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PRONUNCIATION OK TIIE LATIN LANGUAGE.
( Continued .J
Our method of pronunciation very seldom allows
us to give the iust quantity to final syllables and
monosyllables.” These last are commonly pro
nounced short. Os, the mouth, and os, a hone, are
not distinguished from each other in the nomina
tive; nihil becomes nil, wife never, the sign of the
aspirate being omitted, it is written nil (niil) : al
though we pronounce the uncontracted form, not
only distinctly as two syllables, but change the
short vowel of the first syllable to a diphthong
(:naihil ) ; thus depriving this word, at one time, ot
one half its just measure of vowel sound, and
giving it one halt more than its due at another, i
The termination es, however, whether as a mono- 1
syllable or a final syllable, enjoys the privilege of]
being always long ; ihus es from esse, has the same I
quantity with cs from edcre; the last sj T liable of
miles is as long as that ot quits. !
The capricious manner in which the sounds of
the vowels are varied in our pronunciation ot
Latin leads to countless irregularities that have no
real existence. The vowel ot the nominative case j
of the noun is sometimes shortened, sometimes
lengthened, and not untrequently changed for a
wholly different sound in the other cases. Ihus
the o which we shorten in the nominative ot os, j
becomes long in oris; the i ot miles, which is ex-;
panded into the sound ot the diphthong ai, in the
nominative, is forced to contract itselt to that ot
short i in the genitive militis. The verbs also
have frequently one vowel sound in the present,
and quite another in the imperfect; and, again,
recover the first in the perfect; the sound contin
ually shifting, and the quantity expanding or
contracting, as the number of syllables is increased
or diminished. But, though we thus vary the
sounds of the vowels without scruple, where there
is no authority tor it, yet when these changes ac
tually take place, distinguishing contracted from
uncontracted forms, or denoting difference ot
tense, we either neglect them altogether, or ap
ply them according to the rule ot contraries. 1 bus
we in ike no distinction between the e ot pcs and
tint of pedis, but pronounce both long alike ;we
shorten the o ot bos. which, as the vowel ot a word
originally a dissyllable, is long, and yet lengthen
the short oof the genitive bovis. We do not ob
serve the distinction between the short e of the
present and the long e of the perfect of venire;
vet, in the tenses formed trom the perfect, we
indeed change the quantity, and, as we have
m ide the short first syllable ot the present long, so
we make the long first syllable ot the pluperfect
short.
If there yet remain any doubt in the mind of
the reader, as to the incompatibility ot the Eng
lish mode of pronouncing the vowels with the
just quantity of Latin words, let him compare the
rules laid down for the sounds ot the letters, in
the grammar of Andrews and Stoddard, now
used in the principal schools in New England,
with those given in the same volume tor the quan
tity of syllables. The first direction which is
given for the sounds ot the vowels is the follow
ing :
■ An accented vowel, at the end of a syllable,
has always its long English sound.”
The italics are not ours. It was probably
deemed the more essential to impress this lule
on the mind of the youthful aspirant for knowl
edge, inasmuch as, ot the six examples given un
der this rule, of words in which the vowel of the
accented syllable is to be pronounced long, four,
namely, pater , dcdit, tuba, Tyrus , have the accented
vowel short; and the bewildered pupil will heic
after find, under the rules tor the quantity ot first
and middle syllables, dedi specified as one of
seven perfects that have the first syllable short.
Again:
“7 is long in the first syllable ol a word the
second of which is accented, when it stands alone
before a consonant, or ends a syllable oetore a
vowel.”
The example which illustrates the first part of
this rule is idoncus, in which the initial i is short.
With the second part — i is long when it ends a
syllable before a vowel —let the reader compare the
first general rule of quantity, “ A vowel before
another vpwel is short.” Again :
*• When a syllable ends with a consonant, it
has always the short English sound.”
Well may the student who, reading this com
prehensive rule, has begun to flatter himseit that
the difficulties of Latin quantity have been exag
gerated, stand confounded, when, turning over
bis grammar, he meets with two pages ot rules
in large print, and exceptions in fine, all devoted
to this very subject ot the quantity ot syllables
ending in consonants. Still more will his pei
plexity increase, when the fourth general rule of
quantity meets his eye. This instructs him, that
“a vowel naturally short, before two consonantsis long;
but, turning to the examples which illustrate the
rule of pronunciation, that “ a syllable ending with
a consonant has its vowel short he finds that, in five
of these, namely, in regnum, magnus, Jingo, fastis,
cy<rnus, the vowel to be pronounced short is pre
cisely in the position, which by the rule of proso
dy, should entitle it to be long. It is but just to
state, however, that this rule of pronunciation
allows of some exceptions; and the second and
third of these chance to agree with the rule on page
278, that es and os, as final syllables arc long. This;
coincidence, indeed, is but partial; for the rule of
pronunciation declares os to be long only in plural
cases, while the rule of quantity admits, in Latin
words, of but three exceptions. On the other
hand, the direction to make es final long,.which,
when a rule of quantity, has many exceptions, as
a rule of pronunciation has none. But let not the
j student complain ot this slight discrepancy, nor
let him ask why that which is the rule on one
page of his grammar is reduced to be an excep
tion to an opposite rule on another ; let him lather
be grateful, “that he is allowed to find even this
perverse and imperfect conformity between the
pronunciation of Latin words and their quantity.
