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Vox Latina: A Guide to the Pronunciation of Classical Latin
This is a reissue in paperback of the second edition of Professor Allen's highly successful book on the pronunciation of Latin in Rome in the Golden Age. In the second edition the text of the first edition is reprinted virtually unchanged but is followed by a section of supplementary notes that deal with subsequent developments in the subject. The author also added an appendix on the names of the letters of the Latin alphabet and a select bibliography.
148 pages, Paperback
First published January 2, 1965
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About the author
W. Sidney Allen
14 books5 followersWilliam Sidney Allen was a linguist and philologist.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
June 6, 2020
It annoys me when people claim that nobody knows how Latin was pronounced, and therefore (they say) anything goes. In fact we know a great deal about how Latin was pronounced. It was written for the most part phonetically and logically, and we have the evidence of what the Romans wrote about it, the mistakes people made in writing it, the way it was transcribed into Greek and how Greek was transcribed into Latin, the history of the Romance languages that are descended from it, and so on. But there is much to be said about the details, and this book discusses them thoroughly. I felt that too much attention was placed on what can be deduced from Latin poetry. This was for the most part an artificial construct imitative of Greek poetry, applying Greek rules to another language in which they really didn't work. But if you're going to study Roman poetry, it's certainly of interest to try to reconstruct how the Romans would read it. For example, did the stress fall on the syllables that would normally be stressed in prose, or as in Greek on the "long" syllables that contain a long vowel or end with a double consonant? Also interesting to read was the discussion of the origin of the English names for the letters of the alphabet. I learned that in most cases they are the same as the Latin names, but pronounced the way English-speakers were once taught to pronounce Latin: ay, bi, si, di etc., instead of ah, bay, kay, day, etc. The book is heavy going in places but well worth the effort of reading.
August 9, 2007
VOX LATINA is W. Sidney Allen's reconstruction of the pronunciation of Latin in the classical period using a variety of ancient sources. It is a companion to his VOX GRAECA reconstruction of Attic Greek pronunciation and, like the Greek work, *the* work on the subject.
VOX LATINA presupposes no knowledge of general linguistics and is accessible by any undergraduate studying Latin. It includes a ten-page introduction to phonetics to get the reader up to speed. The reconstruction pronunciation is divided into six areas, these being consonants, vowels, vowel length, vowel junction, accent, and quantity. A series of appendices contains selected quotations from Latin grammarians and a chronology of these sources, a history of Latin pronunciation in England, and the names of the letters of the alphabet in Latin.
My only real complaints are the same as those I have against VOX GRAECA, namely that Sidney Allen uses "y" to transcribe one of the semivowels instead of "j" as the IPA would have it. And though the IPA (with Allen's idiosyncracies) is used through most of the book, the quick-reference "Summary of Recommended Pronunciations" at the end gives examples with analogies to undependable Received Pronunciation English, French or German sounds ("o as German 'Bott'", "short u as in English 'put'").
If you are a Latin student interested in broader themes of historical linguistics, VOX LATINA is an essential purchase, as is its companion VOX GRAECA. A secure knowledge of the reconstructed pronunciation will be of enormous help in drawing comparisons with other Indo-European languages and memorising Proto-Indo-European roots.
VOX LATINA presupposes no knowledge of general linguistics and is accessible by any undergraduate studying Latin. It includes a ten-page introduction to phonetics to get the reader up to speed. The reconstruction pronunciation is divided into six areas, these being consonants, vowels, vowel length, vowel junction, accent, and quantity. A series of appendices contains selected quotations from Latin grammarians and a chronology of these sources, a history of Latin pronunciation in England, and the names of the letters of the alphabet in Latin.
My only real complaints are the same as those I have against VOX GRAECA, namely that Sidney Allen uses "y" to transcribe one of the semivowels instead of "j" as the IPA would have it. And though the IPA (with Allen's idiosyncracies) is used through most of the book, the quick-reference "Summary of Recommended Pronunciations" at the end gives examples with analogies to undependable Received Pronunciation English, French or German sounds ("o as German 'Bott'", "short u as in English 'put'").
If you are a Latin student interested in broader themes of historical linguistics, VOX LATINA is an essential purchase, as is its companion VOX GRAECA. A secure knowledge of the reconstructed pronunciation will be of enormous help in drawing comparisons with other Indo-European languages and memorising Proto-Indo-European roots.
October 2, 2013
Gostei muito do livro. Analisa minuciosamente como a pronúncia do latim clássico pode ser reconstruída.
November 10, 2024
So, someone posted a review of this book, indicating that it was a great guide to correct classical Latin pronunciation.
I agree, in that it is a very exhaustive look at Latin in classical times, with analysis of evidence of pronunciations through the following centuries. But it is not an easy read, despite being a short book.
I have some Latin, and I did once take a course in linguistics way back when - I nevertheless found myself out of my depth in many places. A much more thorough understanding of Latin would be required to be able to understand the many Latin quotes he includes (thank goodness for Google translate); he also includes some Greek, which I have almost no understanding of.
He basically goes through each letter of the Latin alphabet, reviewing its correct pronunciation, along with historical evidence of deviations. I did pick up some interesting trivia. For example, the word "orchard" shows that, when the Latin word "hortus" (garden) was borrowed into Anglo-Saxon, Latin speakers were already dropping the initial "h" (thus, our word is "orchard" not "horchard").
