Calabrese System Pronunciation of Latin / Systema "Calabrese" Pronuntiationis

[@corneliaschindelin4439]

Wow, I just discovered your videos last night and now am becoming addicted. My studies of Latin and Spanisch in secondary school were like ages ago (25 to 30 years) and I am thrilled to be able to understand so much of your spoken Latin still. My father was a Latin teacher but he passed away several years ago. He would have loved your channel. Now I am recommending it to all active Latin teachers I know and to my child who is also learning Latin. Maybe one day she will want to speak it, too.

[@jauregi2726]

Being a native Spanish speaker, pronouncing just five vowels according to the Calabrese system feels completely natural to me. Thank you for the video.

[@march4503]

pero en castellano la e y la o son solo cerradas, no abiertas. Esa forma de pronunciarlas viene del euskera. En otras lenguas ibéricas sí se pronuncian abiertas también

[@gnuling296]

Spanish used to have seven too ;)

[@NicolasMiari]

@@march4503 Los que también estudiamos algo de italiano o francés estamos asegurados ;)

[@BorisNVM]

​​@@march4503en español la e y la o suelen ser media, ni muy abierta ni muy cerrada. comparadas con el latin segun allan suelen ser más abiertas las del castellano

[@wyqtor]

For us Romanians too. We do have the ă, î (â) extra vowels, but otherwise it's aeiou, exactly like in Spanish.

[@sammihollins-owen5024]

Goodness me, what a joy it is watching and listening to you :-)

[@Taliannu_i_stiddi_arrassu]

In the Sicilian vocal system there are 5 vowels in tonic position: Latin ă, ā -> Sicilian /a/ ĕ, ē -> /ɛ/ ĭ, ī -> /i/ ŏ, ō -> /ɔ/ ŭ, ū -> /u/ Like in Sardinian. But in Sicilian there are also just 3 vowels in atonic position. Latin ă, ā -> Sicilian /a/ ĕ, ē, ĭ, ī -> /i/ ŏ, ō, ŭ, ū -> /u/ A strange affinity with the classical Arabic vocal system. However in some areas the final "i" becames /ɪ/ and the final "u" becames /ʊ/ (Just if they are atonic): nevem -> "nivi" /nivi/ ~ /'nivɪ/, pomum -> "pumu" /'pumu/ ~ /pumʊ/. Even with the enclitic pronouns: "pàrracci" (talk to him/her) -> /'paɾɾatt͡ʃi/ ~ /'paʐʐatt͡ʃɪ/. This is not a tendency in the biggest cities but in the villages, I suppose linguistically more conservative. But I don't know if it could derive from latin or from the preceding languages of these areas.

[@wonderlustarte]

As an inborn of Emberwood (or, as we say, Braziu-ziu-ziu), I like the classical pronunciation very much since our native ancestors the Tupi-Guarani had open E and O in their vowel system, and I love those sounds (so beautiful!). Also it simplifies latin learning a lot for me. Obrigado for sharing the Calabrese system!

[@mr.katnip1513]

It’s funny because I’ve been going back & forth looking for someone who would make it sound relatable, and finally, I listen to you and your fluctuations make it sound like I’m talking to my neighbor!! 😂👏👏👏👏👏👏👏

[@JonLucPritchard]

thanks, youtube algorithm. been almost a decade since i studied latin. i wonder if textkit is still running.

[@ScorpioMartianus]

It is! I love your nickname. It reminds me of my beautiful baldness and my love of Star Trek. 😃 👨‍🦲

[@iberius9937]

I love the rustic Latin accent when reconstructed!! Very fascinating!

[@rossanabiancani20]

Non mi stanco di ascoltarti!!! Incredibile!!!!

[@ironinquisitor3656]

Very informative video! So that pretty much confirms I to E and U to O in Vulgar Latin. I'm created my own Romance conlang and I'm first creating its spoken Vulgar Latin form and slowing changing and simplifying it until it becomes something else. I used the I to E and U to O changes when I was doing all that. For example, Classical Latin Populus is pronounced something like Pobolos in my Vulgar Latin and the Classical Populi is Pobole in my Vulgar Latin.

[@ScorpioMartianus]

Oh how cool! Write to me and tell me more about your conlang, scorpiomartianus at gmail.

[@ironinquisitor3656]

I'll be sure to do that when I have time!

[@Mendaz]

Ironinquisitor I did the same thing with the romance language I'm making too. Lol

[@ironinquisitor3656]

What is the name of your Romance conlang?

[@b43xoit]

This level of detail applied to an analysis of Old English would be very interesting.

[@Aditya-te7oo]

B. Xoit Agreed.

[@lambswanky1087]

Incredibile che si può creare queste video totalmente in Latino...e che capisco quasi tutto anche se non avevo studiato tanto Latino (quasi niente)! L’italiano è veramente molto conservativo in questo senso. Bravissimo!

[@domenicobertone1807]

Non hai idea di quanto ti invidio 😊😊😊 Un abbraccio dalla calabria 😉

[@rossanabiancani20]

Bravissimo Luke,ti ammiro!!! Sono sbalordita dalla facilità con cui parli il Latino.... Complimenti!!!

[@ScorpioMartianus]

Grazie! Molto gentile

[@viperking6573]

Hi ScorpioMartianus. There's something really interesting that I'd like to let you know! ^^ In Sardinian au gives 'a', e.g. : Laurentius > Larentu ; taurus > trau (I think intermediate 'taru' ); paucum > pacu , etcetera

[@empyrionin]

@Luiz Felipe yes, in Romanian it's Laurentiu pronounced "Lawrentsiw"

[@matthewheald8964]

Interesting. Is there another video where you lay out the entire Reconstructed pronunciation yet? I know you’ve made a lot of separate videos on individual sounds, but have you put it all together in one place yet? Multās grātiās tibi, magister. Valē!

[@iberius9937]

Nésciébam quod modó CAESAR únicus Rómánus fuit scríptórum Latínórum! Ré vérá mírum et incrédíbile!

[@pasqualetortorella4559]

Systema Calabrese tota vita.

[@ScorpioMartianus]

Hahahae, recte! Assentior tibi. :)

[@CarLostis]

Good video, is important to recall that the 5 vowel system still exists in some romance languages like, Catala or Spanish, officialy Spanish only has 5 vowels but follows also accentuation rules that act like the long vowels in the Latin Calabrese system like á(Spanish and Catala) and ā or í and ī, but sometimes accentuation only makes the sound a little bit stronger, but without making it longer like in ó and ō in Spanish, is like a shouted “o” sometimes, those are the differences that I think this languages differs form the Calabrese system. I have heard Sardo follows almost the exact same system but I really don’t know for sure.

[@ScorpioMartianus]

Yes! Thats a very good point. Andrea Calabrese had the same comment when I spoke to him the other day. Thanks for your comment!

[@tenienteramires4428]

In my Catalan dialect we use seven vowels in stressed position ([a], [e], [ɛ], [i], [o], [ɔ], [u]), but in unstressed position we merge [e] and [ɛ] into [e] and [o] and [ɔ] into [o].

[@Thieme11]

@ScorpioMartianus What convinced me that in Classical Latin e and ē and o and ō had the same quality was that moment when Cicero describes his friend's pronunciation of a, well, close e, (at least I think it's legit) and says that it was far from how the Greeks enunciated it (at the time, Greek also had the same qualities for ε and η and for ο and ω, being slightly more open than [e] and [o]). Can you confirm? Also, unrelated, but I love your videos! :D

[@Aditya-te7oo]

El Bigotón del Conquistador! Ancient Greek ε, η, ο and ω had the sound of short closed [e], long open [ɛː], short closed [o] and long open [ɔː] respectively and ει and ου represented the long closed [eː] and the long closed [oː] sound respectively (I'm talking 'bout Classical Greek).

