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THE BOOKSHELF: AD INFINITUM.

The publisher, Walker & Company, was kind enough to send me a review copy of Nicholas Ostler's new "biography of Latin," Ad Infinitum, and I've finally finished reading it. I must preface my remarks by saying that I've never liked the language all that much. I was taught it in Catholic school by the efficient but unappealing combination of Caesar and the ferula, and in the great division of classical snobbery, I am definitely a Hellenist and not a Latinist. That said, I am of course an eager reader of anything labeled a biography of a language, and I enjoyed this one a great deal.

Ostler's basic approach is to move from the language's origin as just one of the twigs on the Italic branch of Indo-European through its heyday as common language of first the Roman Empire and then Catholic Europe to its current fallen status, which he describes at the beginning by saying it "seems a comical language" and at the end by quoting the last of his many Latin tags, Sic transit gloria mundi, in the process tying its fate to the historical tides that swept Europe during that stretch of time (the last 2,500 years or so). It's a sensible strategy, somewhat compromised by the fact that he's not a historian and of necessity has to present a simplified and out-of-date picture of what historians have to say. On the second page of Chapter 1, for example, he writes "ROMANITAS—the Roman way as such—was never something voluntarily adopted by non-Roman communities." (N.b.: When quoting Latin in the early chapters he uses small capitals; after the fall of the Empire, he uses italics.) He qualifies this in a footnote by mentioning the bequest of Pergamum to Rome in 133 B.C., which is hardly relevant; much more so is the insistence of Germanic tribes on joining the Empire a half-millennium later, which he himself describes in Chapter 9 ("First the Goths... applied to enter the Empire"). His general picture of Rome facing the barbarian hordes seems to ignore the recent trend in frontier studies to see permeable zones of trade and cultural contact where traditional historians saw hard and fast borders. Also (to get a minor nitpick out of the way), he doesn't seem to understand the concept of irony. On p. 57, talking about the Romans' advantage in having a single dominating city, he says "Ironically, this single urban core turned out to be much more effective than the multiple urban cores that the Etruscans had developed for themselves"; on p. 318, he says "[Latin] was largely propagated through violence, even if ... that violence was nominally being deployed on behalf of the Christian God of love, and (just as ironically) knowledge of Latin was until recently passed on to each new generation with ample use of the ferula, that painful instrument of educational discipline."

But that's by the by; any book that takes in so much is going to have minor errors and infelicities. The real test is whether there is plenty of good, interesting material that makes you glad to have read it, and the answer here is unamiguously positive. I'll go through and pick out some bits that struck me.

In Chapter 5, on the relations between Latin and Greek, he talks about "hermēneumata 'translations', parallel school texts, apparently dating from the third century AD or earlier, filled with everyday language showing how to say the same things in good Latin and Greek, and (like modern phrase books) sometimes illustrating the right words for a crisis"—and presents two pages of examples, in three columns, Greek, Latin, and English. One example translates as "Isn't this the Lucius who owes me money? It is. I go up to him then and greet him. 'Good morning, good sir! Can I still not have back what you have owed me all this time?' 'What? You're mad.' 'I lent you money and you say, "You're mad"? You cheat, don't you know me?' 'Go away, ask the person you lent it to. I don't have anything of yours.' ... 'Okay then, it's not right for a free man and a householder to have an argument.'" I found four collections of Hermeneumata Pseudodositheana at the Bibliotheca Augustana, a useful collection of Latin texts; it only has the Greek and Latin in parallel, but if you know those languages, it's a lot of fun. If only I'd known about these dialogues in college!

