybe Syria?
European tzade is really interesting! What ancient language had tz in it? It must be that Tet, Tzade and Kuf were pronounced as ejectives, like in Amharic. Tzade preserves this, because European Jews were not exposed to Arabic. Pronouncing these three letters like in Arabic, seeped into Mizrahi Hebrew during the Middle Ages.
What do YOU think?
@@benavraham4397 the Syrian Jewish vav was highly likely influenced by Turkish Sephardim and not a regular native innovation.
@@NK-vd8xi Sounds interesting! How do come by this?
Fascinating stuff! Thanks from a word freak in Vienna, Scott
Who are you?
What did you do to him?
Hahaha 😂
They used to say “only Nixon could go to China.” Now they’ll be saying “only Ranieri could make this video.”
Hahaha!
There are over 50 dialetti in Italy 😇 so no matter what your accent sounds like you can always find it fit in one of the dialects used by Italians🙏🏼
Only 50? I dare say at least 500!
Every city in Italy has it's dialect
When I want to listen recreations of ancient romans speaking Latin, I want to hear Classical Latin.
When I want to listen to Medieval and Church writings read aloud, or sung, I want to hear Ecclesiastical Latin.
The real question is, which of both do I prefer to be used in modern times excluding those two previous considerations? I prefer Ecclesiastical Latin. It just sounds better to me. Classical Latin seems a bit rougher, it needed a few adjustments in pronuntiation that were provided by Ecclesiastical Latin.
I wonder if classical latin sounded so rough because formal high class speech required maximum clarity. At least for me personally a language becomes harder to understand the softer it is.
I love Ecclesiastical pronunciation. It's so beautiful ❤️. Also love that "Italianizing" pronunciation from the 4th century you showed. That's be nice to see more widespread. Yes, shamelessly biased.
I like the Latin with a French accent.
particularly the french "u"
We started to learn ecclesiastical in our homeschool because that was what was provided to us in our curriculum bundle. It was really great for a time, but my oldest became hung up on cases and we were at a stand still. So we began again with a younger Latin curriculum to try and really master the understanding of case endings. I’m doing so we switched curriculum and found classical to be the most produced curriculum so we started again but with classical. I like both and see no reason why we should explore both if attempting to master one.
When I started learning Latin at school in 1978 we started in the ecclesiastical pronunciation, as well as having to speak Latin in class. After a few months the rule changed, and we had to switch to classical pronunciation and conversion exercises were no longer done. I must say it felt strange at the time, these few months were enough to start loving the ecclesiastical pronunciation, even though I can not really use it, being used to the classical variant. Thanks for sharing this video!
How confusing
I love everything about this! Also Happy New Year!
To you as well!
Your Latin accent has a very Italian quality to me, very soft and musical.
I have been studying ecclesiastical Latin for several months. I am Catholic had been a cantor at our Cathedral. I had intended just learning prayers in Latin, but fell in love with the language. I tried several methods but ended up using primarily your recommendation of Lingua Latina Familia Romana: the text, the companion book, the exercisebook and the teacher’s guide/answer book. Hackett Publishing also offers MP3’s for sale on Amazon music in either the classical or ecclesiastical pronunciation, which I purchased.
My goal is to be able to read St. Augustine’s book on the Trinity in Latin and more.
I am at a similar stage. I have found the Vulgate to be a great way to drill my understanding and expand my vocabulary into more religious subjects.
The aesthetic is the reason I prefer the “ecclesiastical” - but of course, this is subjective.
It's a very interesting video. I can draw a similarity to my own heritage language, Armenian. In the church's liturgy we use Classical Armenian which dates to the 5th century AD. There are two standardized modern "dialects" of Armenian (compared to some other linguistic groups, they might be called "languages"), Eastern and Western. While the Eastern Dialect preserves a pronunciation closer to the Classical, the Western Dialect has diverged (primarily in terms of the consonants, which underwent a major shift in the Medieval period). Yet, throughout the Ottoman Empire period and in the Armenian Diaspora, for hundreds of years now the Divine Liturgy (Mass) has been sung and recited in the (less Classically correct) Western dialect pronunciation. The official status the Western dialect had in cosmopolitan Constantinople, and the fact that the church was suppressed in the Eastern Dialect region (Soviet Armenia), while it flourished in the Diaspora, has, I think added to the nostalgia and even simply the normality of pronouncing Classical Armenian in the Western pronunciation. To my knowledge there is no real major movement to pronounce Classical Armenian in the true Classical pronunciation, and in fact there are still controversies as to how it was pronounced in the 5th century. So, we are still in the stage where the "Ecclesiastical Pronunciation" is the norm.