[@delightfulgenius4635]

For me and everyone else who just want to hear the vowels repeatedly, they're at 0:52.

[@LorenzoF06]

I'm back again in this video now that I understand a bit more of Latin even without subtitles I realized the thumbnail is missing the "i" in "pronunciation"! I remember telling you about this for the other video, but I guess I didn't notice the same mistake here. Apart from that, I'm confused on one thing: how do you say "by Sidney Allen" without adapting his name into latin? Is it invariable and understood from context?

[@ScorpioMartianus]

Lol yeah I have to update this thumbnail. Usually we Latinize the first name and use the genitive of that but leave the last name indeclinabile

[@LorenzoF06]

@@ScorpioMartianus I've seen that usage sometimes, so I was expecting that, but I was confused by "Sidney Allen" being pronounced somehow the English way. I've found that part, it's at 2:32, I think you're saying "ab illo Sidney Allen", So "from that Sidney Allen"? Or maybe "ab illo Sidnei Allen"? Where "Sidnei" is the genitive for "Sidne(i)us". I don''t know, I'm still rather confused honestly. (Also I've just found out it's "Sidney", not "Sydney": en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Sidney_Allen; hope not to sound pedantic)

[@AuthLing]

Thanks for this video! I agree with Calabrese's arguments. Did you try changing description of Latin phonology on Wikipedia and Wiktionary? Both are claiming that short and long vowels had different qualities. It's especially unfortunate that Wiktionary uses the outdated views for narrow IPA transcription for all Latin words.

[@ScorpioMartianus]

I haven’t bothered altering wiki no

[@AuthLing]

@@ScorpioMartianus I've published a video that compares Latin and Italian. I would be honored if you could take a look at my video and share your feedback! kzbin.info/www/bejne/n3uyc2droNiWnqM

[@capitanfintus9307]

Spettacolarmente fantastico!

[@ScorpioMartianus]

Grazie mille! 😊

[@Texas43647]

So to break it down. My books have lied to me and the long and short vowels in Classical Latin (spoken how educated regular Romans did) the a e i o u would be pronounced the same whether short or long; the only difference being the length identified by the macron?

[@desanipt]

Well, we can only know for sure if we travel back in time. But a lot of evidence seems to point towards exactly that

[@kian-88romanov86]

Hola amigo Desde México 🇲🇽🇲🇽🇲🇽 tienes un suscriptor nuevo...

[@ScorpioMartianus]

Gracias 😃

[@CeWagnoun]

Ok, now understand what you meant :-) thanks again Luke

[@DC-ct2ie]

At school I have to study ecclesiastical pronunciation, but at least I'd prefer doing it right. Ecclesiastical Latin uses the 5 or the 7 vowels system?

[@mdesapio]

With regard to the vowels, the Calabrese system is identical to the Ecclesiastical Latin pronunciation recommended in the Liber Usualis, the official book of Catholic liturgical chant.

[@ScorpioMartianus]

Not exactly, but it’s close enough for most practical purposes

[@mdesapio]

@@ScorpioMartianus What I was thinking about specifically is the fact that both systems recommend using exclusively the open e and o.

[@adastra3147]

ho bisogno di parlare con te, nel senso che è un mio bisogno fondamentale, sarei davvero felicissimo!

[@ScorpioMartianus]

Grazie! 😊

[@ircensko7324]

6:50

[@amadeusmozart2735]

thing is that ...I understand your latin and I understand it more easily than reading subtitles in English ... I had to turn off subtitles in English and stay on spoken Latin. I think my brain is more suitable for declenses and consecutio temporum than other things ... stll, youtube in Latin, so strange

[@ScorpioMartianus]

Thanks! Yeah, mine is one of many channels.

[@sergiyradonezhsky634]

dude, man after my own heart, I consider myself a scorpiomartianus too.

[@janschetters7720]

nice

[@Pedro-ds3cq]

As a native speaker of Portuguese and someone who also speaks English and German, I also find absurd the idea that they had the short I and the short u.

[@NeelLLumi-AnCatDubh]

I very much appreicate the effort you put into making this and the info you provide, but I strongly disagree with your reasoning. First of all, I certainly don’t think that modern reflexes are fullproof indicators of a language’s origins. If we were to look only at modern Germanic languages, we’d assume that i-umlaut and rhotacism were both features of Proto-Germanic (not the case in East Germanic, and they developed rather differently across those languages), and looking at modern Celtic languages we’d assume Proto-Celtic had initial lenition and other mutations (Celtic languages developed those separately and not in the same way). Second, the fact that Cicero’s friend mixed up those vowels meant that they were similar enough to begin with. Think about the Southern US _pin-pen_ merger: that’s a merger of /ε/ [+front −high −ATR] into /ɪ/ [+front +high −ATR] and /ε/ [+front −high −ATR], only one feature apart, as opposed to your assumed merger of /i/ [+front +high +ATR] into /ε/, _two_ features apart and far more audibly distinct. An intermediate vowel _must_ have existed; the question is just when.

[@ScorpioMartianus]

Right, but none of that explains the occurrence in Sardinian, Lucanian, and African Romance, and half of the occurrence in Romanian. The Calabrese System qualtities have already been reached independently by Adams (see Social Variation and the Latin Language, 2014, p. 67). The Allen system, which is first and foremost a guide for British students of Latin, not a true handbook to the ancient phonology, does not stand up to scrutiny in the light of the most recently collected data.

[@NeelLLumi-AnCatDubh]

@@ScorpioMartianus Explains the occurrence? I’m not following. If you’re asking about explaining the _absence_, I’d argue that it’s fairly simple: /ɪ/ and /ʊ/ are fairly marked vowels, so their disappearance is pretty understandable.

[@ScorpioMartianus]

​@@NeelLLumi-AnCatDubh Romanian has /ɛ/ > /jɛ/ but not /ɔ/ > /wɔ/, as Western Romance, and more significantly lacks /u/ > /o/, also a feature of Western Romance. This indicates that the evolution of the back vowels, 'u' and 'o', came centuries after the front vowels 'i' and 'e' underwent mutation. Romania was relatively isolated after the 3rd century. This is also remarkably consistent as well as synchronic with epigraphic and manuscript evidence of these changes in the Empire. In either of these respective periods, if you wish to have transitional /i/ > /ɪ/ > /e/ and /u/ > /ʊ/ > /o/, that's fine, but it's not a necessary transition (and less likely than /i/ > /e̝/ > /e/ and /u/ > /o̝/ > /o/) and does not have any evidence supporting it. I believe the transitional /i/ > /e̝/ > /e/ happened in the 2nd century AD and the /u/ > /o̝/ > /o/ in the early 4th century AD, but it could just as easily have been /i/ > /e/ and /u/ > /o/ in those centuries. But the point is that, whether there were intermediary stages or not, they did not occur in Classical Latin, which is strictly identified as the 1st century BC.

[@BillB23]

I learned what must have been akin to the Allen system half a century ago. I find your arguments quite cogent. I just recently came across your channels via Ecolinguist and was much taken by your interactions with other speakers of Romance Languages. As you intimated, having gotten English with mother's milk, I find myself putting the Allen pronunciation into spoken Spanish when talking to folks from Latin America. It's totally incorrect, but intelligible. It looks as though I have some old habits to break.

[@MCDreng]

Does mr calabrese have any argument specifically for such an open E and O? I'd naturally want to close those a bit and get to the same "e" and "o" quality of Spanish.

