Long vowels are written with a macron: ā ē ī ō ū ȳ, though this is a modern convention.
Greek long vowels are ει, η, ου, ω, sometimes ι, υ, and occasionally α.
The English letter j was originally an i, forming a diphthong with the preceding vowel, so it forces the stress just as æ, œ, z, and x do.
A vowel followed by a consonant at the end of a word is short in English, except that final -es is always long, as in Pales /ˈpeɪliːz/ PAY-leez.
It differs from Classical Latin in distinguishing i from j and u from v. In addition to these letters, the digraphs æ and œ may be used (as in Cæsar and phœnix).
These two digraphs respectively represent mergers of the letters ae and oe (diphthongs, as are Greek αι and οι) and are often written that way (e.g., Caesar, phoenix).
Despite being written with two letters, the Greek sequences ch, ph, rh, th represent single sounds.
Several word-initial clusters, almost all derived from Greek, are simplified in Anglo-Latin by omitting the first consonant: In the middle of words both consonants in these clusters are pronounced (e.g. Charybdis, Patmos, Procne, prognosis, amnesia, apnœa, synopsis, cactus, captor); medial chth and phth are pronounced /kθ/ and /fθ/ respectively, as in autochthon and naphtha.
That is, bb, dd, ff, ll, mm, nn, pp, rr, ss, tt became pronounced /b d f l m n p r s t/.
Other notable instances involving degemination include: The following combinations, derived from Greek, are also pronounced as single consonants: The simple vowels of Anglo-Latin (a, æ, e, ei, i, o, œ, u, y) can each have several phonetic values dependent upon their stress, position in the word, and syllable structure.
Originally ordinary vowels, they acquired at different points in history the value of the glide /j/ (a y-sound like that in English canyon).
Subsequently, their value has fluctuated through history between a consonant and a vowel; the term "semivowel" thus reflects the intermediate historical as well as phonetic position of this sound.
The effects of the semivowel include the following: The most notable distinction between Anglo-Latin and other varieties of Latin is in the treatment of the vowels.
Each of these may, in turn, exhibit allophonic variation based on features of its phonetic environment, including whether it is stressed, whether it is in an open or closed syllable, where it is positioned in the word, and what consonants are next to it.
Exceptions to the pronunciation of short y generally involve prefixed elements beginning with hy- in an open syllable, such as hydro- and hypo-; these are always pronounced with a long y, e.g. hydrophobia, hypochondria.
This pronunciation is the result of hypercorrection; they used to be pronounced with a short /ɪ/, as is still the case in the word "hypocrite" and (for some speakers and formerly commonly) hypochondria.
"Long" vowels appear in three types of environments: Reduced vowels appear in unstressed syllables, except for: A variety of possible realizations are available for open, semiopen, and semiclosed initial unstressed syllables, including (for e and i) long, short, and reduced variants.
The most general tendency is for long vowels to appear when i and y are either preceded by no consonant or by h, e.g., idea, isosceles, hyperbola, hypothesis.
These are the same sounds as in the preceding chart, but without the option of the "long" vowels and much less rounding of the o. proscenium does not fall in this group, apparently because felt to be pro+scenium.
The underlying sound of open u is /juː/; it shares developments with the homophonous diphthong eu, which can however appear in closed syllables.
Diphthongs in Anglo-Latin are distinguished from simple vowels by having no long or short variants, regardless of position or syllable type.
A late and purely academic pronunciation distinguished final -ā from -a by pronouncing the former like "long a", /eɪ/: for instance, Oxford professor A. D. Godley rhymed Rusticā and "day".
That this was not the usual pronunciation can be told from such forms as circa, infra, extra, in absentia, sub pœna, all of which have an originally long final vowel: circā, sub pœnā, etc.
English adjectives formed from Greek and Latin roots often end in a suffix -an or -ic added to the oblique stem, sometimes retaining a preceding thematic vowel.
These produce generally predictable sound changes in the stem though, depending on its source or simply due to confusion, English -ean may be either stressed or unstressed.
[13] The fact that these suffixes are added to the oblique stem is relevant with words of the third declension whose stems end in a consonant that alters or disappears in the nominative case, as is apparent in such English noun–adjective pairs as Pallas ~ Palladian, Mars ~ Martian, Venus ~ Venerian, and indeed from non-adjectival derivatives of these words such as 'palladium'.
Changes that took place in this period included: Latin spoken in the context of Gallo-Romance and French from approximately the 6th to the 11th-12th centuries.
It starts with the displacement of the native pronunciation of Latin under the Anglo-Saxon kings with that used in the north of France, around the time of the Norman conquest in 1066.
In a fictional case Rex v. Venables and Others in A. P. Herbert's Uncommon Law, after a barrister uses phrases such as "ooltrah weerayze" (ultra vires) and "preemah fakiay" (prima facie) with the new Classics pronunciation he was taught at school, the Lord Chief Justice says "You are not to be blamed, Mr. Wick.
The bitter conclusion is, Mr. Wick, that you must go away and learn to pronounce the Latin tongue correctly, according to the immemorial practice of your profession."