9:54 As a Brazilian Portuguese speaker with European Portuguese relatives, I'm fairly certain we *do* pronounce qu as /kʷ/ (in those cases we do not pronounce it as /kʲ/, of course) like "quadrado" /kʷɐ·ˈdɾa·du/. I say this because I very consciously round my lips before starting to speak this word. I cannot speak for other Romances, but I would imagine that Catalan ought to have it, too? They have a phonology which is curiously similar to ours, even if the morphology is quite different.
I don't think we use /gʷ/ or /ŋʷ/ for "gu" or "ngu", though, so I make no defense of its rarity in Europe or any kind of phonemic consistency in my idiolect, mind you.
Duuuuuude, i was think the same, i thought i was imagening things cus i was possibly over conscious about how i'm speaking it, but i totaly do speak that K(w) sound PLUS the G(w) too like the "gu" in "linguiça".
AND another thing, that "um" at the end of a word that the "m" is dropped for a nasal sound, we also do that but with the ending in "am" we dont say the "m" and the "a" sound nasal( with a little bit of "u" together), the word "compram" we pronounce as "co(u)m-pr-ã(ū)"
Same with Spanish
Same is true in Italian, except in tuscany, in the area where I live the q sound is more like a intermediate, between a hard k and a soft c followed by u, unless after a vowel where it becomes a hard k.
we do use /gʷ/ though, "guarda", "linguiça", "água", "sanguinario", "lânguido", etc.
They're both fine.
I think that both pronunciations have their reason to exist. When reading Caesar we should use the classical one, when reading De Vulgari Eloquentiae from Dante the ecclesiastical one.
Latin pronunciation changed throughout Roman times. The Roman's themselves would probably have viewed ecclesiastical latin as another dialect.
Isn’t people saying you should use Classical pronunciation like some Russian guy telling me I should speak English like the old Anglo-Saxon method because that is what some old English king spoke?
Jacob Cantrell thanks for the comment. To answer your question: not really. Anglo-Saxon is a completely different language from Modern English; they are not mutually intelligible, and use completely different grammar, as well as phonology.
Latin is the language of the Classical Authors from 100 BC to 200 AD roughly, as well as every author thereafter who accurately imitated their style. That is why using a pronunciation system of that period allows for a deeper exploration of the texts.
Contrary to common belief, Ecclesiastical Pronunciation of Latin does *not* represent a natural evolution of Latin phonology. The natural pronunciation of Latin by the end of the Western Roman Empire was already very similar to modern Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese: final consonants had largely been removed, and the case system endings had mostly merged; diphthongization of e>ie, o>uo etc had all taken place. Latin was written the same way in the 500-800 AD period as in Classical times, just as today, but the pronunciation had totally diverged, just as Modern English spelling is largely representative of the spelling of Middle English (the Great Vowel shift, etc.)
800 AD: as part of a Classical Latin revival, Charlemagne hires Alcuin to create a standardized pronunciation of Latin in the Holy Roman Empire, because the sound of Latin in Spain, Italy, France was no longer easily intelligible - the written language was the same, as was the grammar, but the phonology was as all over the place. Thus Alcuin made a spelling pronunciation: every letter gets pronounced, and each letter has one pronunciation value.
This Carolingian pronunciation was basically the same as the current scholastic Restored Classical Pronunciation common today in schools outside of Italy.
So what happened? Over the centuries the Carolingian/Restored pronunciation of Latin diverged to attain some similarities with the countries’ languages where it was used. Thus traditional Italian pronunciation - originally an innovation by an Englishman based on the British Received Pronunciation of Latin of the 8th century, instituted by a Frankish king, remains beloved, I think ironically, as the “native” sound of Latin in Italy. 😂
So no, it’s nothing like pronouncing Modern English with Old English phonology.