[@wyqtor]

In Romanian too, we lack é and ó. We got only è and ò (I am using the same accents that they use in Catalan to distinguish between the two vowel qualities, but we don't use such accents in writing).

[@MCDreng]

@@wyqtor I know Wikipedia isn't the best source but it says that Romanian e and o are the same as in Spanish. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanian_phonology - i.e. in-between "é" and "è" in Catalan.

[@mr.katnip1513]

Tiene cualidades en sonido muy similar al Argentino!! 😇

[@paleotomista]

So there are only open vowels, right?

[@ScorpioMartianus]

Or true mid, as in Spanish

[@Brandon55638]

They are open vowels. The e and o are almost always [ɛ] and [ɔ] in Latin.

[@СиДи-ф4п]

SD Hoc rhythmus tui sermonis mihi arridet nam omnia (quasi) verba intellego. Antequam tuum canalem inveni non credebam umquam veram pronuntiationem latinam auditurum. Gratias inde maximas

[@meusisto]

Salve, Luci, retialis amice! In V sae. p. C. n. vero iam non extitereunt quantitates vocalium, nonne?

[@ScorpioMartianus]

Exstiterunt apud doctos homines! Et in omnibus pronuntiationibus linguae Latinae, seu Ecclesiasticae seu Germanicae, necesse est servare longitudines syllabarum.

[@meusisto]

Sed servare longitudines syllabarum necesse est si poesiam legimus (vero recitamus). Si loquamur, non est scillicet necesse et est, quomodo dicam?, ahistoricum, fictum. Si legimus auctorem e sae. I, scimus eum servare longitudines. Si legimus librum e sae. V, scimus eum non dicere vocales cum longitudine. Si legimus scholasticum cum pronuntiatu restituto, legimus ahistorice (vere nescio si possum sic dicere!). Latina lingua est viva per saeculos, non est ficta lingua ut Esperanto. Pronuntiatus ecclesiasticus servans longitudines non est verum, reale; non est latinitas, est ficta latinitas. Quid censes, amice?

[@ScorpioMartianus]

Econtra! etiam poesis Medii Aevi retinet longitudines bene servatas. :) Comiter dissentio. Jam licet videre longitudines servandas fuisse (et esse!) in omni forma Latina culta. Haec est *unica* lex communis in omnibus schematibus pronuntiatuum. :D

[@jamesvanderhoorn1117]

Esperanto lingua viva est (vel semimortua). Initio sibi finxit ile doctor Zamenhoff linguam chartaceam, uti dicam, sed postea ea coepit vivere, crevit eundo.

[@ScorpioMartianus]

Recte dicis, nec ego sperno Esperanto propter "artificialitatem" si mihi licet ita dicere, solum turpitudinem istius sermonis. :D Aesthetice dictum, id est (mea quidem sententia).

[@TVMatriX-1001]

Bravo

[@ScorpioMartianus]

Grazie!

[@theamericancristero7390]

Interestingly I'm skeptical about the vowel qualities attested to in English sources on ecclesiastical Latin. I find that depending on how we divide it there a 5, maybe 7 Italian vowel sounds, but the o and e that could be considered 2 sounds each are NOT the short i as in pit and the short u as in put that "A Primer on Ecclesiastical Latin" by Collins describes. This is particularly egregious to me bc Anglophone inclusions are even less excusable in ecclesiastical, given that the Italian sound inventory can be identified and verified without difficulty, and requires no reconstruction. I have yet to hear these suspiciously English sounding vowels in ecclesiastical when spoken by an Italian. Although interestingly enough, Collins uses apices to indicate accent stress (like most modern ecclesiastical texts) and macrons to indicate phonemic vowel length (like most neo classical texts,) and considering that his work is somewhat authoritative (in the library of Congress & used as a textbook) it was the nail in the coffin for me in rejecting the proposition that ecclesiastical doesn't use phonemic vowel length; Considering that Latin was used to make long argumentation as recently as the 60s in the second Vatican council, and a textbook from the 80s attests phonemic vowel length, I doubt that something so critical to differentiation between similarly spelled words was dropped in the early 20th century, but rather I believe that it has been largely forgotten within ecclesiastical use in recent decades given Latin's limited usage context in prayer and liturgy within a tiny minority of the Latin rite known as the TLM.

[@ScorpioMartianus]

Well said! I quite agree. Ecclesiastically pronounced Latin necessarily includes phonemic vowel length because that is the inherent and unalienable nature of the Latin language. Just as with those whoe use a "Classical" pronunciation, if phonemic vowel length is not included, their renditions are just more imitations with heavy foreign accents.

[@theamericancristero7390]

@@ScorpioMartianus If you're interested, I actually just made a video for my prayer channel articulating what I believe to be correct ecclesiastical Latin vowels, and not the anglophone imposition of English vowels and the absence of phonemic vowel length. Would be honored if you took a look. kzbin.info/www/bejne/hKqro5imebGoiZI

[@Mr.Nichan]

The choice of which IPA symbols people use to approximate sounds in the continua of both vowels and continents often has a lot of bias from what the transcriber is used to, as well as the existing conventions associated with both the language described and the language the transcriber learned the IPA symbols in relation to. It's not uncommon for different transcribers to transcribe the same sound with different, adjacent, symbols. This issue is more probably pronounced the broader the transcription, but narrower transcriptions introduce more minute details which transcribers can differ in their judgements of (e.g., how aspirated does a stop have to be before you call it aspirated?) and which can be distorted by their misunderstandings or lack of ear-training, etc. Thus, I'm not actually sure in what situations the issue is biggest.

[@Mr.Nichan]

7:23 "Status intermedius nōn necesse est." Is that really true? How often do vowels, especially unreduced and even stressed vowels, change without intermediate steps? I suppose there must be small jumps, on the order of common ad hoc differences between different utterances of the same phoneme, but whenever I hear about ongoing vowel-shifts today, it usually is described and sounds to me like a gradual shift through the vowel continuum, and also irregular between speakers and somewhat between utterances in terms of where exactly the pronounced vowels lie. Also, I don't really see how this is relevant. Just because there are intermediate steps doesn't mean those intermediate steps happened in upper class Roman speech, or in any other particular dialect except the ones where we have evidence for some kind of opening of short high vowels.

[@ScorpioMartianus]

There is a difference between the infinite spectrum of articulatory variations, and phonemic, stable steps. Allen is wrong because he presumed a system which did not exist, based on a notion of required intermediate phonemic steps. His theory is fine, but the evidence contracts him.

[@Mr.Nichan]

@@ScorpioMartianus I don't think it was ever being suggested that the /ɪ/ vs /i/ quality distinction was PHONEMIC. That barely even makes sense, unless vowel length was lost or became less mandatory. The suggestion was a so-called /ɪ/ vs /iː/ distinction, which, if length is assumed to be primary (unlike in English), is just a way of saying that the short /i/ phoneme was usually allophonically pronounced "laxer", i.e. more mid-centralized, than the long /iː/ phoneme, this being a way of explaining why a short vowel would open while the corresponding long vowel didn't, which was the only known aspect if the change. Of course, thinking of that particular kind of change first is an English-/German-speaker bias. Also, this might sound random, but I've always wondered how languages that allow /ij/ pronounce it, and what that says about about the phonetic realization of their /i/ phonemes, especially since most of the ones I know only have 5 or 3 (or maybe 6) phonemic vowel qualities. English allows /ji/ even though it has many vowels, including a phonemic /i/ vs /ɪ/ distinction, though. I suppose when I say "yeast", the /j/ is slightly fricated, but the /i/ isn't noticeably laxer than in "east", so I guess it could work that way for /ij/ in some languages, too.

