How to Pronounce Latin

Are you interested in learning Latin? Maybe you know a few phrases, but don't want to sound ignorant if you mispronounce them. Or maybe you'd like to sing with a church choir, but what they're singing doesn't sound like what your Latin teacher drilled into you in tenth grade. There are two major systems of pronunciation for Latin: classical and ecclesiatical.

Classical Latin is the Latin of Cicero and Caesar; of Vergil, Horace, and Ovid. If you learned Latin in high school, this is what you learned. To learn the basic rules of Classical Latin pronunciation, you must remember that Latin is a phonetic language. (There are no tricks, like silent "k" or six different ways to pronounce "ough," as in English.) Some letters may not make the sound you expect, but their sound will always be the same. In the charts below, the phonetic spelling uses the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). After that comes an example of the sound in American English, and then a Latin word using the letter.

Latin vowels can be either short or long. Most Latin textbooks mark naturally long vowels with a macron, like this: ā. Once you have studied Latin for some time, you will no longer need macrons, because you will have memorized which vowels are long and which are short. If you ever forget, you can check a Latin dictionary.

Some naturally short vowels can become long by position, which can affect pronunciation because of Latin's stress accent. A short vowel becomes long by position when it is followed by two or more consonants or the letter x. In two-syllable words, the accent is on the first syllable (e.g., salvus is /ˈsalwʊs/). In longer words, the accent is on the penultimate syllable if that syllable is long (e.g., secundus is /sɛˈkʊndʊs/). However, the accent is on the syllable that is third from the end if the penultimate syllable is short (e.g., sententia /sɛnˈtɛntɪa/).

A diphthong is simply the pronunciation of two vowels next to each other as one. We do this in English with words such as coin and house.

Many consonants in Latin are pronounced the same as their counterparts in English. The exceptions are:

Doubled consonants were pronounced twice. For example, in mittō, the syllables split thus: mit-tō, and the t is pronounced with both syllables. This can happen with the liquid consonants l, m, n, and r, the plosives d, p, and t, and the sibilant s. Some examples are capillus, summa, annus, and oppugnō.

The pronunciation of Ecclesiastical Latin, or Church Latin, as it is sometimes called, is marked by a softening of some consonants and lengthening of some vowels. This occurred over the course of several hundred years of political and religious turmoil in Europe. When Europe finally came up for air, this is what had happened:

Other diphthongs are pronounced as if the vowels were separate.

When singing in Ecclesiastical Latin, keep your vowels pure. If singing a vowel blend such as au on more than one note, hold the first vowel longer and move on to the second vowel sound just before moving to the next syllable.

Donovan, Colin B. "Ecclesiastical Latin." http://www.ewtn.com/expert/answers/ecclesiastical_latin.htm

Palmer, L.R. The Latin Language. London: Faber and Faber, 1961.

Wheelock, Frederic M. Wheelock's Latin Grammar. New York: HarperCollins, 1992.