There’s nothing wrong with using Ecclesiastical Pronunciation of course to speak Latin. Why not? It’s perfectly intelligible with Restored Classical. But any claims to historical “naturalness” or authority therein needs to be heavily filtered.
polýMATHY Thanks for the clarification.
@@polyMATHY_Luke Extremely enlightening explanation.
@@polyMATHY_Luke .....Mr. Ranieri, I'm confused.
I'm looking also at a video you posted seven months after this one, "Ecclesiastic Latin versus Classical Pronunciation History", in which you say at the 28:29 point, (here is a link to that video: ruclips.net/video/XeqTuPZv9as/видео.html ), "A classicizing pronunciation is both legitimate and historically consistent with how Latin has been treated over the millennia; whether the FIRST classical [restored] pronunciation [you show an image of Charlemagne in his court at Aachen], which is what we call the Ecclesiastical pronunciation or [whether we are considering] the MODERN Restored Classical pronunciation, which is a very accurate reconstruction of First century B.C. urban Latin."
Now, in this comment you've made, here, in this thread, you indicate that the Italianate (Ecclesiastic) pronunciation diverged a bit from the Carolingian Restored-Classical pronunciation (as all of the regional pronunciations of Church Latin did) in the centuries through the Middle Ages.
So, here is my straight forward question: Do we know what the Carolingian Restored-Classical pronunciation sounded like (basically)? ....And, more to the point, which of the two modes of pronunciation that are prominent today -- Ecclesiastic-Italianate or modern Restored-Classical -- is more similar to the Carolingian Restored-Classical mode?
@@MrJm323 and Luke, in addition to this, we know how the Catholic Church did well the job of keeping everything we have from the first centuries until this day, like the Holy Scripture copied by hand, and documents, clothes of saints of the first centuries, et coetera. And in Rome the influence of the Latium, which became the language of the Imperium, probably influenced the accent too. Despite of this, we use to consider the influence of the italian in pronunciation of latin, but not the more evident: the latin was the one which originated the italian in that historical and cultural context. And history and culture is a very important part of the accent, is part of the identity of a people. That's because I think this is the way the famous latin writers used to pronounce. But like in english there are many accents, and here in Brazil there are a lot of accents different of Portugal's portuguese, and in Italy there are lots of dialects, there is no an only way to pronounce a language of a such huge territory like Roman Empire.
Both are beautiful, both are historical, both kept the pulse of human connection alive in their times. Both languages persuaded, wooed, censured and quarreled on behalf of the irrepressible passions that must be set free.
As a Traditionalist Roman Catholic, your videos and both channels help me a lot with my Latin
Also, yeah, I actually prefer Ecclesiastical Latin more since that is how I hear my Masses and say my prayers and my chants and hymns at Church.
Am I the only twit who tries to sing Christmas carols with (attempted) Classical consonants? I'm guessing that's the worst of all worlds :p
Love that you used a clip of the Gesualdo six, they're fantastic.
Being born of Immigrant Italian parents( who insisted on English at home) I learnt Dialect and Italian at age 7 during a funeral visit to Italy ( 9 months with kids my own age in a small town) made learning essential.
At church, Ecclesiastical Catholic Latin ( with an Irish accent) was the Rule.. as it was when I studied Latin at High School...until in Yr.10 we had a Cambridge Classics Graduate who introduced us the Classical Latin ( much to the chagrin of the Religious Latin Teachers.
Anyway, I survived Latin at school, could read De Bello Gallico in Original, and used Latin in my Medical Studies.
Later, in my mid-twenties, I went to an Italian university, and for entry, had to be reasonably fluent in Italian...3 months with a middle school teacher got me through the entry exam...thanks to my
Knowledge ofthe Dialect ( two of the Examiners were fluent Dialect speakers)
So with that, and a friend who was a Teacher of High School Latin ( in Italy) taught the Italo- Ecclesiastic version, but privately declaimed Cicero in the classical style...v== w, c==k, etc.
I now, at 74, am still grasping literary Latin, in the classical style.
Another lifetime, maybe?