In Chapter 8, he has a discussion of Christian Latin with some great quotes:
A general feature of Latin as used by Christians was its aggressively vulgar, plebeian, tone, quite happy to commit what traditionalists would call solecisms or barbarisms. This is unsurprising, since it was the converse of their worries about excessive eloquence. As Arnobius had put it, writing in 303, "When the point is something serious, beyond showing off, we need to consider what is being said, not how elegantly; not what soothes the ears, but what brings benefits to the hearers." But the fact that it seemed easier to write ungrammatically also shows that maintaining the full traditional grammar of Latin was becoming a burden even to native speakers, within the fourth century AD. Augustine observed:
For what is called a solecism is nothing other than putting words together on a different rule from that followed by our authoritative predecessors. Whether we say inter homines ['among men'—accusative case] or inter hominibus [ditto—ablative case] does not concern a man who only wishes to know the facts. And likewise, what is a barbarism but pronouncing a word differently from those who spoke Latin before us? For whether the word ignoscere ['pardon'] should be pronounced with the third syllable long or short is indifferent to the man who is praying to God, with whatever words he can, to pardon his sins. What is correctness of diction beyond sustaining images that happen to be hallowed by the authority of former speakers?
He even explicitly enjoined breaking the grammatical rules on occasion:
Feneratur [a deponent verb, with passive form but active sense] is the Latin for giving a loan, and receiving one: but it would be clearer to say fenerat [i.e., the corresponding active form]. What do we care what the grammarians prefer? Better you understand through our barbarism, than get left behind [deserti] through our elevated finesse [disertitudine].
Good for Augustine! (This might be a good time to point out that all translations from Latin are referenced to the original texts in the footnotes.)

In Chapter 11, he talks about the beginnings of the Romance languages; this passage presents an interesting theory about how and why Latin became a "foreign language":
Alcuin enjoined a new, universal style of pronunciation for Latin, deliberately reconstructed to be close to its original sound. Rather than allow each local community to pronounce its Latin as came naturally, he proposed that all should follow a single norm....

This would perhaps give scholars closer access to the true sound of Latin poetry and rhetoric; importantly, it would certainly make it easier for them to communicate orally in Latin, wherever in Europe they might hail from. As a reform, it did not in itself tend toward vernacular literacy: indeed, quite the reverse, for the immediate effect of the new pronunciation was to make priests reading out their sermons or their church offices more or less incomprehensible to their illiterate parishioners. In the favorite—somewhat extreme—example, the word viridiarium 'orchard' cold no longer be pronounced in northern France as verdzer, by then its natural rendering in the local variety of Romance. With each priest following his home pronunciation, it was possible—at least in Romance-speaking countries—for the Latin text to have been read pretty much in line with the local language.... The newly antiquated, universal Latin, by contrast, was a foreign language everywhere, accessible only to those who had studied it.
Compare the results of the Renaissance humanists' insistence on following classical models, especially Cicero (Chapter 15):
By insisting on ancient models, the humanists tore Latin away from its old, massive root structure, pruned it, and replanted it in well-weeded display beds, in admirable but alien splendor. Latin remained a privilege of the educated: Renaissance humanism did nothing, for example, to bring Latin closer to the growing multitudes who were learning to read in the vernacular. But even for those who were brought up with it, Latin was now that little bit harder to learn, as its links were cut with modern discourse, however ponderous that discourse might have been. Appreciating Latin neat, in its supposedly purer, pristine form, was an aesthetic achievement; but paradoxically it made the language harder to master, and to use as a living medium of day-to-day expression, let alone as a vehicle for original thought.
And there are all sorts of incidental tidbits, like his reference to Maffeo Vegio, "an epic poet who dared to complete Virgil's Aeneid with a Book XIII of his own devising, carried off with pure Virgilian panache" (online here), and this splendid quote from John Colet's preface to Lily's 1511 grammar: "In the beginning men spake not Latin because such rules were made, but, contrariwise, because men spake such Latin the rules were made. That is to say, Latin speech was before the rules, and not the rules before the Latin speech." If all this appeals to you, you will like the book, which is well written, comprehensive, and delightfully discursive.

One thing I found hard to understand, though, was his gloomy sic transit gloria conclusion. Sure, Latin is no longer the world language it was, but there's been a revival of interest in recent years; there are Latin blogs, you can get the news in Latin, and there's a whole movement to promote spoken use (read Rebecca Mead's New Yorker article on Luigi Miraglia). Lingua latina vivit!
Posted by languagehat at January 10, 2008 06:59 PM

Если бы Q и С не различались не было бы нужды изобретать отдельную букву.
Спасибо за подробные ссылки, но я не совсем понимаю, в какой период жили их авторы.

