How to Pronounce Latin (Syllables & Elisions) / De Latine Pronuntiando (Syllabae Elisionesque)

[@ScorpioMartianus]

Hac in cantione usum sum eodem rhythmo naturali Latino! Spero vobis placituram esse. 🦀 kzbin.info/www/bejne/kHvEY6yKrt11gdE

[@troyschuler186]

I’ve been learning Latin in the grammar and translation method and you just blew my mind.

[@hafezreader6919]

Im from Iran. I thought meter and rhymes at this level are exclusive to persian and arabic. Your work is priceless and uniqe.thanks.

[@ScorpioMartianus]

Thanks so much! Persian has lots of similarities with other Indo-European languages such as Latin and Ancient Greek 😃

[@Aditya-te7oo]

@@ScorpioMartianus And also Sanskrit.

[@Dashuyan88]

​@@Aditya-te7oothey are one once a single language and still are just different forms of a single language

[@kennethconnally4356]

This kind of blows my mind because Latin relies so heavily on the endings that disappear if you speak like this to determine what words mean. For example, consider the phrase heard (with elisions) as "regn' Ann' annihilat' oppid' in Asia." This seems really hard to parse without the endings! It might be "regno Annae annihilatum oppidum in Asia" (the town in Asia annihilated during the reign of Anna), but it could just as easily be "regnum Annae annihilatum oppido in Asia" (the reign of Anna, annihilated by a town in Asia), or "regno Anna annihilata oppidi in Asia" (Anna, annihilated by the reign of a town in Asia), or probably 10 other things I didn't think of. Particularly in poetry, where the words are strewn about more or less at random to suit the meter, making word-order even less of a trustworthy guide than usual, wouldn't eliding the endings of words make spoken Latin extremely ambiguous?

[@luizfelipe5399]

Not if elision doesn't erase the previous vowel completely, but kind of makes a diphthong out of it. We do that in Portuguese, where "onde é" becomes kind of "ondyé" or "branco e preto" becomes "brankwi preto". Now, the fact that we reduce final -e and -o to -i and -u do make it easier, but something similar to that may have happened in Latin.

[@tylere.8436]

​@@luizfelipe5399Great thought, in Latin even the conjunction, cum (when), is subject to elision! cum ausus es = c'ausus es? Just doesn't seem like a complete elision if a conjunction was reduced to a single consonant! I'd imagine it was more like: cw'ausus es.

[@Dashuyan88]

In sanskrit its not an issue

[@kennethconnally4356]

True that you could retain some of the grammatical information by pronouncing the elision as a blending of the 2 vowel sounds. But from the fact that the resulting vowel, in poetry, always has the quantity (long or short) of the second vowel, it seems like they weren't doing that (at least not when reciting poetry). So for instance, the phrase "ita egeō" will always scan as short-short-short-long, suggesting it's pronounced "i-t'e-ge-ō," never short-long-short-long, which would suggest a diphthong joining the words: "i-tae-ge-ō."

[@simonebiggi9180]

Grazie mille, Scorpio Martianus! Ti ringrazio nell'umile idioma Dantesco! Lieto che internet sia popolata anche da gente come te! 💪🔝

[@ScorpioMartianus]

E grazie a te! 😃

[@dianeallen5803]

Your pronunciations are irresistible - so beautiful!

[@dianeallen5803]

I was listening to an old song from the 70s yesterday. It was the Carpenters' song "I'm on the Top of the World". The chorus says, "You almost put me on the top of the world." At least that's what the words are. But as Lucius would have it, Non sic! The Carpenters actually say "Yallmost put me etc." A perfect elision!

[@elliotvernon7971]

Excellent! Thank you so much for making this.

[@ScorpioMartianus]

Thank you for watching it, Elliot! :)

[@DavidAmster]

Thank you, Luke, for your excellent videos!! I’m “locked down” in the Fez medina, enjoying them and learning a lot!