Ha! Singing in ecclesiastical Latin!!! It is like sweet chocolate -not the original recipe but deliciously corrupting!
I have to say, as I professionally work with Latin everyday (from a linguistic point of view... unfortunately, we are not speaking it at the office :-P), I am more and more mixing the Ecclesiastical/Italian pronunciation (my "native" one) with a "rigorous" reconstructed Classical-like one. I am not caring about any differences anymore. The fact that I have to do with Latin from all time periods and places at once is not helping me :-P Sometimes I feel like Salvatore from the Nome della Rosa ("The Name of the Rose") by Eco, if you happen to know him XD
Penitenziagite! Penitenziagite! Te sientes come un ragazzo che fala tue le lingue al mismo tempo e non parla nessuna bem. Regards.
We speak and respect BOTH
The most brilliant defense of Ecclesiastical Latin pronunciation! And by the best Pronuntiatio Restituta speaker I have ever come across!
One thing I have been wanting to ask you as I watched your videos, is how do you su´ggest practising the correct pronuntiation for short and long vowels. I have realised how important it is, however, I haven't been able to find a logic behind it so as to find out by deduction when it's not indicated in a text (or when I write a sentence myself). And many texts (maybe most), do not have macrons!
Gratias tibi ago!
As a SPL I want to congratulate you. Perfect explanation.
I really like the sound of the ecclesiastical latin and I really enjoy it when in mass and church.
Still, as new Latin learner, I prefer the classical restored pronunciation. I think it has a lot to do with having Spanish as my native language. Pronuntiatio restituta feel more natural for me. Hehehe
I think I'll try to have a Hanna Montana policy... The best of both worlds
Gratias tibi, magister!
As a Brazilian (that speaks the Rio de Janeiro Portuguese pronunciation), the Ecclesiastical form feels the most natural to me, as all the sounds are practically the same (with very few exceptions, like the ce, ci, ge and gi).
similis mecum est.
haha, thanks to "tempus est iocundum" in the background, I could not concentrate on your argument but kept singing that catchy tune in my head :D oh oh, totus floreo!
(OVerall language/linguistics geek here) I speak English and French. I am originally from New Orleans, half-Cajun and half New Orleans Creole, and I grew up with bits and pieces of both from the different sides of the family. I took French in high school because I wanted to speak more, and because I spoke some, it was easy. My first French teacher was an elderly missionary who had originally learned/spoken extremely conservative "academic" French, but had lived for years (as in four decades) in francophone Africa and had picked up the accent. My second French teacher there spoke and taught us "modern" Parisian French. In college, my French teacher was from Romania, and so I picked up a bit of a ROmanian French accent as well. The upshot of it all is when I speak French, I sound like I'm from barely-defined "somewhere else." Especially with r's.
This taught me how important the timbre of a specific language and accent is. French sounds harsh to a number of people, and my accent sounds particularly harsh to them. For example, people who speak Spanish. My best friend grew up bilingual in English and Spanish, but later also learned French (very important for he and I to communicate at parties where nearly everyone spoke English, Spanish, or both) as well as Italian, Japanese and a few other languages. (He's one of those guy with the enviable ability to learn languages so easily, he can do it as a hobby.) I moved to Texas and started to have to learn a bit of Spanish when I worked for the state, essentially enough to tell them who I was, where I was calling from, and that I was about to get a translator. My friend helped me with pronunciation and prosody for it, and he said I was overall understandable, but I was actually speaking Spanish with a *French* not English accent, and thus, he said, "You sound like you're really, really angry at everyone."
Ecclesiastical Latin has it's own sound, and thus it's own place. It's a language reform, not a corruption. There is, in my very descriptive vs proscriptive, no way to "corrupt" a language, only to complain about the way it evolves. We have evidence of people complaining in historical Latin about people mispronouncing said Latin. ("Can't tell a mouth from a bone.") But on a practical boots-on-the-ground level back then, I'm sure there were people saying "He is corrupting our language!" but just as many saying "Oh, he's from Carthage, apparently." IT's the same thing today: We should spend less time complaining about the minute details of how we pronounce a vowel or consonant, and more time communicating.
