/lit/ - Literature

Alcibiades is pronounced al si by i deez

How the fuck am I supposed to pronounce Mycenae?

At least more translators are using the Greek forms for less known names now.

Most languages translate greek names. It's the same with portuguese:

Vergilius - Virgílio
Troia - Tróia
Perseus - Perseu
Iason - Jasão
Teseus - Teseu
Archimaedes - Arquimedes

And the list goes on. French and spanish do the same, just stop being autistic.

Americans have a lot of trouble speaking latin, this is true
Most of them will say "Semper fi" with the "i" like in "hi".

Every language does this. It's a Germanic language trying to grapple with sounds it doesn't produce natively. Few non-Germanic language speakers can do English "th" properly. Even "zh"-ey "j" is a derivation from Classical Latin "i", so is "v" from "u". Vulgar Latin existed contemporaneously with Classical Latin even in High Republican times. Attic Greek was a rarity and just one arbitrary dialect among many until it became a lingua franca because of Athenian literary prestige and Alexander.

>>4369155
>semper fi
>short for semper fidelis
>taking issue with people not correctly pronouncing the already incorrect truncation of a foreign phrase that they only know because it's on the Marines' banner

Is it just me or is the captcha apt? Stop rorigagging about language, pronunciation varies.

>>4369144
These translations atleast still somewhat resemble the originals. But english phonetics totally fuck up latin and greek words.

>>4369128
Alcibiades would be Ahl kee bee yah des.

Mycenae is kinda hard to transcribe into english, but it is Mükenä. If you know how umlauts are pronounced, this would help you.

>>4369153
>It's a Germanic language trying to grapple with sounds it doesn't produce natively.
But it does produce most of these sounds. It jsut refuses to, and instead applies its own phonetics.

>>4369171
I don't think it's an issue. You can't expect masses, especially american masses, to show knowledge about something this high-brow, right?

Well at least high-brow to them.

>pronunciation varies
Yes, you have to pronounce the english word like an english one, and the foreign word like a foreign one. Pronunciation varies.

>per say

>>4369204
>Yes, you have to pronounce the english word like an english one, and the foreign word like a foreign one. Pronunciation varies.

The point was that certain peoples simply cannot pronounce certain sounds. It's impossible, or very nearly impossible, for them to do so. The Japanese are a famous example.

You're demanding the disappearance of accents. That is what you're saying. Accents are consistent subtle mispronunciations.

They do it so Murricans don't notice the bible wasn't written in america, or that indeed any history happened outside of america.

They do this to pretend they have a culture, when all they really have is their language, which they didn't even come up with themselves.

>>4369218
what you're saying is that instead of trying to use a word, we should just do this: http://youtu.be/WjUtoQaRfE0

>>4369218
I'm not demanding anything, I know it can't be fixed for americans. And I'm certainly not demanding the ridiculous things you think my post implied

But if I were to wish, I'd wish, in this example, that americans do not pronounce the "Fi" as in "hi", but rather as in "tree", which isn't the same exact sound that in latin, but at least show that the speaker has some knowledge of the correct pronunciation

Because the other pronunciation, the one mostly used today, isn't due to english language, but to pure ignorance

>>4369218
Come on now, pronouncing Iason as Yahson instead of Dsheysn is not hindered by accent. A person speaking nothing but english is perfectly capable of making the sounds necessary to say Yahson. Or pronouncing Zeus as Tsoys rather than Soos. It has nothing to do with accent. It has to do with using wrong phonetic systems.

>>4369255
imagine we did that to chinese things.
Copy the way they're written, and not how they're actually pronounced.
pic related.

Well, well... which language would you turn to for the correct pronounciations of all dat shit? A germanic language you say? That's right niggas, it's German. Masterrace language. Deutsch stark.

>>4369255
Yes, and Marc Antony is Marcus Antonius, and Tully is Kih-keh-ro, and Caesar is Kai-sar, etc. But then you might as well criticise Classical Latinists for not reflecting the vulgate, or the vulgate for not reflecting the literary tongue. Same with Chinese, same with Arabic, etc.

I agree with you to an extent but a) it's impossible to prescribe on a wild scale and b) it's virtually pointless.

>>4369253
"Fidelis" is "fih day lis", not "fee dell is". You want to circumscribe Latin pronunciation rules for people who don't know Latin, and who are using *incorrect and arbitrary truncations of words to begin with*, but you don't know Latin. It's odd.

>>4369272
Gerne doch.
Immerhin haben wir, soweit ich weiß, eigentlich immer die korrekte Aussprache.

>>4369278
bis auf "C", das eigentlich "K" sein sollte. Kaésar und Kikero.

>>4369285
jetzt wo du's sagst...
aber das macht eh jeder falsch, das zählt nicht.

>>4369277
>"Fidelis" is "fih day lis"
>ay
No. It is not an ay. It is a long e (but not an english e). Kinda like the first half of the sound you make when pronouncing ay, but without the ending of it.

>I agree with you to an extent but a) it's impossible to prescribe on a wild scale and b) it's virtually pointless.
It's not entirely impossible, but in english it is just so wrong sometimes that it barely resembles the original latin/greek terms anymore.

>>4369285
>Kaésar
You mean Käsar?

>>4369300
ae is a parallel to the Greek ai, if you want to be nitpicky, but ä would work as well

>>4369306
I learned it that way that in latin ae is always pronounced like ä. Or is that only as an ending? (For example a-declination genitive singular.)
Can it vary in mid-word?