Цитата: Darkstar от декабря 23, 2007, 20:16
Предлагаю переименовать латынь в древнеитальянский, чтобы больше не возникало таких вопросов...

Гораздо интереснее как они произносили Q и С.
Поскольку в новоромансих оно дало все что угодно от /ch/ до /k/,  то и Q произносилось каким-то особым образом. И это не /kv/
Мне кажется, что изначально это было что-то более полугласное типа /hw/, где h могло быть сильно палатизировано, отсюда итальянское /сh/, но произносилось легко, поэтому в руманском и сардинском исчезло оставив /w/ > /p/, /b/

Q has the sound of English Q in the words _quire_, _quick_. Priscian
says:

[Keil. v. II. p. 12.] K enim et Q, quamvis figura et nomine videantur
aliquam habere differentiam, cum C tamen eandem, tam in sono vocum, quam
in metro, potestatem continent.

And again:

[id. ib. p. 36.] De Q quoque sufficienter supra tractatum est, quae
nisi eandem vim haberet quam C.

Marius Victorinus says:

[Keil. v. VI. p. 5.] Item superfluas quasdam videntur retinere, X et K
et Q... Pro K et Q, C littera facillime haberetur; X autem per C et S.

And again:

[Id. ib. p. 32.] K et Q supervacue numero litterarum inseri doctorum
plerique contendunt, scilicet quod C littera harum officium possit
implere.

The grammarians tell us that K and Q are always found at the beginning
of a syllable:

[Prisc. Keil. v. III. p. 111.] Q et K semper initio syllabarum
ponuntur.

They say also that the use of Q was more free among the earlier Romans,
who placed it as initial wherever U followed, --as they placed K
wherever A* followed,--but that in the later, established, usage, its
presence was conditioned upon a vowel after the U in the same syllable:

[Donat. Keil. v. IV. p. 442.] Namque illi Q praeponebant quotiens U
sequebatur, ut _quum_; nos vero non possumus Q praeponere nisi ut U
sequatur et post ipsam alia vocalis, ut _quoniam_.

Diomedes says:

[Keil. v. I. p. 425.] Q consonans muta, ex C et U litteris composita,
supervacua, qua utimur quando U et altera vocalis in una syllaba
junguntur, ut _Quirinus_.

John C. Rolfe.
University of Pennsylvania.Use of Devices for Indicating Vowel Length in Latin
...These statements are clear and definite. The second one made by Scaurus is confirmed by the inscriptions; for although there are twenty-two instances of an apex over i in the twelfth volume of the CIL alone, that use is relatively very rare. An apex occasionally appears even over a tall I, as in XII.890 and 3065 add. The other statement, in which Quintilian and Scaurus agree, points to a logical and helpful use of the apex, but unfortunately the statement is not confirmed by the inscriptions. The apex is used in many instances where it does not serve to distinguish words or case-endings of the same spelling except for the quantity of the vowels, and frequently such words or case-ending are left unmarked. This fact, however, does not prevent us from accepting Quintilian's principle as one of those which regulate the use of the apex; for it will be seen that no principle of the kind is observed with uniformity. In fact, one is almost tempted to think at times that uniformity was deliberately avoided.
Of many thousand inscriptions which I have examined I have found only two in which all the long vowels are marked. As both these inscriptions are short,
probably no great significance is to be attached to their consistency, but they are interesting as rare specimens.
It would seem that the best results would be obtained by examining some of the longer official inscriptions of the best period, and we may begin with the Monumentum Ancyranum, the great inscription in which the Emperor Augustus recorded the events of his reign.18  The inscription proper contains approximately 1,884 words and 1,399 long vowel-quantities. Of the latter 487, or about 34 per cent, are indicated by apices or by the tall I. The marks are for the most part limited to one on each word, but forty words have two marks and two have three marks each.19 Although, of course, the apex did not designate the accent, it naturally occurs frequently on accented syllables, since an accented penult often contains a long vowel, which is sometimes the only long vowel of the word. Quintilian's rule is observed in seventy-eight cases, while in forty instances marks are omitted which would differentiate words or forms. These figures, however, are the result of giving the rule the most liberal interpretation possible, including, for example, all cases of īs and not merely those from words which also have forms in ‑ĭs, and adverbs like antea as well as ablatives in ‑a. If we confine the count to forms which could actually be mistaken for others, we have thirty-nine marked vowels and twenty-three unmarked.
In general, the marking of the long vowels seems to be to a certain extent a habit, which once begun is carried on for a time, dropped and resumed, a view which receives confirmation from the usage in other inscriptions.
Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, LXI (1922), pp87 ff.