A language is not dead until it *stops* evolving. Then it becomes of tool for silencing rather than speaking. If I learned to speak Latin on a regular basis (rather than bits of scientific language as I do now) I would still be dealing with my brain telling me to use swallowed and guttural r's, and to nasalize sounds that simply don't exist in whatever non-French, non-English language I'm speaking. But would I be "corrupting the language?" Nah, I'd just be "from New Orleans, apparently." But it would be better than to be too intimidated by purists to speak it at all.
Great video.
So what you're saying is: if I use those two classical pronunciation diphthongs, as well as those four ecclesiastical pronunciation affricates, I can be hated by both classical/ecclesiastical speakers, understood by even less people, be even less accurate to any historical region's Latin pronunciation, but sound more cool overall? Count me in. (And hey, double the hate = double the comments on each RUclips video, so it's really just a net gain :P)
Jokes aside, great video! I know some languages (like Japanese) have plenty of words that are pronounced the same way, though those are at least written with different kanji; I don't know if the 'h' is excluded from written ecclesiastical Latin as well as spoken, but I can certainly see it making some words more context-heavy. I find it difficult to grasp which spoken Japanese words mean what sometimes when trying to listen (or reading when written in kana), so I can see that potential downside for ecclesiastical as well. But yeah, definitely agree that the affricates sound really nice. Thanks again for the very informative talk; I didn't know anything about what an affricate or fricative was, or what the precise pronunciation differences between the two were, before watching this.
Modern Italian, like Brazilian Portuguese, is very musical with a lot of chi chi cha sounds, I love it.
I had a dispute with a Franciskan Padre , who was visiting us back in the day, about k over c in my pronunciation of words and text. It was about the word "ecce" )))
Who cares about the sound as long as your painting is world-famous?
Thank you for speaking of Ecclesiastical Latin so positively! I studied Latin at a Catholic high school (who never mentioned the reconstructed pronunciation of Classical Latin, btw) and this is the pronunciation I've stuck with. CL doesn't sound natural to me. I also speak Italian, French, Spanish and Arabic. Most languages have a rhythm and a "feel" to it and to me CL doesn't feel or sound natural. I'm open minded though, and since I've retired, I've been spending a lot of time reviewing Latin. It's a great language!
Hi James! I'm glad you liked the video! Yeah, I think the problem is a lot of CL pronunciation folks usually have very strong American or German accents; an Italian who does a reconstructed Classical Latin pronunciation, like my friend ad colleague Stefano Vittori, sounds more natural than even the best Ecclesiastical speakers; have a listen to these videos where you can hear his voice:
Petronius, Cena Trimalchionis on his channel:
ruclips.net/video/khiootdwfok/видео.html
On my podcast Legio XIII where we discuss the chronology of the transition of the various CL phonemes into the Italian/Ecclesiastical:
ruclips.net/video/yJZmT7w0zeA/видео.html
This video of mine, after I received some helpful coaching from Stefano, is news reported in the fast news style of modern Italians:
ruclips.net/video/sxz89u2FKpM/видео.html
So the effect is that, it's not a CL pronunciation that probably bothers you, it's the ignorance of the CL speaker on how to eliminate non-Latin elements of pronunciation, especially consonant and vowel qualities, as well as and most importantly intonation and rhythm.
@@polyMATHY_Luke Thanks! I will check out the links that you provided. I am now a subscriber!
Thank you for helping to keep this sacred language alive
Lmao! Nah, seriously, you're great. Thanks for this video, I've been waiting on such a defense of the living dialect. Merry Christmas, Magister!
I'm glad it made you laugh a bit! 😃 Merry Christmas
4:00 - But she has what Americans would perhaps call a very minor speech impediment and we Italians call "la R leggermente moscia" ;) That is, hers is not standard Italian R and not a regional variation. A percentage of people have it; nothing wrong with that; it sounds slightly nerdy and/or cute to many of us.
Sophie Marceau is a stunning woman. So is the one at the beginning singing "Veni, Veni".
Absolutely! haha
The band Krypteria used to pronounce as Schp. It's really germanised. Victoriam Schperamus.
Thank you for your recommendation of Friar Alessandro. His interpretation of Adeste Fideles is unbeliavable.
