Familia Romana recordings that are alternative to Hans Oeberg recordings (a different and much younger voice). The stresses/accents and vowel lengths are ALWAYS adhered to. So you can imitate it - Download the MP3 http://tinyurl.com/oqr27s2 - Download the no-background-noise MP3 version http://tinyurl.com/lwd84sa but with a slightly worse voice quality. (so I don't recommend this version) ___________________________________ The pronunciation: I do adhere to the restituted rules quite rigorously but there might be some deviations I know about and I am going to list them: 1) The vowel inventory used for my restituted pronunciation (the long and short monophtongs I use) is this http://tinyurl.com/p7y86en . It is not 100% what the book (Vox Latina) prescribes but it is daringly close (much closer than the English vowel inventory for example). The only difference between my way and the prescribed way is that my long vowels are always identical to the short vowels (the same vowel quality) and differ purely only by the length (different vowel quantity), unless for "í/ī. Sometimes it might happen that I will use a vowel which is identical to what is prescribed by the book. But you will probably hear no difference. 2) I do not turn final vowel+m (um/em/am) into a nasalized vowel both for higher clarity of the recording and mainly because I do not hear anybody from the latinists I talk to to do that very much unless they read poetry. Also Vivarium Novum teachers, as far as I know, do not do this. (And Vivarium Novum is the biggest known community speaking only Latin) 3) I do not produce "QU" as labiovelar stop, because the majority seems to ignore this also. We produce instead a sequence of two sounds "Q + W" as in Italian: so my pronunciation is not exactly what the book (Vox Latina) would prescribe but it is what you will hear in the restituted pronunciation all around the world (both from lips of academics and amateurs). To be honest I have never met (or heard) anybody to do here a real labiovelar stop. 4) My mother tongue does not aspirate certain consonants: "p,t,k" which is GOOD for Latin and this recording is therefore also very beneficial for English speakers who tend to do this and usually do it also in Latin, even if they try to avoid this. Terence Tunberg, maybe the best latinist in the world, also does it sometimes and that makes him distinctively sounding English when speaking Latin. 5) My native tongue never reduces vowel / does not turn them into schwas, so this is again very beneficial for the English speakers. E.G. I would never pronounce "animus" as "anim-s", which when unreduced, is correct. 6) My initial consonants that are supposed to be voiced, like "b" in "barba", are always voiced. English speakers tend to produce them as unvoiced and unspirated, so this will be a good example for them. 7) the classical diphtong "AE" is not supposed to be exactly the same as the first vowel in the word "island" but it is supposed to be something as "a" + suppressed "e". But I will probably not always adhere to this. The audible difference is marginal. Same with "oe". 8) I never pronounce long vowels (monophtongs) as diphtongs as English speakers tend to do. So my "ē" is never "ei", my "ō" is never "ou", etc. 9) I pronounced 'Lesbos' with "z". This was not on purpose... it is what we call in phonetics an assimilation of voicing. ("b" is voiced, ergo "s" will be voiced too). Maybe the Greek pronunciation of that time had this (but I do not know). If something else occurs me, I will write it down. I hope you will enjoy it. As I mentioned, the recording is done with my headphones on, so it is done with a silent voice in a way which gives it an interesting color, but I think it is not exactly unpleasant :-) - I have not removed the background noise because the voice would suffer a bit.

• published: 22 Dec 2013
• views: 21