[@Mr.Nichan]

@@ScorpioMartianus I don't so much have a problem with the theory presented in this video, or with saying that it's more likely than Allen's, as with Luke's emphasis on it being clear proof. We know that Cicero called the vowel "E plenissimum dicas", but that doesn't NECESSARILY mean that it actually was. It may be stronger evidence than Allen had, but it's still weak. It's very common, when people hear vowels that are between the vowels of their native dialect, for them to misinterpret them as being exactly vowels in their dialect. I'll give examples: 1) My dad has said that people from New Zealand use [i] in places where most English speakers use use [ɛ]. In fact, if you listen to the recordings he got this from, you can hear that they actually say [e], or at least a vowel that is lower than and distinct from their actual /i/. between the two. 2) There are stereotypes that both Scottish people and Canadians (Western Canadians, I think) pronounce the word "about" as /əˈbut/. In fact, I believe both use a diphthong more like [əˈbɘ͡ut]. 3) The "Geography Now! Ireland" episode begins with a skit about the fact that the Irish man "Peader", pronounces the /æ/ phoneme in his name as [a], which makes the Californian host mishear it as an /ɑ/ phoneme, as in Californian ("cot"-"caught" merger + tapped t/d) "Potter". kzbin.info/www/bejne/r4i9moJtjrOihrM After the first 31 seconds, you can skip to 7:35 you can hear the Californian's attempted (and apparently accepted) correction from [ˈpʰɑɾɹ̠̩] to [ˈpʰæɾɹ̠̩]. (My transcription of /r/ is questionable but not the point.)

[@thesicilygamers]

Restituta in mente, sed ecclesiastica in corde (ut omnes itali XD)

[@ScorpioMartianus]

Hahae, quasi non diutius! Numerus Italorum qui profluenter Latine loquuntur ac pronuntiatione Classica utuntur multo major est quam Itali traditionali Italica pronuntiatione utuntur. Inter eos numerare possumus Alexandrum Veronensem, Irenem Regini, et Joannem Carolum Rossi. Haud autem foedam censeo pronuntiationem Italica traditionalem, sed fortasse redolet "provincialitatem" quandam sive ruralem.

[@thesicilygamers]

@@ScorpioMartianus nonne meministi Giampierus Marchi? Ille quoque fluens latine loquens est et utitur pronuntiatione ecclesiastica

[@ScorpioMartianus]

Ille est mihi optimus amicus! :D Sane, sed ille inter minoritatem numeratur.

[@iberius9937]

Optimé nárrás et monstrás quómodo nón fierí potest /ɪ/ neque /ʊ/ in óré latínó antíquó esse. Ego istud súspicábar!

[@Ensgnblack]

So the long ē was not pronounced as the “e” in “they”?

[@ScorpioMartianus]

Correct! It was not.

[@Ensgnblack]

Thank you for the response! I watched your video, and it was helpful. I am not a linguist or a philologist though, and some of the notations are escaping me. Would you happen to be able to direct me to a resource where in the way the vowels are pronounced is written? For example: “ū” sounds like the “u” in the English “rude”?

[@PaulSmith-qs1es]

I find it harder to read fluently when using this system though. Perhaps it just takes practice, but it causes me to pay to much attention to the meter, which comes just naturally if the long and short vowels also have different qualities.

[@anthonymccarthy6688]

only if you are an English speaker

[@azariacba]

Question about the vowels: You wrote /ɔ/ to represent the Latin "o" sound, but wouldn't the correct symbol be /o/? /o/ is (I think) the sound you've been using, and it's the "o" vowel in Spanish and Italian. /ɔ/ is the vowel sound in the English words "or" and "more" (in most dialects of American English) /o/ doesn't occur on its own in most forms of American English (it only exists in diphthongs). It's the "o" vowel sound in languages like Spanish. Similar thing with /ɛ/ and /e/.

[@ScorpioMartianus]

Hi. Check the IPA vowels on Wikipedia

[@mohammedjalloh7658]

Septem vocales systema mira mihi est. semper putavi quod a = a, ā = a:, e = ɛ, ē = e, i = i, ī = i:, o = ɔ, ō = o:, u = u ac ū = u:. Quae est hanc systemam ? Et ubi “o” venit si numquam fuerit in classica latina ? Gratias per tuo reponso !

[@ScorpioMartianus]

Gratias pro commentariis tuis! "Et ubi “o” venit si numquam fuerit in classica latina ?" - Non intellexi. Iterum explices? Systema tuum est plus minusve ut ego pronuntiabam. Differt autem, quia E et O apertas enuntiabam *tantummodo* in syllabis tonicis (cum accentu vel ictu), sed E et O omnibus aliis syllabis, seu longae seu breves, claudendae sunt - sic est in Italica hodierna.

[@mohammedjalloh7658]

ScorpioMartianus In systema calabrese, “o” non est, ergo, ubi venit in linguas neolatinas ? Mihi paenitet, latina mea non bona’st. Ergo, meum systema pravum est vel verum est ?

[@ScorpioMartianus]

Hmm, Latina ō -> /o/ et ŏ -> /ɔ/ e.g. Italica "sole" sed "buono."

[@mohammedjalloh7658]

ScorpioMartianus Ah, teneo. Gratias !

[@ScorpioMartianus]

Libenter!

[@adastra3147]

Sono nato a Milan, Milano, Mediolanum. Nel secolo 5° d.C., la influenza etrusca arrivava fino a Milano. Che latino parlavano a Mediolanum? Sicuramente non quello Osco (Oscum)

[@ScorpioMartianus]

Eh, bella domanda! Dovremmo chiedere a Prof. Calabrese!

[@landofold]

Have you ever considered to do a video in Vulgar Latin?

[@ScorpioMartianus]

Certainly! But Vulgar Latin is not very well attested. Other than my attempt to reconstruct the Vulgar pronunciation of the 1st century AD in this video, there is not much more I could do to represent it. Moreover, there was considerably little variation in true Latin, that is Classical Latin (which is identical to the Latin used through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance and by the Catholic Church up to the present day, with only very minor variations in style) across the Republic and later Empire. Latin is a uniquely unitary language, with one standard form with very small variations across geography and millennia. The ever changing popular forms we call Vulgar Latin have no specific, identifiable shape or standard, until the early versions of the Romance languages which began to be written down about a thousand years ago. So, while a fascinating enterprise, I would call it a very creative venture to attempt something in pre-Romance Vulgar Latin, more than a scientific venture. Thanks for your comment!

[@landofold]

Very interesting, thank you sir!

[@ScorpioMartianus]

My pleasure! Just my thoughts. You should also ask Sobakus and Paleogloss who commented below; they know more about linguistics than I do and are brilliant men!

[@alwaysdreaming9604]

But what about contractions? Is the last vowel just completely elided if the next word begins with a vowel? Or if it's kept how is it pronounced? Like how do I pronounce "parvum oppidum"? is "um" pronounced as a short "u" or as "w"?

[@JacobMaximilian]

Quid est "a.C.n." et "p.C.n."? Estne in Anglicam "CE" et "BCE"?

[@b43xoit]

Ante Christum nātum et post Christum nātum?

[@JacobMaximilian]

@@b43xoit Gratias tibi ago

[@TVMatriX-1001]

Sei un genio ispirato dagli dei

[@ScorpioMartianus]

Ma sei troppo gentile! :D Ti interessa molto la fonetica del latino?