From Alan Bowman and David Thomas, Vindolanda: the Latin writing tablets London: Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies, 1983, pp. 19-24
It is well known that the Romans punctuated their writing under the early Empire by the use of a medial point between words (interpunct); it is also well known that they came to abandon this practice.38 In inscriptions it is still found in use, though rarely, into the third century, but in Latin papyri it ceased to be used early in the second century.39 In first-century papyri, both literary and documentary, it is often found, sometimes used regularly but more often only used here and there.

With respect to the Vindolanda tablets it must be stressed that a great many apparent dots occur on the photographs many of which are certainly not ink. In other cases we cannot be sure which are and which are not ink (and recourse to the originals does not always help). In consequence we are often unsure whether or not an apparent dot after a word is to be treated as interpunct or not. That said, the impression we gain from our tablets is that they fit very well into the known picture. Only a minority of writers use interpunct, and there may well be none at all in the military documents;40 possible exceptions are 135.1 (but this may have a different purpose(Vol. II, Ch. 4) and 160.41 It is rare to find interpunct used consistently; more commonly it occurs only here and there within a text. This confirms the received opinion that interpunct was on the way to dying out altogether by c. AD 100.42 Interpunct occurs in the following texts:43 120, 164, 175, 196, 208, 211, 216, 238, 242, 266, 297, 311, 315, 323, 326, 330, 339, 345 and 351. Of these, however, only 164, 175, 196, 238, 266, 297, 323, 330 and 345 use interpunct frequently. In addition there are some ten or eleven texts in which interpuncts may or may not occur.

The other way to indicate word division is by leaving spaces between words. This is not a normal feature of Latin papyri and it is perhaps surprising that it does occur here and there in the tablets. Good examples are 152, 225, 311, 314, 322 and 335. In medieval manuscripts, after word division became the norm, it was usual to leave no space between a monosyllable and the word following. This practice does not seem to be observed in our tablets, not even when the monosyllable is a preposition.

A further feature which needs mentioning is the occurrence of a diagonal mark, exactly like an apex mark (see the following section), after salutem. If this occurred only once we should simply dismiss it as having no significance. But the fact that it probably occurs no less than four times must give us pause: see 234, 243, 248 and (the clearest example) 265. In the position where it occurs it cannot be intended as an apex over a vowel and should perhaps be understood as marking the end of a section of a letter (in fact the opening section).44 In this connection we should also draw attention to the medial point after the date in 135.1; this seems unlikely to be interpunct (it is not normal at line ends and is not used elsewhere in the text) and may be intended to mark off the date from the text following. There may well be a similar indication of the end of a section of a text in 146.1, see the note ad loc.45

The use of apices in Latin inscriptions and papyri has been the subject of two recent articles by Kramer and Flobert.50 Kramer discusses the shape the apex mark takes (in papyri it is always straight and looks much like an acute accent), the period of time over which apices are attested (from the 1st century BC to the 2nd century AD in inscriptions, but as late as the third century in papyri), and the reasons for their use: he seems to believe that the use of apices depended more or less on the whim of the individual writer (his word is "fakultativ").51

Kramer, however, does not go into details, in contrast to Flobert, who gives a statistical analysis of a selection of inscriptions, indicating the nature of the syllable on which the apex is placed (open/closed, stressed/unstressed) and its position in the word (initial/medial/final).52

