pronouciation question please!!

[all_mcom]

vowels---specifically in et, mus, tis, bimus, bit,estis, etc. On prima CD some words are long while on LC1 they are short. Also. et seems to be pronounced short in both, yet accroding to the pronounication guide, I am not finding any thing about short sounding vowels. Only, the ah, long a, long i, long o, and oo as in boot sounds for a,e, i, o, u. Am I not understanding the pronounciation guide correctly? TIA

[Vik]

I have noticed the inconsistency in pronunciation, as well, in both the DVDs and the CDs. Since we are taught from the beginning how to pronounce letters, I just let my kids know when the teacher has mispronounced something. She may say the same word two or three different ways, but I still find the DVDs very useful (actually I don't need the CD with the DVD).

I think I read once that the "e" followed by a "t" sort of gives the "e" a short "e" sound rather than the usual "ay" sound. Close counts.

The other thing that is almost never brought up is that a "t" followed by an "i" makes the sound "ts" as in "tsunami". I think "ti" and "gn" should be in the same list with the other letter/diphthong pronunciations explained at the beginning of the workbooks.

[martin]

The pronunciation of Latin is always a subject of questions from our customers. The bottom line is that there are quite a number of different pronunciations depending on what country you are in. There is a generally well-understood system used in American Universities, and a relatively well-understood system of pronunciation in the Catholic Church. But there are inconsistencies even there. Outside of that, it's the wild wild west.

You've obviously seen that some of that kind of variety has crept into our own programs. There is no one right pronunciation for Latin. For the parent or teacher teaching Latin, the objective is to simply settle on one pronunciation and be consistent within your own program--and even then only to avoid confusion.

We're always trying to do a better job of that ourselves (with mixed success as you can see), but for your purposes you just need to settle on one approach in your own home school or classroom situation and stick to it. In this regard the best I can do is to suggest what I do in my own classroom, which is to follow the simple rule of pronouncing the vowels long expect where it is plainly awkward.

More generally, I simply pronounce it like Italian. If you have heard Italian, you know what I mean.

Sorry for telling you to do what we say, not what we do, but we will try to do better ourselves.
That is the rule I use

[Vik]

That's what we do--Italianate Latin. Leigh does say that since no Roman is here to correct us, not to worry too much about it. But you know little kids... so happy to point out the least bit of deviation, whether in school or in life! So I just tell them, yes, the pronunciation doesn't jibe with the rules. Actually the kids often catch it before I do; just shows me they're paying attention!

Since I insist on consistency in other languages, I insist on it for Latin too, or else they'll get sloppy. :)