[@TVMatriX-1001]

@@ScorpioMartianus ciao, sono un filologo, saggista, scrittore: www.queendido.org

[@TVMatriX-1001]

@@ScorpioMartianus sono uno studioso libero, non mainstream

[@TVMatriX-1001]

@@ScorpioMartianus mio nome è Salvatore Conte, mio account qui è omaggio ad Agrippina Augusta, fondatrice di Colonia Agrippina sul Reno

[@TVMatriX-1001]

@@ScorpioMartianus sono anche un sacerdote pagano

[@defensorgentium2047]

Salve, Franciscus vocor et sum discipulus qui latine discere vult, sed non multum temporis ad discendum habeo, quod semper in taberna laboro. Quomodo hanc studere magnificam linguam possum? Corrige me, quaeso, cum multa menda facio. Gratias tibi ago.

[@Glossologia]

Macte! :D

[@ScorpioMartianus]

Gratias! :D Age grex!

[@mdesapio]

In your 5th c. educated Latin pronunciation you pronounce the "ae" diphthong in the Classical way. At what point did it get flattened out into an "e" even in educated speech?

[@ABAlphaBeta]

Possibly even before this, it's hard to know for sure

[@flavioezio3073]

According to the Calabrese system then the name Roma was pronounced Roma with a long and open o? It seems very strange to me, the names of people, places and cities are those whose pronunciation is more faithfully preserved through time and in Italian language Roma is pronounced with a closed o, not open

[@ScorpioMartianus]

Well, it wasn't preserved in Tuscan. It was changed. In Sardinian it was preserved.

[@flavioezio3073]

@@ScorpioMartianus I agree that there may not have been an intermediate stage, but how can we be sure that the Sardinian languages ​​(there is not a single variant of Sardinian) have preserved archaic characteristics of Latin and have not instead evolved changes: that is, as JN Adams remarked well in his book "Social variation and the latin language" the Sardinian variants could have modified / evolved new mixed sounds, instead of having preserved precedent ones. The velar pronunciation of C in Kelu (cielo) and Kena (cena) is found in the Logudorese variant and may not be the preservation of the original Latin sound carried by the roman legionaries, but it could be an influence of the linguistic substrate already present mixed in a new form after contacts with different other languages

[@albuso1974]

@@flavioezio3073 you could be right, it appears that latinization in Sardinia did not happened until VII century AD (as a result of Christianization). Until then nuragic and Punic were the dominant languages, if that is true then I don't see how Sardinian could have preserved classical Latin when in classical era did not even exist as a language. "Punic continued to be spoken well into the 3rd-4th century AD, as attested by votive inscriptions,[82][83] and it is thought that the natives from the most interior areas, led by the tribal chief Hospito, joined their brethren in making the switch to Latin around the 7th century AD, through their conversion to Christianity." en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sardinian_language

[@gnuling296]

Assuming that there is no intermediate step is quite a stretch of the imagination. Phonologies aren't so unstable that they just immediately switch to a new vowel causing mergers if they aren't combinative. If we assumed that then there would be complete chaos. It is much more likely that this sound change occurred outside of Rome. And why is it supposed to be so strong evidence that he mentioned the complete merger? It does not prove that he didn't have any kind of lax vowel. Also I don't think the modern dialects of Italian are such strong evidence. I want to say that I am not against the proposition :) But I disagree with the point that such a sound change occurs without an intermediate step (where the sound change originated) - sorry if I missed an argument, your videos are quite long. I think you shouldn't call the other theory in question false but just present the arguments, which you've done very well. That way people like me aren't triggered to disagree just because one theory claims to rule them all. The arguments are far more convincing than such notions. :)

[@ScorpioMartianus]

Thank for the comment! 😊 Well, you can actually witness languages change in this manner without the intermediate step. That's the point I'm making. Sydney Allen was reaching, and didn't have the benefit of current linguistic knowledge. It's not just Calabrese, Turrigiano, Vittori, and myself, but also JN Adams sees it this way.

[@gnuling296]

@@ScorpioMartianus Where should such an innovation come from if it clashes with the phonology of the language? It can come from a foreign phonology (different dialect or language).

[@flutterwind7686]

@@gnuling296 Look up caught-cot merger. There was no intermediate necessary.

[@LudovicoValoroso]

🔥🌞😍👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼

[@danielsimpson4087]

Mē iuvāre possīsne ut melius litterae longae et brevis "e" sonum in verbīs, putā, "est" et "ēst" distinguam? Nisi fallor, quālitas litterae "e" in utrōque verbō varia esse vidētur. Grātiās tibi agō!

[@ScorpioMartianus]

Secundum Calabrese (et mē), oportet prōnūtiāre eādem quālitāte, sed longitūdine dīversā. Et satis. Prōdūcenda est 'e' in 'ēst'

[@Unbrutal_Rawr]

Lūcī mī optumē, placuit taeniola ut solitumst quamvīs nōn in omnibus tibi assentiar - ut scīs jam sānē, est autem ūna rēs in quā plūrumum tēcum discrepāre videor neque admodum ratiōnem tuam assequī vel argūmenta, scīlicet quid causae sit cūr tū dīcis - sī rēctē teneō - vōcālīs [ɪ] et [ʊ] numquam in linguā Latīnā extitisse. Namque imprīmīs, plērīque doctī artis linguisticae historicae consentiuntur hās vōcālīs extitisse sine ūllō pūsillō dubiō. At quid? Nīmīrum quod sī minus, nōn potuerint vōcālēs istae brevēs et altae subitō et ūnā in plērīsque locīs immānis Imperī dēmittī et cum [e] et [o] confundī - tālia ipsa ars phonetica fierī nōn sinit gradum medium postulans. Aliās factum esset sīcut in linguā Sardā hodiernā aut in Āfricā inferiōre antīquitāte - quālitāte eādem remansērunt quantitāte omissā nec umquam cum aliīs vōcālibus confūsī sunt. Et hic gradus medius jam diū inventus est et saepius dēmonstrātus ex tot inscrīptiōnibus, epistulīs, librīs aliīsque scrīptīs ex quibus constat in sermōne scrīptōris vōcālem /i/ brevem quālitāte suā appropinquāsse /ē/ ita ut ambigerētur utrum per I an E scrībendae essent /i/ brevis et /ē/ longa (necnōn /u/ et /ō/ - licet hoc sērius) - atque ambae per utramque scrībēbantur. Hoc nisi per [ɪ] et [ʊ] fierī nōn potest - etsī sunt cāsūs ubi confūsiō in scrīptūrā inter I et E aliīs ratiōnibus explicārī potest (vidē Adams "Social Variation..." III.5 et 7). Et ex linguīs recentiōribus vīvīsque constat saepe oppositiōnem quantitātis comitārī et ā distantiā quālitātis. Quidquid exīstumēs dē aliīs argūmentīs eōrum ab Allen, haec docūmenta argūtiōra esse crēdō quam ut in dubium vocārī possint. Quaeritur tantummodo 'quando', vērum nōn 'an' - et hīc equidem crēdō omnia indicāre saeculō prīmō pCn prōrsus hās [ɪ] et [ʊ] eō locō ēnūntiātās fuisse ubi tū E et O plēnissumās ēnūntiās (quod vērē absonat ut tū vel ipse bellē exprestī =D). Cēterum diphthongum /au/ temporibus antīquīs tantum singulīs in locīs aut verbīs cum /ō/ confūsum fuit - in sermōne vulgārī autem remanserat saltim ūsque ad mediam aetātem (quia ab exitū /ō/ longae differt), in aliīs loquēlīs etiam ad hunc diem. Spērō amīce tē mihi simplicius loquentī veniam datūrum cum dīcō tē vidērī mihi aliquantō longiora et hau vērī similia conclūdere ex opusculō bonī professōris Calabrese quae neque ex iīs quae ab eō scrīpta sunt, neque - ut equidem arbitror - ex cujuslubet alīus scrīptīs conclūdī possint.

