Latin pronunciation

[Carmine Colacino]

You are right. My idea was more that of a reasonable approximation, though,
rather than an unrealistic perfection :-)
What I mean is that I had in mind five vowel sounds (a-e-i-o-u) to be
pronounced in a more or less uniform, and approximate, way. After all, you
may pronounce [i] as in sheep [i:] or in ship [i], and still it is,
approximately, an [i] {ee} sound, what changes is its length, I believe; th=
e
problem is when you pronounce it [ai] {eye}.

I know even less Englishmen that can pronounce reasonably a double
consonant, but I do not think it is a big deal:-)


[phonetic symbol]
{English approximation}

;-)

Carmine Colacino


> I think you underestimate the extent to which the way of pronounciation
> of one's mother tongue is hard-wired into one's brain. For instance, I
> know few Italians who manage to proncounce the name of an embarkation as
> "ship" rather than "sheep", even though their English may be nearly
> faultless in terms of grammar, comprehension, etc..
>
> Just my $ .02    ;-)
>
> --
> Wolfgang W=FCster
> School of Biological Sciences, University of Wales, Bangor, UK
> e-mail: w.wuster at bangor.ac.uk   WWW: http://sbsweb.bangor.ac.uk/
>


--
Dr. Carmine Colacino
Herbarium Lucanum & Dept. of Biology
University of Basilicata
85100 Potenza, southern Italy
e-mail: colacino at unibas.it
url: http://www.unibas.it/utenti/colacino/mediterraneo.html