[@toinsola]

great video as always thank you

[@FranciscoTornay]

In trhe channel "ten minute Spanish" (link below) there's a great explanation about how Spanish speakers join the words and how such a phenomenon results in reduction of the number of syllables, without eliding them, at least not in most cases. In the context of poetry we call this "sinalefa", and it is a standard feature of Spanish poetry, just at it was in Latin.There is at least one academic article in Spanish defending the idea that the process in Latin was similar, that is, more sinalefa than elision. Essentially: equal vowels get merged together, either with or without lengthening (which would be a kind of elision but it sounds different than just dropping one of them as you do in the video) but different vowels tend to be merged into a single diphthong, making up a single syllable but without eliding any of the vowels. If the vowels do not make up an existing diphthong they can either be turned into the most similar one or be left in hiatus, resulting in no loss of syllable. I find it very possible that the ancient Romans did something similar, only increasing the number of cases of syllable reduction, because they had some diphthongs not exisiting in Spanish (ae, oe) and because they let their hiatuses be turned into diphthongs more readily than in Spanish, particularly when it fitted the meter. Speakers of Germanic languages find this difficult because they tend to separate vowels by means of a glottal stop, which Spanish (and other Romance speakers) do not, as explained in the video: kzbin.info/www/bejne/oIbRlZKefbJjjNk

[@sramtae5820]

The rythmn in Latin makes everything sound beautiful. Thank you from Colombia

[@ScorpioMartianus]

Gracias 😃

[@edwardamosbrandwein3583]

@@ScorpioMartianus When did letter H lose it sound in Latin and became a silent letter?

[@hadrianusbrailensis9593]

Would the Romans, in the case that phrases were found difficult to understand due to elisions, have opted to pronounce words entirely, i.e. without elisions, for the sake of clarity, or was it indeed just how the language was intended to be spoken and understood? And having to do with that former question, are we certain that the use of elisions is the traditional way of speech for the Romans, or was they something more that occurred when a person spoke quickly? I am partially moved to side with the latter argument since I think poets, at times, chose to take pauses within their own verses and so an elision does not exist between words wherein one ought to exist. So, by that stance, would it not be true that the slower a person speaks, or rather when they take pauses between words, those word endings are not elided as often as they would be for a fast speaker. Or perhaps is it that Latin was spoken fluidly, without pause between words, and so elisions became the standard? O and one more question, if you don't mind. Regarding words that end with "um" and followed by "est" or "es," it sounds a bit strange, I suppose, to pronounce the "m" and then follow it with the "st." On top of that, I saw an example of an elision written within an inscription that regarded this same topic, and the "m" was removed and so the elision was written as "ust" rather than "umst." So, are you certain the nasalization of the "m" remained with the elision since theoretically it should not be cut out, or might the "m" have been elided as well since it is indeed a weak consonant?

[@vladimirkravchenko6399]

Gratia'st, Luci!

[@somnus6179]

Your videos are incredibly informative. Thank you so much

[@ScorpioMartianus]

Thank you for the support! :D I appreciate the feedback enormously.

[@jaybrodell1959]

Very informative. Thanks. I can see why this carried over to Spanish

[@CrispyCircuits]

Spoken and written Spanish are very different. This sort of thing caused me many problems understanding spoken Spanish. I was dumped into speaking Spanish at work, home and with friends on the US after only one semester of Spanish. I can see that it will be necessary to always speak whatever I read always. Cool! Thanks.

[@Girvid]

In the same case for another classical Indo-European language, namely Sanskrit. It is called “sandhi” ( = combination) and there are elobarate rules for it. But in Sanskrit it is also written as such. For example: “He is a hero. vīras asti (वीरस् अस्ति) > vīraḥ asti (वीरः अस्ति) > vīro'sti (वीरोऽस्ति)

[@kennethconnally4356]

Latin is full of little words that don't have any elements that wouldn't be elided by these rules: eum, ii, ea, eae, hae, hi, eo. Wouldn't it get confusing for them to disappear when they occur between words that start and end with vowels? Consider this sentence: "Ego et eum et Caesarem amo" (I love both him and Caesar). With these elision rules it becomes "Eg'et e't Caesar'amo." It seems like this would at least initially be heard as "Eget et Caesar amo" and it would take some detective work to figure out the intended meaning

[@hadrianusbrailensis9593]

I have the same question, although I think it should be elided as Eg'e t'e't Caesar'amo since the "t" from from the first et would actually go to "eum" just like in the example of "non ego nobilium..." (ect.) wherein the final "n" from "non" goes with the "e" of "ego" so it becomes "no-ne-go no-bi-li-um..." sorry for being a bit of a grammar Nazi or rather an elision Nazi in this case but its for the sake of Latin I guess lol. But yea, to go with your question it would be incredible difficult to understand so I'm thinking that perhaps the Romans spoke more clearly in cases where it could be difficult to understand and chose to take pauses between words and not elide letters similar to how some poets choose to take pauses in the middle of their verses (not for the sake of clarity in that case but for the sake of rhythm).