Of the 75 examples of apices in the Vindolanda texts 61 are on vowels in final syllables or on monosyllables, about 80%. Flobert too, in the material he examined, noted a significant proportion of examples on final vowels (up to 49%), but not such a striking proportion as in the Vindolanda material.53 Of the 14 falsely placed apices (i.e. those on short vowels), 9 are on vowels in final syllables, about 65%, a somewhat smaller proportion than in the case of the correctly placed apices. The figures suggest almost a mechanical habit of placing apices (if they were used at all) on final vowels, regardless of whether those vowels were long or short. But apices are not placed willy-nilly on final vowels. It is striking that certain words or word-forms repeatedly have an apex on their final vowel, a fact which further demonstrates the importance of conventions of writing which one can no longer understand: suó 6 times (cf. tuó once, meó once), first-person singular present verb-forms (rogó, exoró, cupió, putó, scribó, rogó), dative and ablative forms of second-declension nouns (Brocchó, Verecundó, Cassió, Flauió, Vettió, Seueró, uiaticó (?)). A high proportion of apices on short vowels are on a final a (8 out of 14). 32 of the 61 correctly placed apices are over final o, and another 12 are over final a. a and o have a similar capacity, it seems, to attract an apex, particularly if they are in final position. It is not simply the length of the vowel which is influential. The letter (regardless of the length of the phoneme which it represents) and its position in the word have to be taken into account.

As for apices which are not on final vowels, we find that in most cases the apex is on the vowel which bears the stress accent. Long vowels: compendiárium, Fláuio, Octóbres, Fláuius, numerátioni, fráter (twice), nómina; 7 examples, i.e. all but one of the apices on long vowels which are not on final syllables. Short vowels: rógo, Córis (?). Flobert too has noted a marked tendency for the apex to be used on stressed vowels. There is evidence that short vowels under the accent tended to be lengthened,54 and that tendency may help to explain a form such as rógo. Does sácrifició offer evidence that there was a secondary stress on the a?

It is also worth noting that it is particularly common to find final o marked with an apex when it is being used in the address in the prescript of a letter or in an address on the back of a letter. This is only what we would expect. The use of an apex in this position continues in papyrus letters into the third century, well after the use of the apex elsewhere had been abandoned.55 As has been indicated, Flobert's analysis naturally takes account of the use of apices over short vowels in inscriptions.56 We know of no such analysis for Latin papyri,57 but have noted two probable examples of its occurrence, both in letters: P.Köln III 160.758 and P.Qasr Ibrîm 30.59 This is clearly a subject which will repay further study and one for which the evidence of the tablets will be of great value.60

P.Flobert (1990), "Le témoignage épigraphique des apices et des I longae sur les quantités vocaliques en latin impérial", in G.Calboli (ed. 1990), 101-10
J.Kramer (1991) "Die Verwendung des Apex und P.Vindob. L 1 c", ZPE 88: 141-50.