A single word enjoys, under the rules for pro
nunciation, the dignity of an exception to itself.
The word post —in virtue of there being in Eng
lish a word post, in which the o is pionounced
long* —is entitled to have its vowel long. But
this privilege is not extended to the words de
rived from it; and here the student may again
compare what is said of the pronunciation of pos
tremus, on p. 4, with the rule of quantity on p.
262, which declares that “derivative words re
tain the quantity of their primitives.”
The labors of the Latin Grammar at length
accomplished, the laws ot quantity known by
theory, and those of pronunciation familiarized
by use, the student, perhaps, attempts to put in
practice these contradictory rules, and, by their
aid, to fathom the mysteries of ancient song. Now
is it that, with Mr. Melmoth, t he is lost in wonder
at the “exquisite sensibility of the ancient ear,”
that could find distinctions in the length ot sylla
bles in which the duller modern organ can detect
no inequality. He has heard, perhaps, that it has
been said by someone of elder time, that if, in
the first line of Virgil, primus had been prinus, the
harmony of the line would be destroyed. $ He
may read the line again and again, but rests in
the conviction that, to his ear, the harmony is in
no way affected by the change. He feels, in
deed, a secret misgiving that all the words in the
JEneid might be varied indefinitely as to their
sound, without its making any particular differ
ence to him. If he be an ingenuous youth, he
contents himseit with lamenting the obtuseness of
his ow-n faculties, and resigns the hope ot ever
discovering the charm of Latin verse. It he be a
bit of a quack, or if his imagination be capable of
uncommon flights, he puts a good face on the mat
ter, talks of the melody of Latin poetry, for the
benefit of the less imaginative or the more frank,
to the end of his Latin reading days, which most
commonly, except with men professedly literary,
extend no farther than the term of the academic
course.
Even in the scanning of verses, according to
the English and American mode of practising it,
the just quantity of the syllables is wholly neg
lected. Nothing more is done than to divide the
line into the proper number ot feet, and the feet
into the due number of syllables, these being arbi
trarily called long or short, as the case may re
quire ; though the ear can discover no such dis
tinction, or, more often, perceives the short to be
long, and the long to be short. For an example,
we need <*o no further than the two first teet ot
the first line of Virgil:
Anna vi | rumqiie ca |
The last syllable of both these dactyls is, by
English and American scholars, pronounced long;
in the first, the short i of virum is changed to a
diphthong; in the second, the short a of cano re
ceives the long sound ot c. But to understand
fully what fate the labored lines of Virgil musi
find in an American mouth, we have but to read
the concluding observations on the pronunciation
of penultimate and final syllables in the received
Latin Grammar.
“ To pronounce Latin words correctly, it is
necessary to ascertain the quantities of their two
last syllables only ; and the rules for the quanti
ties of final syllables would be unnecessary, but
for the occasional addition of enclitics. As these
are generally monosyllables, and, for the purpose
of accentuation, are considered as parts of the
words to which they are annexed, they cause the
final syllable of the original word to become the
penult of the compound. It is necessary, there
fore, to learn the quantities of those final syllables
only which end in a vowel.”
Nothing more is necessary, then, in order to
pronounce Latin, than to know the quantity of
ihe penultimate syllable. Nothing more is neces
sary in order to read correctly the elaborated
works of those poets whom,|j as Cicero tells us,
the laws of measure so strictly bound, that no syl
lable in their verse might be, even by a breath,
longer or shorter than was fitting. Well might
Milford assert, that English scholars “ seem re
solved to confine the doctrine ot quantity as some
thing mysterious or cabalistical, to be locked up
in the mind, and forbidden in practice.”
