10 Comments

  1. Robert Johnson says:

    Is there a website where you can type the word and then get an audio pronunciation? Immensely enjoying your website. I am a senior (I do mean senior – when the dinosaurs walked the earth) Latin beginner. Have always wanted to learn Latin and now taking an online course. Now retired and never had time to do it when I practiced medicine. I am utterly engrossed by it. Thank you

    1. Hi Robert, it’s great to hear that you are enjoying my website! Unfortunately I don’t know of a website with that kind of audio function. But if you go to my post on “How To Pronounce Latin” and then scroll down to the bottom, I have a section called “Examples of Latin Pronunciation.” This links to some audio resources. You can’t type in any word you want, but you can hear the pronunciation of some common words and/or listen to short Latin texts. Hmm, if I could figure out the tech side maybe I could make the resource you have in mind – something to think about for the future.

  2. Thank you very much! Very helpful.
    Couple of questions:

    1. Are “vowels long by POSITION” actually pronounced “twice as long” as “short” vowels?

    2. You say above: “mo in admoneō” contains a short vowel that is not followed by two consonants. That’s why this syllable is short and cannot take the stress.

    Do you mean “ne in admoneō” contains a short vowel (and so on)?
    The stress IS on the “mo” (even though it’s short), since it CANNOT be on the short “ne” — right?

    CHEERS! Patrick.

    1. Hi Patrick, I’m glad the post was helpful!

      1. First, the vowels themselves are not long by position, but rather the SYLLABLES are long by position. So a short vowel followed by two consonants is still short (and pronounced accordingly). But the SYLLABLE is long; this is because it ends with a consonant and thus takes longer to say. The length of the short vowel + consonant(s) is roughly equivalent to the length of a naturally long syllable.

      2. Oops, that was a typo. Yes, the stress is on the “mo”! Thanks for pointing this out – I have corrected the post.

      Let me know if you have any other questions!

  3. Many thanks! Everything explained clearly!

    Just a question:
    What do you do with the second person singular of the present imperative of facio (and dico, duco, fero)? Should you stress the last syllable? beneFAC, proDUC

    1. Hi Martin, this is a great question. For these particular verbs, you do stress the FINAL syllable in the 2nd person singular imperatives. This is because these imperative forms are irregular.

      Originally, for example, *prōdūc* was *prōdūce*. In this original form, the stress fell on *dū* because it was a long second-to-last syllable. Eventually the final E disappeared, but the stress remained on *dū*.

      (Apologies for my late response – I have been quite sick!)

  4. John M Meredith says:

    @Robert Johnson – audio pronunciation: use Google translate (translate.google.com). Click on the loudspeaker icon, lower left of either the source text (left panel) or translated text (right panel). You can copy-and-paste text into the source panel and the translation will instantly appear in the destination panel. And good luck with the learning curve!
    PS – You can have fun reversing the translation with the bidrectional arrows between the panels to see if the “untranslated” translated text is the same as your original source text. Do this multiple times to see how long it takes for the translation to mutate into something quite different!

  5. G.B. Edwards says:

    Hello, I am a biologist who frequently encounters Latin in scientific names. I am presently having a discussion with a colleague about the pronunciation of the Latin word ‘inclemens’. Since ‘clemens’ has a long vowel in its first syllable, and prefixes such as ‘in-‘ are rarely stressed, it seems clear to me that the proper place to stress the word according to the Latin rules of pronunciation would be in-cle’-mens. However my colleague (and I have also seen this in one online site) thinks the proper pronunciation is in’-cle-mens. Can you please let us know the correct pronunciation and why? Thank you.

    1. Hello and apologies for the delay in responding to your question! You are right that ‘inclēmēns’ should be stressed on the second syllable (cle). The reason is because the stress always falls on the second-to-last syllable if it is long. In this case, the E in ‘cle’ is a long E, so it does take the stress. I hope that helps!

  6. G.B. Edwards says:

    Yes, thanks much for answering my question!

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