[@tylere.8436]

I would imagine that such words were placed before consonants so this wouldn't occur. These word were probably not used much by the Imperial era anyway because of such occasions, it would explain why these particular words didn't survive in the Romance language. Like eo present conjugation were supplanted largely by vado, not confusing when eliding.

[@eleazaralmazan4089]

Beautiful! Thanks for sharing!

[@ElmerEscoto]

Gratias tibi Lucius!

[@ScorpioMartianus]

Et nīl est!

[@zarastin]

Hi Luke, thanks for the awesome Latin help. Could you please point me to a creator or place where I can listen to Catholic prayers in Ecclesiastical Latin? Everything I hear ignores vowel length and elisions. I would like to find someone that respects them.

[@ILoveLanguages]

Very well explained :) 2 Thumbs up!!!

[@ScorpioMartianus]

Thanks so much! :D Gratias! Yes, I think this is actually the most important part of Latin pronunciation, much more than more superficial things like hard or soft C in "cēna" for example. It's the fundamental aspect of the scansion of poetry and prose. Yet I find it's too often ignored by most Latin speakers, who don't know languages like Japanese, Finnish, Hungarian, and others that preserve syllable quantity like this. My hope is to spread these ideas so they catch on in our Latin speaking communities! :)

[@cynthiamboty690]

You are the best! Thank you so much

[@plakette26]

Hach, das war Musik in meinen Ohren! Einfach wundervoll 🤩💕

[@juanxaviersantossalvador2866]

Perfect! In french they use the liaison because it makes the language sound beautifully. Perhaps when the franks invaded Rome and started to born a proto-french language, they used latin rules for the laison. Who knows!

[@ScorpioMartianus]

Absolutely! Many of these rules also apply to Spanish too.

[@mikicerise6250]

Yeah we still form syllables the same way in Spanish, just we don't have the long vowels.

[@frenchimp]

When you pronounce odi et amo as od'et amo, I hear something like odjetamo (not odetamo), with a j glide where the long vowel i was. Did I hear rightly, and if i becomes j, does similarly u become w?

[@ScorpioMartianus]

You hear correctly

[@fraternitas5117]

How to destroy Latin high school teachers in six minutes and thirty three seconds.

[@MatteoRussi-yl9mw]

Hello Luke. Thank you for your amazing job. Latin has a musical accent as I found also in your pronunciation. I'm trying to put this accent on a musical score, so should be easier for the students the correct pronunciation of the long and the short vowels and the accents. Your highest pitch on the ictus should be F#. I'm trying to understand the others pitches. I would like to connect with you. Let me know, please.

[@ScorpioMartianus]

Ciao Matteo! Write to me at Scorpio Martianus at gmail dot com (I wrote it that way to avoid spam from bots). I look forward to hearing from you!

[@chopsticks084hashi]

Does this rule apply to diphthongs? Like au, ae… etc. Do we elide only the final letters of diphthongs? I mean "e" in "ae". Or, do we elide the whole a diphthong when a vowel follows? I’m practicing Latin pronunciation to read Latin beautifully by watching your videos!😀 Thanks for your helpful videos! 🙏

[@ScorpioMartianus]

Thanks so much! Essentially yes; as long the syllables are merged into one syllable.

[@chopsticks084hashi]

@@ScorpioMartianus thanks so much for your reply!!🙏

[@tellvs]

Gratias tibi! ¿Estas elisiones también se aplican en la pronunciación eclesiástica del latín? Excelente trabajo de divulgación.

[@ScorpioMartianus]

Sí! En todas las pronunciaciones es correcto.