Agreed!
I recall my Italian philosophy professor pronouncing Latin partially in Classical and partially in Ecclesiastical pronunciation.
You and I are of like mind in esteem of the Modern Italian reading of Latin. What you say resonates with me, about the need to welcome diversity in studying together a tongue spanning so much spacetime. I also wholeheartedly agree with you about the need, no matter the reading scheme, to safekeep the phonemic information by vowel length. Moreover I thank you for this referenceable phonemic comparison between Cæsarian and Church Latin.
If I may show another outlook: I first delved into Latin while gripped by her offspring tongues, for I love French and often find Spanish handy. The softening of stops in the Church reading ere the front vowels calls them back, and so lately I have grown fond of its consonants, forwhy I also find myself more naturally favoring the Late Empire vowels. Maybe I'll even find Latin handy, if not better than nothing, should I get lost in Italy, hahæ!
Bene. Well done. I was trained in ecclesiastical Latin, and if you will forgive me, I far prefer it
Dē gustibus! 😊
I like your conclusion. I study the Ecclesiastical, but I actually keep the Classical h and ae. Who is going to barge into my house and tell me not to?
Okay, I finally got around to watching this video. I see both as equally legitimate pronunciations of Latin, but obviously prefer RC when speaking... I personally think Ecclesiastical Latin sounds "wrong" when spoken. For some reason I don't really like the sound of it when spoken, it sounds like a bad mashup of Latin and Italian to me, rather unpleasant to my ear. However I recognize it's kinda been spoken that way for longer than RC has, and I think Classical sounds "wrong" when sung, as I prefer Ecclesiastical in liturgical and sung Latin. Not sure if anyone will read this or why I feel the need to post my opinion (I don't think either are illegitimate pronunciations) but here it is, it could change in the future
It’s always good to express well constructed opinions here. Thanks for the comment.
I have a question for you that I hope you'll answer: I sing Gregorian chant in my church choir. We've had several choir directors. I was taught that ecclesiastical Latin pretty much follows modern Italian though there may be some regional differences. The question came up last weekend as to the pronunciation of descendentibus from the Introit for the 6th Sunday after Pentecost: Dominus fortitudo plebis suae . . . This occurred in the sentence: assimilabor descendentibus in lacum. I was told that that it should be pronounced descendentz-ibus, instead of descendent-ibus. I wasn't sure about this one. I'd never noticed it before. Your opinion would be much appreciated.
A fine question. No, the ts pronunciation only occurs with ti plus another vowel. So tibus is as written
@@polyMATHY_Luke Thanks! That's what I thought:-)
Hello Luke! I learned ecclesiastical Latin in Hungary where we pronounce the word "Cicero" as "tsitsero", where the "TS" sound is similar to the English "caTS"…;. We pronounce "mutatio" as "mutaatsio" (mutáció in Hungarian orthography). We pronounce Latin letters according to our own Hungarian way. Somebody told me it is of Austrian Habsburg Catholic influence. do you know why German/Austrian and Hungarian ecclesiastical Latin sounds so similar if not due to this historical influence? Can there be a more profound lingusitical reason? My priest teachers always laughed at the Italian ecclesiastical pronunciation and considered it a CORRUPTION OF THE WORST KIND. HE said to us: "The way Italians pronounce ecclesiastical Latin makes them sound like the chirping of. worthless sparrows, where as we Hungarians are REAL men, for we do not make the "c" sound soft and flexible. He thought that the best Latin pronunciation was preserved in Hungary and Germany. He did not prove his point. Can there be any truth in this statement? Thank you for your great job! !!!!!!!!!! Bye, David Zelnik from Hungary
Szia! Hahah. That’s utter nonsense. The traditional Italian pronunciation of Latin was made the Ecclesiastical pronunciation in 1910. Hungarians should feel free to use their traditional pronunciation if they wish, of course. But this ridicule for it is so silly. (The Hungarian pronunciation is just the German pronunciation, by the way, same as in Poland).
The fellow you mentioned is completely wrong about the history. I explain the whole history of the language in the video “The Immortal Language”
♥️ 🇭🇺
Prefer the sound of the Ecclesiastical Latin.