[@Glossologia]

Hey man! Sorry I can't respond in Latin haha - I'm pretty sure I've understood your argument, but let me know if I'm misunderstanding any of your points. *Namque imprīmīs, plērīque doctī artis linguisticae historicae consentiuntur hās vōcālīs extitisse sine ūllō pūsillō dubiō.* As demonstrated by a few more recent publications such as the 2015 one that was posted to reddit referencing Calabrese, the reason why previous to his 2003 publication there was more or less consensus is because everyone was taking Vox Latina and its conclusions for granted. Now that an alternative explanation has been proposed, not everyone is convinced. Here's the issue: Firstly, we have to acknowledge that at some point, the vowel system needs to have been one with five qualities that could be either long or short - this is pretty much universally the kind of system that systems where long and short vowels have different qualities tend to develop out of. We see this in the Indo Aryan languages, in the Germanic languages, in the Polynesian languages, etc. Proto Italic is also universally reconstructed with such a system. We know that at some point, the system gained additional qualities, as tends to happen. This has to have happened some time either immediately after the Proto Italic period (~1000 BCE), immediately after the classical period (~100 CE), or some time in between. Sydney Allen suggests that this happened in the Old Latin period, and that it affected all vowel pairs other than /a/. There is a certain elegance to this suggestion - it explains both the "confusion" of the letters i, e, o and u, and also explains the later merger in continental romance. The development of sardinian can be explained as a more complex set of mergers rather than true conservativism. However, there are major issues with this. Firstly, there's the fact that Sardinian is not alone in its development. It's one thing an unexpected set of shifts happens once, but it also happened in Africa, in Lucania, and partially in Romania and Sicily where short u is retained. These places simply not undergoing the shift that the rest of romance underwent is a much more elegant solution when accounting for the development of romance, which indicates dating the divergence in quality of long and short vowels much later, in the late classical or even post classical period. Okay, so that may be true, but what of the issue of spelling inconsistency in the Old Latin period? Well, first lets be very clear on what Sydney Allen is suggesting - that all Latin speakers in this period through to the classical period had a stable nine quality system, and that the similarity in quality of e / ɪ and o / ʊ caused speakers to alternate between i, e, u and o to write these sounds. That is, some speakers were using the letters i and o to represent /ɛ eː ɪ/ and /ɔ oː ʊ/ respectively. This is highly suspect - this is hundreds of years before any indication that length distinction was weakening, and yet speakers were confusing eː and ɪ when the two sounds differed both in quality and in length? Also, if they were doing that, why wouldn't it be consistent for all instances of short u and short i? That's not the only issue, though. The old Latin period was one in which latin vowels were in flux. As you are well aware, many instances of short o shifted to short u. Additionally, the inherited short e was becoming short i - compare Latin "imperator" to Oscan "emberator", or latin "in" to greek "en". In many cases, the words that are being written with e instead of i, such as "enque" for "inque", are words with etymological e. A far, far more likely explanation for these spelling inconsistencies is hypercorrection. In Old Latin, words like "en" had become "in", "com" had become "cum", etc. The orthography reflected the etymology, which is an actually decent explanation for spelling confusion in which etymological short u would have been written on occasion with o instead of u. This also explains why the same errors weren't made in the opposite direction - if eː and ɪ were really the sounds being used, and if they really sounded close enough that speakers confused them, you'd expect both to be accidentally written with the letter normally used for the other. The fact of the matter is that while an old latin 9 quality system is a single explanation for both phenomena (spelling inconsistency in old latin and the later developments in romance), it is a *bad* explanation for both of them. What about later spelling inconsistency? Well, as you're aware, alteration between sounds like e and i was common in rustic speech, quite possibly due to the influence of other italic languages. The pompeii inscriptions that are often used as evidence of this in the classical period belonged to the descendants of Oscan speakers. So then, finally, there's the question of the merger that happened in the majority of romance languages. How did short /i/ become short /e/ if it wasn't originally realized as /ɪ/? How did short /u/ become short /o/ if it wasn't originally realized as /ʊ/? This question is predicated on a fundamental misunderstanding of how sound shifts work. Sounds don't *need* to go through every possible intermediate stage to shift from point A to point B. A perfect example of this is the great vowel shift in English. We have vowel shifts like the following: /eː/ -> /iː/ /ɛː/ -> /eː/ -> /iː/ /aː/ -> /eː/ /oː/ -> /uː/ There is no evidence to suggest that any of these shifts occurred by going through small intermediate steps, and they demonstrate exactly the same distance that those vowel mergers in continental romance needed to go through, albeit in the opposite direction. Cicero also gives us a perfect example - classical iː in "villa" alternates with ɛː in rustic speech. Another example that Luke likes to bring up is the alternation between /oi/ and /eː/ in modern Japanese, as in the word "sugoi". So, given all of that, Calabrese's position that you had a 5 quality system which became a six or seven quality system in the post classical period seems far more likely than Sydney Allen's position that a 9 quality system became a 5 or 6 quality system 5 different times, and a 7 quality system everywhere else.

[@raffaelet2383]