[@edwardamosbrandwein3583]

@@ScorpioMartianus Is it correct to write dipthongs "AE" and "OE" with the A and the O attached to the E?

[@BorisNVM]

Is this valid for Vulgar latin or when we speak in a coloquial way? I say it to be more accurate with the language. A good video of course.

[@ScorpioMartianus]

Thanks! Vulgar Latin is not a useful term as it means different things. This is indeed the colloquial language of 100 BC to 200 AD, which is by definition Latin. In that time period, there is no difference between Classical and spoken or “vulgar” Latin.

[@yanisbourgeois9028]

Awsomissimum ! Were elisions also used in oral speech, or were they strictly reserved for verse ? Because I havn't beenable to get a consensus on that...

[@ScorpioMartianus]

The connected speech of vowel merger is a mandatory characteristic not only of Latin but Italian, Spanish, and other languages

[@MikerBikerB]

Beautiful video. And to think I spent 6 years learning Latin and it was all fiction. No long vowels, m, v, no contraction and above all no practice.

[@lolingermany]

wow, noone ever taught me this :o

[@ahmedattia1372]

God bless you.

[@HasufelyArod]

Makes sense

[@Straitsfan]

I was wondering how to divide syllables in Latin -- unless I'm just missing the obvious. Can anyone tell me?

[@ScorpioMartianus]

This may help kzbin.info/www/bejne/f5SuaGZrr8igl8k

[@Tony-Blake]

Is the rhythimic resemblance to dactyls and spondees coincidental?

[@ScorpioMartianus]

Roman authors of prose were very aware of the natural rhythms of their language - so indeed, they are not coincidental per se, but they probably composed their works with the sounds, with the natural rhythms very much in their minds (if only subconsciously), as good modern authors do as well. When I'm chatting in Latin, I often delight in saying a phrase with many long syllables, enjoying the powerful effect of the spondees - which drives home a point I have if it's serious; or if not, it becomes ironic and hilarious. :D Thanks for the comment!

[@josephmendiola1889]

Tibi facto ago valde gratias hanc pelliculam

[@alexanderpodgorski5449]

Is that true for ecclesiastical Latin?

[@BrandonBoardman]

Yes.

[@suzanazafirova5199]

Се прашувам зошто ритмиката во вашиот говор ме асоцира на ритамот во македонските народни песни?

[@afidalgo7]

Ōdī et amō… ēlīsiō (Ōd'et amō) aut synaloephē (Ōdjet amō)?

[@ScorpioMartianus]

Salve! Recte, ipse malo synaloephe uti, etsi elisio quoque bene se habet. Necesse est saltem unam syllabam facere, nec duas. :)

[@BrandonBoardman]

Ambae rēctae sunt, sed synaloephēn ūtī mālō post vócālēs longās et diphthongōs.

[@Sanzianabel]

0:12 it sounds like you’re singing

[@iberius9937]

2:56 For the ignorant, who can joke about what they just heard or react unfavorably to it: This word, so controversial and taboo thanks to censorship, cancel culture and historical/linguistic ignorance, comes FROM LATIN and means precisely what it means: Literally, BLACK, referring to the color, or at least dusky or swarthy, depending on the context. For it to have been used disparagingly and as an insult towards certain people is irrelevant. The word means precisely what it means. That aside: Excellent video, Luke!

[@satouhikou1103]

What word?

[@iberius9937]

​@@satouhikou1103 Select the time stamp to hear it spoken.

[@satouhikou1103]

@@iberius9937 I asked you for the word.

[@TranslatorCarminum]

Etiam vōcālēs longae ēlīdī possunt ant' aliās vōcālēs? Crēdēbam vōcālēs brevēs sōlās ēlīdī posse.

[@kangaroostorm2525]

Credo non solum vocales longae elidi potuerunt sed etiam diphthongae. Si adhuc dubites...

[@СиДи-ф4п]

Pelliculam servavi ut studerem

[@weirdlanguageguy]

I can see why you dislike the ignoring of macrons, it completely destroys poetry. Sort of like ignoring tones in Chinese, I'd imagine.

[@ScorpioMartianus]

Precisely so!