But honestly, there's no way I could keep in my head all the things he says about each letter, and there's no easy summary guide for quick look-ups to let you know if you're saying something correctly. An audio component would be an excellent accompaniment to this book as well, since I had many moments of trying to sound things out to myself, and still not being sure if I got them right.
The easiest read of the whole book is Appendix B, which presents a brief discussion of English pronunciation of Latin. I found it interesting that the clergy seemed to be the biggest opponent to proposed reformation of Latin pronunciation (by Erasmus) in the 1500's, and scholars at Cambridge were threatened with being fired if they persisted in using the reformed pronunciations. In a similar dispute in France, clergy and scholars argued over the pronunciation of words such as 'quamquam', whose disputed pronunciation 'cancan' may have much later given the name to the dance, since 'cancan' may have be used to signify a scandalous performance.
On the whole, if you are an accomplished Latin scholar with an interest in the struggle to resurrect the correct pronunciation of this dead language, you will no doubt find this book useful. But it is definitely an academic work, and not for the faint of heart.
I agree, in that it is a very exhaustive look at Latin in classical times, with analysis of evidence of pronunciations through the following centuries. But it is not an easy read, despite being a short book.
I have some Latin, and I did once take a course in linguistics way back when - I nevertheless found myself out of my depth in many places. A much more thorough understanding of Latin would be required to be able to understand the many Latin quotes he includes (thank goodness for Google translate); he also includes some Greek, which I have almost no understanding of.
He basically goes through each letter of the Latin alphabet, reviewing its correct pronunciation, along with historical evidence of deviations. I did pick up some interesting trivia. For example, the word "orchard" shows that, when the Latin word "hortus" (garden) was borrowed into Anglo-Saxon, Latin speakers were already dropping the initial "h" (thus, our word is "orchard" not "horchard").
But honestly, there's no way I could keep in my head all the things he says about each letter, and there's no easy summary guide for quick look-ups to let you know if you're saying something correctly. An audio component would be an excellent accompaniment to this book as well, since I had many moments of trying to sound things out to myself, and still not being sure if I got them right.
The easiest read of the whole book is Appendix B, which presents a brief discussion of English pronunciation of Latin. I found it interesting that the clergy seemed to be the biggest opponent to proposed reformation of Latin pronunciation (by Erasmus) in the 1500's, and scholars at Cambridge were threatened with being fired if they persisted in using the reformed pronunciations. In a similar dispute in France, clergy and scholars argued over the pronunciation of words such as 'quamquam', whose disputed pronunciation 'cancan' may have much later given the name to the dance, since 'cancan' may have be used to signify a scandalous performance.
On the whole, if you are an accomplished Latin scholar with an interest in the struggle to resurrect the correct pronunciation of this dead language, you will no doubt find this book useful. But it is definitely an academic work, and not for the faint of heart.
May 6, 2020
Thorough and precise. Though it's presented as a practical guide to pronunciation, it would probably be a bit overwhelming to a novice student of Latin—not least because Allen frequently quotes ancient grammarians without bothering to translate them—but there's little that should be very surprising if you've learned Latin in a classroom setting almost anywhere in the last couple of decades.
As an in-depth phonological treatment of the language, Allen's defence of certain decisions is sometimes a bit more concise than is strictly desirable, but that's also a consequence of the time it was written—the first edition dates from 1965, and this second one, which mostly just adds a few pages of notes, from 1978. Though almost all of it holds up, it would be interesting to see it expanded and updated with more recent scholarship; unfortunately, Allen selfishly died in 2004.
(Allen massacres the IPA, but he gets a pass because he 1. says he's going to, and 2. makes explicit how. His reasoning is bunk, of course, and replacing [j] with [y] because English people aren't bright enough to deal with it otherwise is a bad call when Latin also had a [y] (which he writes [ü]).)
As an in-depth phonological treatment of the language, Allen's defence of certain decisions is sometimes a bit more concise than is strictly desirable, but that's also a consequence of the time it was written—the first edition dates from 1965, and this second one, which mostly just adds a few pages of notes, from 1978. Though almost all of it holds up, it would be interesting to see it expanded and updated with more recent scholarship; unfortunately, Allen selfishly died in 2004.
(Allen massacres the IPA, but he gets a pass because he 1. says he's going to, and 2. makes explicit how. His reasoning is bunk, of course, and replacing [j] with [y] because English people aren't bright enough to deal with it otherwise is a bad call when Latin also had a [y] (which he writes [ü]).)
January 14, 2020
This book was an engaging introduction to the scholarship on the so-called "Reconstructed pronunciation." Especially helpful were the appendices, which included quotes (in Latin) from period grammarians and authors on the pronunciation of Latin, a history of the "Traditional English" pronunciation, and a review of the scholarship that happened between the two editions.
The scholarship isn't entirely current. (It was, after all, written in 1989.) In particular, more scholarship has been done on the vowels, and many persons are claiming a 5 vowel system (with no open/closed variants of u and i), including Calabrese. But this read was fun and engaging (insofar as a scholarly text on Latin pronunciation can be), and it was accessible to someone with little formal linguistic background.
The scholarship isn't entirely current. (It was, after all, written in 1989.) In particular, more scholarship has been done on the vowels, and many persons are claiming a 5 vowel system (with no open/closed variants of u and i), including Calabrese. But this read was fun and engaging (insofar as a scholarly text on Latin pronunciation can be), and it was accessible to someone with little formal linguistic background.
Read
October 10, 2019After the first reading, I think I have to reread it. Great study of Latin sounds!
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