For some reason it won't show up when I post this on my main account... Hey man! Sorry I can't respond in Latin haha - I'm pretty sure I've understood your argument, but let me know if I'm misunderstanding any of your points. *Namque imprīmīs, plērīque doctī artis linguisticae historicae consentiuntur hās vōcālīs extitisse sine ūllō pūsillō dubiō.* As demonstrated by a few more recent publications such as the 2015 one that was posted to reddit referencing Calabrese, the reason why previous to his 2003 publication there was more or less consensus is because everyone was taking Vox Latina and its conclusions for granted. Now that an alternative explanation has been proposed, not everyone is convinced. Here's the issue: Firstly, we have to acknowledge that at some point, the vowel system needs to have been one with five qualities that could be either long or short - this is pretty much universally the kind of system that systems where long and short vowels have different qualities tend to develop out of. We see this in the Indo Aryan languages, in the Germanic languages, in the Polynesian languages, etc. Proto Italic is also universally reconstructed with such a system. We know that at some point, the system gained additional qualities, as tends to happen. This has to have happened some time either immediately after the Proto Italic period (~1000 BCE), immediately after the classical period (~100 CE), or some time in between. Sydney Allen suggests that this happened in the Old Latin period, and that it affected all vowel pairs other than /a/. There is a certain elegance to this suggestion - it explains both the "confusion" of the letters i, e, o and u, and also explains the later merger in continental romance. The development of sardinian can be explained as a more complex set of mergers rather than true conservativism. However, there are major issues with this. Firstly, there's the fact that Sardinian is not alone in its development. It's one thing an unexpected set of shifts happens once, but it also happened in Africa, in Lucania, and partially in Romania and Sicily where short u is retained. These places simply not undergoing the shift that the rest of romance underwent is a much more elegant solution when accounting for the development of romance, which indicates dating the divergence in quality of long and short vowels much later, in the late classical or even post classical period. Okay, so that may be true, but what of the issue of spelling inconsistency in the Old Latin period? Well, first lets be very clear on what Sydney Allen is suggesting - that all Latin speakers in this period through to the classical period had a stable nine quality system, and that the similarity in quality of e / ɪ and o / ʊ caused speakers to alternate between i, e, u and o to write these sounds. That is, some speakers were using the letters i and o to represent /ɛ eː ɪ/ and /ɔ oː ʊ/ respectively. This is highly suspect - this is hundreds of years before any indication that length distinction was weakening, and yet speakers were confusing eː and ɪ when the two sounds differed both in quality and in length? Also, if they were doing that, why wouldn't it be consistent for all instances of short u and short i? That's not the only issue, though. The old Latin period was one in which latin vowels were in flux. As you are well aware, many instances of short o shifted to short u. Additionally, the inherited short e was becoming short i - compare Latin "imperator" to Oscan "emberator", or latin "in" to greek "en". In many cases, the words that are being written with e instead of i, such as "enque" for "inque", are words with etymological e. A far, far more likely explanation for these spelling inconsistencies is hypercorrection. In Old Latin, words like "en" had become "in", "com" had become "cum", etc. The orthography reflected the etymology, which is an actually decent explanation for spelling confusion in which etymological short u would have been written on occasion with o instead of u. This also explains why the same errors weren't made in the opposite direction - if eː and ɪ were really the sounds being used, and if they really sounded close enough that speakers confused them, you'd expect both to be accidentally written with the letter normally used for the other. The fact of the matter is that while an old latin 9 quality system is a single explanation for both phenomena (spelling inconsistency in old latin and the later developments in romance), it is a *bad* explanation for both of them. What about later spelling inconsistency? Well, as you're aware, alteration between sounds like e and i was common in rustic speech, quite possibly due to the influence of other italic languages. The pompeii inscriptions that are often used as evidence of this in the classical period belonged to the descendants of Oscan speakers. So then, finally, there's the question of the merger that happened in the majority of romance languages. How did short /i/ become short /e/ if it wasn't originally realized as /ɪ/? How did short /u/ become short /o/ if it wasn't originally realized as /ʊ/? This question is predicated on a fundamental misunderstanding of how sound shifts work. Sounds don't *need* to go through every possible intermediate stage to shift from point A to point B. A perfect example of this is the great vowel shift in English. We have vowel shifts like the following: /eː/ -> /iː/ /ɛː/ -> /eː/ -> /iː/ /aː/ -> /eː/ /oː/ -> /uː/ There is no evidence to suggest that any of these shifts occurred by going through small intermediate steps, and they demonstrate exactly the same distance that those vowel mergers in continental romance needed to go through, albeit in the opposite direction. Cicero also gives us a perfect example - classical iː in "villa" alternates with ɛː in rustic speech. Another example that Luke likes to bring up is the alternation between /oi/ and /eː/ in modern Japanese, as in the word "sugoi". So, given all of that, Calabrese's position that you had a 5 quality system which became a six or seven quality system in the post classical period seems far more likely than Sydney Allen's position that a 9 quality system became a 5 or 6 quality system 5 different times, and a 7 quality system everywhere else.

[@ScorpioMartianus]

Victor mi doctissume, imprimis ignoscas tardum meum responsum! ac maximas tibi gratias ago pro commentariis tuis eleganter hic scriptis! (Meque prorsus delectari stilo tuo loquendi ac scribendi, multo enim cultiorem meo colloquiali sermone eum censeo, affitear! Semper permulta a tuis mihi gratissimis scriptis avidus disco.) 😃 Quamquam in hac re fieri potest nos non consensuros esse, nihilosetius tam felicem me existumo tales sodales inter amicos meos numerare posse. Erasmus hoc adagium protulit: “amicus alter ipse” - Raphael, tu, et ego sodalitatem unicam condimus, apertissime omnibus, attamen pro hoc tempore artius inter eos qui Latine loquendi simus cupidi ac de pronuntiatione confabulari tum umbratice tum jocose soleamus. :D Quam propter rem omnino beor! “quid causae sit cūr tū dīcis - sī rēctē teneō - vōcālīs [ɪ] et [ʊ] numquam in linguā Latīnā extitisse” Istud meum argumentum valde “conservans”, dicamus, esse aestumo. 😊 Id est, ipsius orthographiae et grammaticorum evidentia deest. Scepticum me vocato! hahae. Vocales [ɪ] et [ʊ] nihil nisi philologice inferantur in lingua Latina exsistere possunt. Nec omnino prave! Sed fortasse non sunt necesse uti explicentur phaenomena antiquae linguae. Itaque “argumentum forte”, Andreae Calabrese nomine, hac in pellicula attuli. “Hoc nisi per [ɪ] et [ʊ] fierī nōn potest” Raphael noster huic quoque respondit, et ego in ipso spectacello exemplum Japonicae loquelae mutationem exposui (nempe ‘ai’ -> ‘ē’ ac ‘oi’ -> ‘ē’), et Raphael Anglicae linguae “Great Vowel Shift” memoravit. Status intermedius non est necesse. And speaking of English, I’ll now transition to English to better include our studious friend Raffaele who, for the time being at least, still makes use of the Common Tongue. 😃 Raffaele, indeed I feel you are much better suited to the details of this discussion that I, given my relatively simplistic (though staunch!) view on the subject. And so I tend to agree with your conclusions. Particularly, the 5 vowel qualities are the reconstructions of Proto-Indo-European, Proto-Italic, and many others, so that is interesting. It really does, as both you and Victor mentioned, come down to the timing. Was it in Old Latin? Sardinian alone proves it was later than Old Latin, as does Southern Lucanian, and North African. Romanian and Sicilian offer fascinating insights as well. Indeed, this is enough to convince me. Calabrese's explanation is simpler, and explains the transformations equally well if not better than the Allen model. I think the biggest argument for [ɪ] and [ʊ] comes from the belief that intermediate stages are required. But, as we have amply demonstrated, they absolutely are not required. Given that, the Allen argument falls apart.

[@Unbrutal_Rawr]

Hi friends, and thank you for your replies! Et tū mī Lūcī nōlī, obsecrō, mihi verbīs tam affābilibus urbānīsque rubōrem incutere, nam grātiam hercule minumē referre queō quī stiliculum mihi nesciō quem comparāverim, urbānitātem vērō haudquāquam! I could have responded to many of the points you guys make to try and demonstrate why I think they're objectively mistaken, but I think we have a bigger, methodological problem ot our hands. You both assert that sound shifts do not require intermediary stages - something that I've been accepting as a basic tenet of phonology around which all descriptions of sound shifts are based and the denial of which makes the vast majority of those sound shifts become completely arbitrary and pulls the rug of explanatory and predictive power right under the discipline's feet. The examples you give in substantiation also leave me with many questions. Let me ask you: what was the aim of Prof. Calabrese's paper and in what way did he proceed to achieve it? The aim was to describe in detail the precise phonological developments of the Latin vowel system into Romance. This was achieved by first postulating that some time around the I.c AD short high vowels acquired a [-ATR] marking - or more simply put, the short /i/ acquired the value of [ɪ]. To cite him on p.76: "Given that the inscriptional records shows [sic] that that the replacement of ě with ae begins to occur around the first century AD, we must conclude that the process differentiating the [ATR] values of short and long vowels *must have already occurred around this time."* The short /i/ had become [ɪ] before I.c AD. Next Prof. Calabrese proceeds to postulate a _negation_ operation which reverses the values of all of the vowel's features, thus turning a [+high, -ATR] vowel [ɪ] into a [-high, +ATR] vowel [e]. Indeed, he specifically mentions that the process "is not arbitrary" but is instead a repair of a disallowed configuration (p.83). Why does he do it when he could have said "it just happened with no intermediary stages"? Because that's not how science is done, and indeed it robs science of its explanatory and predictive power as already mentioned - any vowel can shift into any other vowel if we postulate no obligatory intermediary stages. To cite him on p.82: "But once we assume such a range of possibilities, we are in a situation in which we can no longer say anything about the actual changes we observe in the individual languages." and "We can conclude that the account of (28) [the change [ɪ] > [e] _-me_ ] in terms of a functional theory of acoustical similarities is simply not explanatory and cannot be maintained." This has apparently nothing to do with them being acoustically close as other kinds of repair, or instances of the same repair can result in much more acoustically different vowels. Incidentally one such other kind of repair he mentions on the same page is _delinking,_ in which the features [+high] and [-ATR] get disassociated, resulting in the shift [ɪ] > [i] - precisely what might have happened in Sardinian, African Latin and the varieties with the close back vowel as a reflex of the Latin short /u/. The apparent (!) Japanese case is accounted for just below on the same p.83: "The contraction of a low and a high vowel creates a mid-vowel in many languages (i.e., a+y, a+w -> ɛ, ɔ). In Calabrese (1988) I hypothesized that the coalescence of the two vowels creates a bundle containing the disallowed configuration [+high, +low]. This configuration is repaired by negation into the configuration [-high, -low], thus creating a mid-vowel." (To allow myself a brief remark, the fact that I'm typing this makes me suspect that you guys haven't read the theoretical part!) As you can see, Prof. Calabrese went to considerable length to arrive at a scientifically sound theory that has explanatory power not only for this particular sound shift, but for many other ones as well. His explanation unambiguously postulates the existence of the "intermediary" vowels [ɪ] et [ʊ] and puts the terminus ante quem at I.c AD. It goes in line with my understanding of how a scientific investigation should be conducted even if I can still point out some deficiencies in it, and it gives me confidence that my position regarding the methodological disagreement we three seem to be facing is sound and justified. With this said one thing remains to be clarified - the claim that GVS ran its course without any intermediate stages which I find positively baffling. I hope I'm not asking too much when I inquire into your guys' sources behind this claim - nothing I've read at any point seems to agree with your assessment and I would very much like to read any scientifically-minded materials that would challenge my point of view. In particular I'm curious whether you think there was some particular mechanism behind it, or whether our disagreement is simply an extension of our difference of opinion regarding basic phonological methodology. In conclusion, friends, I hope you don't find my tone overly disagreeable - as I said in the beginning, I have yet much to learn from Luke in terms of expressing my thoughts with due urbanity and tact =D