[@weirdlanguageguy]

@@ScorpioMartianus By the way, I'm currently using your LLPSI playlist to internalize stress, vowel length and elison. It still catches me off guard something.

[@TuLoPhung]

Actually in Chinese things goes quite complex but interesting😂 Of course you are correct, traditionally our ancestors wrote poems and songs based on both tones. Traditionally the last character of each sentence should end in the same “韵”(the last part of a syllable, including tones. e.g. /tʃiaŋ˥˩/ and /daŋ˨˩/ are of the same 韵 since they both end with /aŋ˩/). Sometimes if the vowels sounds really close, it would be ok to put them on the same position for rhythm, like /æ/ and /ɛ/. Except for that, syllable length also workED in Chinese poetry. There were 4 tones in Mid Chinese - 平 上 去 and 入, and because 平 tone WAS longer and 上 去 入 WERE shorter, they were classified into two groups - 平声 and 仄声, which are the counterparts of long and short syllables in Latin. Our ancestors were strict with that. e.g. a kind of poem called 五言律诗(5 characters rhythmic poem?) is strict with syllable length. The rules can be a little bit complicated but you may figure them out in the following type: 仄仄平平仄, 平平仄仄平. 平平平仄仄, 仄仄仄平平. 仄仄平平仄, 平平仄仄平. 平平平仄仄, 仄仄仄平平. Once you choose to write in this type, none of the characters can unfollow the rules. And if you read them with the correct syllables length, they sound really beautiful. Of course the pronunciation of Chinese characters changes dramatically through centuries, well educateded poets still tendED to write based on pronunciation centuries ago based on so called rhythm books (but actually they don’t know how exactly those characters WERE pronounced, which is a quite complex topic due to Chinese unique way to record pronunciations). For example, a poet in the 10th century would likely to write based on the rhythms in 5-6th century, and poetry in the 20th century would do the similar (but not the same) thing. For example, the first great leader Mao Zedong prefers to write poems based on a rhythm book written in the 13th century, which sounds tremendously different from the language he himself speaks. However even they didn’t know how the characters were pronounced before, there do exist ways to shift modern pronunciation to fit old rhythms beautifully , which I’m not going to expand since it’s really complicated. Sadly nowadays such interesting knowledge and techniques are usually not taught in school education and few would prefer writing and reading poems in this way😢Even some poets still write in the traditional way, their poems are rarely read with tradition techniques.

[@weirdlanguageguy]

@@TuLoPhung wow, thank you for your amazing response! That's so interesting!

[@S14.244]

Modo linguam Latinam disco

[@tenienteramires4428]

Does it also apply for monosyllabic words? So, would "sum in caeló" be pronounced as ['siŋ'kaɛ̯.lɔː] or it would be more like ['sũ̯iŋ'kaɛ̯.lɔː] or even ['su̯iŋ'kaɛ̯.lɔː]? Also, how does one distinguish betwen "Rómá it" and "Rómam it" if they both sound like ['rɔː'mit]?

[@ScorpioMartianus]

That's an excellent question! Technically, any of those are possible, but I like ['sũ̯iŋ'kaɛ̯.lɔː] and ['su̯iŋ'kaɛ̯.lɔː] since these preserve more information. As long as these vowel mergers create a single syllable, the most important part has been mastered. :) You are very well acquainted with phonetics so you should have no trouble approximating the latter two. Moreover, as a Catalan speaker, you achieve these vowel mergers naturally, as do native speakers of Italian, Spanish, Romanian, and Portuguese. I, an the other hand, a poor American, can only envy your born gift! :D

[@FranciscoTornay]

@@ScorpioMartianus We speakers of Latin languages do merge vowels in a single syllable, as you explain but we don't elide vowels completely in most cases never, in the case of Spanish. My opinion is that Latin speakers pronounced in a similar way, at least in prose. I have just commented (in Latin) elsewhere in your channel that it seems hiatus was not so rare in prose either, and have given you a link to a technical article about this issue. Rursus tibi gratias ago, quod tam magnificum canalem offers

[@tenienteramires4428]

@@FranciscoTornay Actually, when I speak Spanish I elide vowels a lot less than when I speak Catalan. In Spanish, for example, I'd pronounce "esto es de ayer" or "no estoy contento" like "esto es d'ayer" and "no estoy contento", but those same sentences in Catalan would be "açò és d'ahir" and "no estic content" and pronounced (in my dialect) like "açò's d'ahir" and "no'stic contén". I don't know why, but it happens.