Michael A. Covington
Latin Pronunciation Demystified
2 Four rivals
The pronunciation of Latin becomes much less puzzling once you realize that there are at least
four rival ways of doing it. The pronunciations you hear in biology or astronomy class don't
match the ones you learned from your Latin teacher, and guess what? That doesn't mean they're
wrong. They just reflect different periods in history.
Table 1 displays the four main methods. The ancient Roman pronunciation wasn't accurately
reconstructed until about 1900. Before that, scholars in every European country pronounced
Latin as if it were their own language. With English this gave particularly comical results because
English pronunciation had undergone drastic changes at the end of the Middle Ages. Here's an
example:
Julius Caesar
= YOO-lee-us KYE-sahr
(reconstructed ancient Roman)
YOO-lee-us (T)SAY-sahr (northern Continental Europe)
YOO-lee-us CHAY-sahr
("Church Latin" in Italy)
JOO-lee-us SEE-zer
("English method")
Today, we still use the English Method to pronounce historical and mythological names in En-
glish context. The constellation Orion is called O'Ryan, not o-REE-on, and Caesar is called
SEE-zer.
Italian "Church Latin" is widely though not universally used in the Catholic Church and in
singing.
I recommend the northern Continental pronunciation for unfamiliar scientific terms, since it
resembles many modern languages and is, in fact, the pronunciation used by Copernicus, Kepler,
Linnaeus, and other scientific pioneers.
1
________________________________________
The ancient Roman pronunciation is of course what we use when teaching or seriously speaking
Latin. Its biggest peculiarities are that v is pronounced like English w, and ae like English ai in
aisle. These two sounds were already changing at the end of the classical period.
3 Do we know how the Romans pronounced Latin?
Surprisingly, yes. The details of the reconstruction are given in W. Sidney Allen, Vox Latina
(written in English), Cambridge, 1965. There are several main sources of knowledge:
• The Latin alphabet was meant to be entirely phonetic. Unlike us, the ancient Romans did
not inherit their spellings from any earlier language. What you see is what you get.
• Language teaching was big business in Roman times, and ancient Roman grammarians give
us surprisingly detailed information about the sounds of the language.
• Languages derived from Latin give us a lot of evidence. In fact, many of the letters of the
alphabet are pronounced the same way in French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian. It
stands to reason that the original Latin pronunciation has survived.
• Spelling errors made by the ancient Romans are very informative. If two letters are often
mixed up, they must sound fairly similar. Likewise, if two letters are never mixed up, we
know they sounded different.
Here's an example. In classical times, the natives had no trouble keeping ae distinct from
e; if they ever misspelled ae it came out ai. Later on, they started changing ae to e. That
enables us to pinpoint when the sound of ae changed.
• Finally, transcriptions into other writing systems, such as Greek and Sanskrit, often pin
down the ancient pronunciation of Latin very precisely.

5 About the alphabet
In classical Latin, the vowels i and u can be pronounced non-syllabically as consonants. For
example, uia was not "oo-ee-ah" but rather "wee-ah" and is nowadays written via.
Except for a few purists, all Latinists today write v for consonantal u. This would have puzzled a
Roman, who considered U and V to be the same letter.
After classical times, Latin v came to be pronounced like English v, losing its phonetic resem-
blance to u.
Latin dictionaries and textbooks often write consonantal i as j, but editions of the classics usually
do not. Thus you will find Julius in the dictionary but Iulius in a classical text.
The letter w did not exist in Latin. In northern Europe, beginning in the Middle Ages, scribes
sometimes wrote w or vv to represent the sound of English w in non-Latin names.
5 About the alphabet
In classical Latin, the vowels i and u can be pronounced non-syllabically as consonants. For
example, uia was not "oo-ee-ah" but rather "wee-ah" and is nowadays written via.
Except for a few purists, all Latinists today write v for consonantal u. This would have puzzled a
Roman, who considered U and V to be the same letter.
After classical times, Latin v came to be pronounced like English v, losing its phonetic resem-
blance to u.
Latin dictionaries and textbooks often write consonantal i as j, but editions of the classics usually
do not. Thus you will find Julius in the dictionary but Iulius in a classical text.
The letter w did not exist in Latin. In northern Europe, beginning in the Middle Ages, scribes
sometimes wrote w or vv to represent the sound of English w in non-Latin names.

SMETIUS, HENRICUS, Prosodia quae syllabarum positione & diphtongis carentium quantitates, sola veterum Poetarum auctoritate, adductis exemplis demonstrat. Frankfurt, 1599.

Ага, а румынский и сардинский? А особенности северо-итальянских диалектов? Суть в том, что там нужно постулировать целую кучу процессов, чтобы из жесткого KV получить такую гамму разных фонем...

Скажите кь помягче и порезче-будет почти как ч!
Кстати,а корень был еще в доИЕ наверняка gui-, +суф.-v-дало vive,viva;vita; и жить,живой-от гив-?А guiva,gviva где-н.слово есть?

Que"куэ"->ке->к'е->че.Что же тут не так?Сначала выпало у неслоговое,потом к смягчилось и перешло в ч.