...still need to improve my Latin in all regards, especially Ecclesiastical pronunciation. I've argued with friends over what accent is best -- Anglicized is usually accepted as worst, one of my friends says a Spanish Latin accent is best, and I say French is just to annoy everyone... I eventually found out that Classical Latin sounds the worst for pronouncing Ecclesiastical texts, especially if its in Gregorian chant... It's kind of comical and out of place there. Still, I will try to learn it for non-liturgical contexts in my... planned... attempts at becoming fluent in Latin.
I love the sound of French choirs singing Latin - much more attractive than the Italianate pronunciation.
I have studied Latin while reading and speaking it in the ecclesiastical pronunciation. Since I study ancient Greek too and I really like languages I wandered what changes had the languages made in the centuries. So I learned Byzantine pronunciation of ancient Greek and Classical pronunciation of Latin, I find the diphtongs ae and oe sounding better like e, but the guttural c and g are better as k and g and v is better pronounced like semiconsonant u (w in English most of the time, like water) and h to be actual h, not silent. So that's opinion of an Italian speaker
Very interesting video! There are a couple of side notes that I believe are important to be added:
1) We must remember that there was no one pronounciation of Latin even in the classical period. The prononciation of the élites (the senators, like Cicero, Plinius et al.) was one thing, the prononciation of the plebs was different for sure. At the same exact moment in time. Not just that. Also the prononciation differered based on the region. Latin spoken in Rome was one thing, spoken in the provinces, it was different. One thing that we know for sure, and we know this from a text by Horatius (if I remember correctly), is that Tuscans used to pronounce the "C" consonant exactly like modern day Tuscans do, that is, they aspire it. It sounds like an "H" at best, or is even completely eliminated, for example, the word "carica" (which today means "load", but in ancient Latin was a type of fig fruit), in Tuscany would sound like "hariha" or even "aria", both now AND then! Which is remarkable, I believe!
2) I believe that in everyday spoken Latin, even in the classical period, the prononciation of some letters, such as the diphtong "AE" was not as neatly articulated as most speakers of restored latin prononciation do today. I believe that in the everyday talk, a word like "Familiae" was not spoken as "FA-MI-LI-A-E" like restored Latin speakers of today do, I think that the two vowels flow was very much a continuous "AE" rather than a distinct "A-E" - a sound that was probably a hybrid of the two, until with the times the less important one was dropped, for the universal law of linguistics that states that all words tend to evolve to their simplest most significant form ultimately; and this meant, for the words like "familiae" or "rosae", that the flowing diphtong ultimately let the less significant vowel (the A) drop in favour of the more significant one "E", which signifies the plural.
Most of this is not correct. See my other videos and read my sources.
Please, I really need to know the name of the song that starts at 0:51 I've heard it before at church but can't for the love of God find the name.
this needs to go up. i need answer too, lol
It's called "Gaudete, Christus est natus"
@@carolusluini a million times thank you!!!
Can I pick your brains on the most controversial word in choral literature? EXCELSIS!!!
It sounds like Italian. That’s why it sounds good.
Every language has a different national pronunciation of "their" latin. Hearing english native speakers distort ecclesiastical latin sends shivers down my spine in absolute horror. Just like when they try to speak french. They can't do that either. Just like the other way around, for that matter. People have national accents, depending on their native tongue.
So one standardised classical latin accent is not a bad idea. It makes it easier to understand eachothers latin.
Hey, Luke, is it bad that I couldn't hear/understand some sounds you were making? For example, I couldn't distinguish at all the differences you were making in the s sounds. I feel that I'm going to end up speaking with a combination of both classical and ecclesiastical pronounciations 😅
Very simple.. It is ALL beautiful in its own way. ..and I love the singing 😌
Min 11,30" :
In 'Campidanese' (South Sardinia) the most spoken, we say LINGUA and ACUA(water).
Ciao! Certo; sto parlando del Nuorese. 😊
"Limba" in logudorese e nuorese e "abba" per "acqua"... sono diversi come sardo,per lo meno ci sono molte variazioni...