[@FranciscoTornay]

Interesting observation. Maybe the cause is the "vowel reduction" typical of eastern Catalan varieties. As for your original question, above, I linked an article about this topic in another commentary to this video. Here's the link, in case you're interested: www.jstor.org/stable/282939?seq=7#metadata_info_tab_contents

[@tenienteramires4428]

@@FranciscoTornay There's vowel reduction in all Catalan dialects, I speak what is called "Tortosí", which is a subdialect of western Catalan. In western Catalan we have an e/ɛ merger into e and a o/ɔ merger into o in unstressed position. The biggest difference betwen western and eastern Catalan is that easter one mergers a/e/ɛ into ə and a o/ɔ/u merger into u (except in some balearic subdialects), so there's a bit more vowel reduction.

[@ekoi1995]

-um sounds like french, interesting XD

[@SaturnineXTS]

more like Portuguese really

[@Sanzianabel]

it sounds like.... latin

[@kirstenmuller4536]

He's nasalising it. Maybe that's why. That particular vowel isn't nasalised in French, though.

[@hugoemedeiros]

Grammatica capituli XXXIV libri qui inscribitur Familia Romana placet. Gratias.

[@ScorpioMartianus]

Et mihi perplacet! Ego saepissime ea parte usus sum ut melius intellegerem sermonem Latinum.

[@Muck-qy2oo]

Sounds quite interesting but I don't believe that romans actually spoke like this. It still sounds to nonfluent.

[@defensorgentium2047]

Sed hoc modo non facile est declinationem cernere atque intellegere id quod aliquis dicit. In Italiā alio modo lingua Latina docetur ut te scire credo.

[@allanrosengren8615]

Pronuntiatio tua mihi placet, sed adhuc mihi non ex toto persuades: Quomodo scire possumus Romanos in prosa sicut in versibus elisiones tantas factos esse? Francogallice, exempli gratia, tractatio syllabarum non idem est in prosa et in poesi: Prosa: Je r’grett’ rien. (quasi quattuor syllabae) Poesis: Je ne regrette rien (septem syllabae!) Poesis Francogallorum plus “syllabosa” est quam prosa eorum; fortasse prosa Romanorum plus syllabosa erat quam poesi Romana!

[@ScorpioMartianus]

Scīmus quod ipsī grammaticī rem plānē fēcērunt. Quīntiliānus legendus

[@allanrosengren8615]

@@ScorpioMartianus Testimonia Quintiliani grammaticorumque autem ad regulas firmas reduci non possunt. Quintilianus e.g. scripsit (Inst.Or. XI 4. 40) vocabula “multum ille” et “quantum erat” multu~ille, quantu~erat pronuntiari. M finalis “parum exprimitur… neque enim eximitur, sed obscuratur et tantum ut hoc aliqua inter duas vocales velut nota est, ne ipsae coeant.” The final -m “is hardly expressed… nor is it deleted, but it is obscured, so that it is like a sign between to vowels preventing them from coalescing.” Eodem capitulo (XI 4. 36) dictionem cum hiatu interdum commendat, e.g.: pulchrā oratione. Haec verba sine elisione pronuntiari debent - teste Quintiliani. Ergo: In prosa elisionibus utamur, ubi et quando convenit. Sicut tu facis in nova pellicula tua, in qua ex libro “Roma Aeterna” Romae recitas. 😊 kzbin.info/www/bejne/m2LJYaZ6o7ShetU

[@cleitondecarvalho431]

Hodie mane studebam elisionibus et "liaison" linguae francicae... adhuc caput osque mihi dolet (aut dolent?) 😖

[@ScorpioMartianus]

Hahae! Et tu es Lusitanophonus! Cogita de me misello Americanulo! :D

[@jesusthroughmary]

Thanks, I hate it

[@Instruisto31]

Why don't you just speak Latin like any language in the world? You "sing" the language. Any Roman was singing "Saluuuuteee"