Yet the whole subject of quantity is extremely
simple, and may be easily comprehended by any
boy often years old. The truth is, all these rules
upon rules, and exceptions upon exceptions,(would
be superfluous, if children were taught from the
beginning to pronounce Latin properly; they
would, in that case, never err in the quantity or
* Yet the pronuncifition of the word post is in English rather
the exception than the ruL ; most words spelt in this way
change the sound of o to a sound lying between a and o, but
nearer to the first; as, lost, frost , &c.
f Author of Fitzosborne's Letters.
f The last syllable of primus being short, and that of prirnis
long, in Roman mouths : in the English pronunciation of Latin,
both are short alike.
|1 Quos necessitas cogit, et ipsi numeri et modi, sic verba
versu includere, ut nihil sit, ne spiritu quidem minimo, bre
vius aut longius quam uccesse ost. De Orat. L. 111. c. xlviii.
i accent of a word, any more than the Romans
I themselves did. Most of the general rules of
quantity would, if the language were correctly
| pronounced, be deduced from it by the pupil him
self. For example, the rule which declares a
diphthong to be long. If the learner had been
accustomed to sound t lie two vowels of the diph
| thong, he would no more need to be told that a j
I diphthong is longer than a simple vowel, than
that two svllables are longer than one. But if,
instead of pronouncing the diphthong as a double
sound, be has been used to give to the broad, full
sounds ac and oc. the sound oft, the slenderest of
la l l the vowels, there is no diphthong there, and
the rule, which at first seemed superfluous as a
truism, now becomes doubly superfluous from
the want of any thing to which to apply it. But j
in truth, we understand by a diphthong not twoj
vowel sounds in one syllable, but two vowel
characters written one into the other. So abso
lutely is this the case, and so coolly taken for
granted to be so, that Walker talks, in all se
riousness, of “ ocular diphthongs ” and diphthongs !
to the a/e. ]t must have been in prophetic vision j
of the fate his c herished language was hereafter j
to meet, that Cicero wrote —“Omnium longitu
dinutn et brevitatum in sonis, sicut acutarum gra
viumque vocutn judicium, natura in auribus nos
tris collocavit ; M a truth which otherwise it had j
seemed the world hardly needed a Cicero to tell
it.
Syllables were not arbitrarily called long or
short by the ancients. This distinction wasfound
ed on fact. Nor was it a nice distinction, per
ceptible only by a delicate ear ;* the di Acre nee
between a long vowel and a short, one w as as the j
difference between two and one. It is wadi known i
that the Romans anciently wrote the long vowels
with two vowel characters, as amaabaamu*, musaa \
(abl.) The genitive of Fompcius was written Tom
pciii. The temporal augments were originally
written in full, as call, cemi , &c. This custom
continued, according to Quintilian, until the time
of Accius, and even somewhat later. Subsequent
ly, for greater expedition in writing, one of the
vowels was omitted, and the apex was placed
over the remaining vowel, to mark the omission.t
These contractions were made merely for the
convenience of the scribe; the syllable lost nothing
of its just quantity of sound in consequence.
In order to read Latin, and especially Latin po
etrv, with propriety, it is necessary that each
syllable of each word should receive its just meas
ure of sound. Children should be taught to pro
nounce accurately, in this respect, from their lirst
entrance into the study of Latin. To facilitate
this, it is desirable that, at least in all the books
intended for the instruction of youth, every long
vowel should he marked as such. All these mi
-11 uic rules for finding the quantity of syllables
would he extremely useful to an editor in this
view, but it is surely superfluous for each indi
vidual to learn by rote a set of tedious rules, of
which he is never to make any application, when,
by a little pains in his early instruction, all that
these arc designed to teach might be familiarly
known to him by practice. Thus trained, the
student would afterwards read Latin poetry, as
the Romans themselves read it, without the aid of
rules; and, if the composition of verses in a for
eign and dead language be deemed a thing desi
rable, even for this, he would have a guide within
himself more unerring than any written laws. It
is to be remembered, that the poets did not com
pose their verses by these rules of prosody, bul
in conformity with their own poetic sense. —Ante
enim carmen ortuni est, quara observatio carmi
nis.—The rules were deduced from the writings
of Greek and Roman poets; and were thus care
fully elaborated at a later time, when the pronun
ciation having been corrupted, the ear alone
could no longer judge of the harmony of ancient
verse. Those, therefore, who were ambitious of
writing after classic models, studied exactly the
compositions of the ancient masters. The labors
of the expositors of ancient prosody are most val
uable, since, by their help, the student may read
the Greek and Roman poets ; but they are of use
only so far as they are put in practice; enclosed
within the covers of a book, or stowed away, with
other scholastic lumber, in some unfurnished
corner of the brain, they are absolutely valueless.
To be Continued .
* Longam (syllabam) esse duorumtemporuuj, brevemunius,
etinin pueri sciunt. Quint. Inst. Oral. L. ix.
f In the case of the i this mark of abbreviation was not used ;
the long or double i was denoted by a lengthened character;
as in this line from an inscription of the time of Tiberius :
nIl PROSVNT LACRLUAE NEC POSSVNT FATA MOVErL
The omission of a vowel character was also sometimes no
ted by a slight space and a mark like that ot the acute accent;
as in prosunt in the above line ; but this was not common.
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