[@tudormardare66]

Systema rusticum quid usum erat non totale verum est. Lingua daco-romanica "u" et "ū" in "u" transformavit, eodem tempore "i" in "e" et "ī" in "i". Problema hicce est non omnia dialecta rustica eadem erant. Non fuit singula lingua vulgaris. Semper periebant quoque nascebant dialecta, ut linguae instrumenta humana sunt, quae mutant.

[@ScorpioMartianus]

Recte mones, amice! Gratias pro commentariis tuis! :D

[@Glossologia]

Yes, you are correct, and interestingly the same development also occurs in Sicilian. I believe what Lucius is describing there is the rustic latin spoken near to Rome.

[@petrustectander3423]

Scorpioni Martiano S. D. Valde laetor me nuperrime pelliculas tuas invenisse. Tibi maxima habenda est gratia, quod eas nobiscum communicas. Quid ad pronuntiationem horum, quae in classico sermone ‘maximus’, ‘pessimus’, ‘optimus’, ‘decimus’, ‘lacrima’, ‘manifestus’, ‘intibum’, ‘libido’, ‘libet’ scripta invenimus, in vetustiore autem lingua ‘maxumus’, ‘pessumus’, ‘optumus’, ‘decumus’, ‘lacruma’, ‘manufestus’, ‘intubum’, ‘lubido’, ‘lubet’ scribi solebant? Constat aetate Ciceronis ac Caesaris Sallustium hac ratione scribendi eiusmodi verborum usum esse, maiestatis atque amplitudinis cuiusdam gratia. Bene. At nonne etiam Quintilianus ipse primo libro Institutionis Oratoriae (1:4,8) scripsit medium esse quendam u et i litterae sonum? Hoc explana, quaeso, et perge nos omnes pelliculis docere. Vale.

[@ScorpioMartianus]

Simoni Lucius S.D.P.! Gratias quod subscripsisti meo canali! :) et pro blandissimis tuis verbis. Recte! Gaio Julio Caesari gratias agere possumus pro hac mutatione u>i in scribendo, qui mos sequitur pronuntiationem eius temporis. Haec vocalis appellatur "sonus medius" ab antiquis. Qualis sonus sit? Valde similem ei in vocabulis Japonicis arbitror, e.g. mekishiko, gakusei, ubi 'u' vel 'i' scribitur sed sonus paene inaudibilis enuntiatur. Nota bene sonum medium *tantummodo* prope "m" "b" vel "f" accidere in vocabulo; hoc sibi velit consonantes labiales, quae simillimae sunt vocali 'u', rotundum faciunt sonum. Ergo maximus>maxumus facillime pronuntiari potest. Haec est explanatio. Haec quoque est causa cur "volō"

[@mr.katnip1513]

I’m originally from Puerto Rico but of all the dialects I’m familiar with in Spanish, your Latin style is closest to Argentina which makes it even easier and fun 🤩

[@brunogripp]

Lingua graeca non habebat [y] in omnibus temporibus. Solum attica dialectus saeculi II auc. habebat hunc sonum. Aliae dialecti legebant υ ut [u]. Et in media aetate hic sonus cito cecidit, mutatus in [i], ut omnes sciamus per modernam graecam linguam.

[@tiberiusaemiliusvictorius1363]

Quid? Putabam omnes homines doctos in quinto saeculo locuti ess pronuntiatu italico sicut papam! Liber meus lycaei mihi mentitus est!

[@ScorpioMartianus]

Pessimē quidem mentītus est! 😃 Ecce quōmodo sonuerit Latīna 5° saeculō: kzbin.info/www/bejne/hHrTeGWMqcpsfJY Nōnne sonat Italicum hodiernum?!

[@Shroomiedoobie]

i agree that Allen's short "u" and "i" are at least weird if not completely absurd if compared to modern romance lenguages, but doesn't allen's "u" have a somewhat similar sound to the borrowed greek "y" ?

[@DrWhom]

I love how you pretend to struggle with regular English: er, Seeedni Ah-len.

[@cintulator2]

Yes. But not. Somehow Southern European way to say things.

[@lainosakalov]

It is better for spanish speakers to disable subs hahaha

[@NicholasShanks]

You seem to speak very slowly. Is that supposed to be for the benefit if the listener? It got annoying after about 3 minutes.

[@ScorpioMartianus]

If you mean how I speak Latin, this is how I normally speak kzbin.info/www/bejne/fKu1mHyiaKqVrMU

[@gnuling296]

The way you talk down and make fun of "less educated" Italians is something that I find very displeasing.

[@ScorpioMartianus]

You shouldn't. I know many very educated Italians who haven't had the benefit of intense English language immersion who have this very accent (they excellent Latin instead of perfect English). I love Italians when they speak with an accent. It was an important demonstration of Italian phonology, for the sake of contrast. An Ancient Roman would have a similar accent.

[@gnuling296]

@@ScorpioMartianus The way you talk often seems very arrogant to me and sometimes like you're making fun of others. If that weren't the case I would probably really like your channel.

[@Columbator]

​@@gnuling296 He often makes fun of himself, which should bring some indulgence about his seemingly arrogant behaviour. So far, the only times when I found some arrogance, he was playing a character, like a ancient Roman would have done. Which educated and refined person would like to talk like… an Oscan ? lol He looks like a nice guy to me.

[@ChrisPeck-niganma]

Mi chiedevo perché la pronuncia calabrese sarebbe stata importante nel pronunciare il latino. Poi ho scoperto che Calabrese è solo un cognome.

[@anitachiara54]

Anche io 😆