I have no intention of ever learning either form of Latin, but ... yeah, I think the ecclesiastical accent is just really pretty. I like to play Hildegard of Bingen's music on flute, and when I read it, I think in the ecclesiastical accent just because it's more like Italian, and I'm in it for the music and not for the classical historical stuff. (She was born in 1098, and who knows what version of Latin she spoke in her area of what's Germany today.)
Been binging your videos, and it's all very interesting.
Thank you! Where can I download your table of comparative phonetics (Classical vs Ecclesiastical) mentioned in video?
3:43 just for interest: is her pronunciation of "r" considered normal in Italy? I found it somehow special because it's the uvular trill.
Ah no indeed! She has the weird r moscia, as it's called. Just ignore that part of the video! 😅
@@polyMATHY_Luke oh thank you for your answer! nonono, i didn't want to complain or so, 😊 I just found it interesting because in my German dialect, we use the apico-alveolar trill "r" _(so the Italian "normal" r)_ which is considered special in Germany, and when I switch to Standard German, I also change my pronunciation of "R" in order not to sound weird 😅 So i thought there might be something like that in Italian, just the other way round. But now I know that's not the case. Thanks a lot 😉👍
Perhaps because of a dialect (most probably northern Italian?)
@Jordan Rodrigues Not necessarily, as you can hear in the video 😉
I had a choral director once who loved Latin pieces written for the church. These were written with the intent to be sung using Ecclesiastical Latin pronunciation. He didn't understand the pronunciations very well and found a Classical Pronunciation guide to help him. Being an amateur choir from the American Southeast, neither he nor they were very good at pronouncing either. It drove me crazy hearing single vowels sung as unintentional diphthongs among other inconsistencies.
When I took Latin in high school about 50 years ago (I was *terrible* at it!) our teacher made a point of trying to teach the classical pronunciation. In particular, I remember that c's, as in "Cicero", were supposed to be pronounced as "k" rather than "s". I don't see that in your chart though -- did I miss something? (Also, I don't see anything ahistorical about Ecclesiastical Latin -- it was the living language of the Catholic Church for over a thousand years).
We like both
I definitely prefer classical Latin pronunciation, it is clear and beautiful.
Awesome! Thank you. What about the pronunciation of mihi and nihil?!
Well, in any form of Latin, since even Ecclesiastical/Italian pronunciation recognises /h/ (you'll hear Luigi Miraglia saying /hoc/ for "hoc"), I will generalize this for all pronunciations:
mihi as /mi.hi/ or /miː/
nihil as /ni.hil/ or /niːl/
And also Italian/Ecclesiastical has /mi.ki/ and /ni.kil/.
@@polyMATHY_Luke Yes, it was really the /k/ pronunciation I was asking about. It's almost universally practiced and (as far as I can see) only for those two words and not for other instances of intervocalic h. It always struck me as the strangest thing about ecclesiastical pronunciation. I wonder if there's manuscript evidence for this pronunciation (e.g., a scribe inserting a c or k).
@@montgomerylatin you can check the epigraphs of Petrarca, transcribed today with the same "michi" and "nichil"
@@thesicilygamers Thank you.
I've got the same story, but for me the other prununciation is the central European (Tsitsero, Tsézar ... gn read as g+n; sc as s+ts or s+k, long vowels and accents observed, h pronounced, ge gi like in the resotred one....etc) which is the traditional one for Czechs, Austrians, Germans, Poles, Hungarians, Ukrainians, Southern Slavs etc etc. :) Here the Ecclesiastic pronunciation still sounds exotic.
Nice to see you here, my man
@@polyMATHY_Luke And for me as well our traditional pronunciation always sounded somewhat "nicer" and more "epic" ... Carmina Burāna in these parts are usually sung with it (and probably the Orff's original theatrical performance used that pronunciation as well), the Christmas carols too... [But otherwise, for philological purposes, the restored pronunciation, with, if possible 'as restored phonetics as possible', is the way for me, as for you.]
Provo a scrivere in italiano, sapendo che Lei lo conosce, professor Ranieri. Da cattolico, mi fa sempre sorridere ascoltare le Messe in latino celebrate in Germania od in Austria sentendo frasi come "Seqvvenzia Sancti Evanghellii"