>>4369312
Maybe it varies, like the pronounciation of "-ough"? I'd stick with ä if that's how you learnt it

>>4369324
I doubt latin phonestics would vary as much as english ones. They are, like the modern german ones, extremely consistent. If ae is pronounced like aé at one point, it is likely not of latin origin.

>>4369300
>No. It is not an ay.

For the sake of the argument, it is only necessary to point out that you're pedantically asking people to correctly pronounce a conjugation of facio which they bizarrely swapped for the word fidelis. You want to be super fastidious about one arbitrary thing, but not the ostensibly more important thing, the actual fuckin' meaning.

>>4369337
Don't the phonetics of the Twelve Tables differ severely from Classical Latin and from what glimpses we can get of vulgar Latin?

>tfw my master race mother tongue doesn't do this
hungarian has got a nice variety of sounds, almost completely able to express the correct pronunciation trough writing these names as they sound and we got in touch with antique culture late enough not to vulgarise/match it as to how it should sound in Hungarian

Vergilius - Vergíliusz
Troia - Trója
Perseus - Perzeusz
Iason - Iaszón
Teseus - Tézeusz
Archimaedes - Arkimédész

>>4369277
>"Fidelis" is "fih day lis", not "fee dell is".
what
no
what the fuck is wrong with you

>>4369337
we should really have an expert look into this. I could, for example, make the case that "Caesar" could've been pronounced "Kaésar" at one point in time to become "Kaiser" in German, but without any proof or knowledge about it, we're bummed

Swedish doesn't alter Greek names at all, as far as I know.

>>4369347
Austrian here, I can vouch for this. Hungarians are bros.

>>4369343
>For the sake of the argument, it is only necessary to point out that you're pedantically asking people to correctly pronounce a conjugation of facio which they bizarrely swapped for the word fidelis. You want to be super fastidious about one arbitrary thing, but not the ostensibly more important thing, the actual fuckin' meaning.
I am not the anon you were talking to, I was just pointing out that the long e in latin is not pronounced like ay.

>>4369353
Yeah, most germanic languages are like that. English is sorta the black sheep with their phonetics.

Spent too much time with those frenchies, I assume.

>>4369348
Kaiser definately derives from Caeser, but I think it is more based on the writing rather than the pronounciation (Käsar).

>>4369361
Fair enough, was only using an approximation to show fidelis is not "fee del ..".

>>4369347
How does Hungarian handle Turkic loanwords? Aren't there a lot, like 10-20%?

>>4369383
>fidelis is not "fee del ..".
But it is. Atleast the way I learnt it.

>>4369394
I think it's technically J, because it's short.

>>4369412
Huh, it changed the character.

Here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near-close_near-front_unrounded_vowel

>>4369412
>>4369414
That's the exact vowel I think it is.

>>4369425
Where are you from?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/de/En-us-bit.ogg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f4/De-bitte-2.ogg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d9/Sv-sill.ogg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bf/Ru-%D0%B4%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%B2%D0%BE.ogg

The first two sound like how I was taught to pronounce Latin short i's.

>>4369436
Germany.

>>4369442
..And the i in that bitte there sounds like "ee" to you?

My college is a seminary and I hear every goddamn accent in the world applied to Latin, which tends to mangle short vowels (and pretty much everything else in rapid speech), but I'd be surprised at that.

>>4369451
>..And the i in that bitte there sounds like "ee" to you?
Not at all, no. Maybe we don't talk about the same part of semper fidelis here though? I meant the "de" of fidelis, which as far as I know should be a long (german) e.

>mfw language fascists

The english language has always been a fuck up. It's a beautiful fuck up constantly changing. Leave it alone.

The English language belongs to the Anglo-Frisian sub-group of the West Germanic branch of the Germanic languages, a member of the Indo-European languages. Modern English is the direct descendant of Middle English, itself a direct descendant of Old English, a descendant of the Proto-Germanic language. Typical of most Germanic languages, English is characterised by the use of modal verbs, the division of verbs into strong and weak classes, and common sound shifts from Proto-Indo-European known as Grimm's law. The closest living relatives of English (besides the English languages and English-based creole languages) are the Frisian languages of the southern fringes of the North Sea in the Netherlands, Germany, and Denmark.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grimm%27s_law

>>4369272
>epiktet
>mark aurel

germoney pls

>>4369607
>The closest living relatives of English (besides the English languages and English-based creole languages) are the Frisian languages of the southern fringes of the North Sea in the Netherlands, Germany, and Denmark.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXlPpKCN7i8

Doesn't sound close at all though.

>>4370039
The closest.

Middle
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QE0MtENfOMU

Olde
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVyXDYp60BE

>>4369171
It does not vary. In Latin an "i" is always pronounced like a long "e", as in the Spanish word "si". Most latinate languages preserve this pronunciation.

>>4369101
I'm laughing my ass of here. Everybody having problems with such simple language as Latin.

>be Finnish
>our pronunciation is almost the same as in Latin
>vergilius is just ver gi li u;s semper fidelius is just semper fidelius
>most of our own words are pronounced exactly the same as they are written.

>>4369153
>Attic Greek
Sorry, man but that was hilarious

I get it. Latin is a beautiful language, but not the way the Catholics or must modern English speakers pronounce it. I don't know Greek, but I imagine it's much the same. I at least know enough about Proto-Indo-European and whatnot to understand that certain pronunciations are all wrong, like Zeus.

>>4369383
we built them in long ago, and forgot the alternative hungarian words for those. And yes, there are a whole lot. Before coming to the Carpathian Basin in which we live, we lived together with turkish tribes for some hundred years and the Ottoman invasion did its work too.