credit to u/theromancrow for this great image :)
this post was submitted on 19 Mar 2025
40 points (97.6% liked)
Latin Language
190 readers
2 users here now
Salve! Haec communitas de lingua Latina in lemmy est.
Everyone is welcome here, from absolute beginners to practically fluent speakers.
Dictata:
- All type of content is allowed, from questions to memes, as long as it is about Latin.
- Think before you post or comment.
- Be kind.
If you are learning Latin, be sure to check the Codex.
Some other great communities to check out:
founded 2 months ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
You never fail to make such good comments :D I probably should have specified the differences between those two. I did double-check the color names just in case, but i could've missed that. If otherwise, i would've probably edited the mistake.
Long vowels in latin are pretty interesting. Usually i think of more precise pronunciation as a property for asian/semitic languages (harakaat, chinese tones, niqqud etc) but while most of the time in latin you don't have to pay too much attention to it, but in some edge cases it can completely change the meaning. That's what i'm afraid of (with who? Have no idea, not like there's any native latin speakers to heckle me lol)
Thank you!
BRB, bringing Cicero back with a time machine - he must judge our pronunciations! X-D
I wouldn't be too worried about it. There are minimal pairs*, but most of the time you can get who's who by context; even nominative -a vs. ablative -ā, one is often right at the start of the sentence, the other is typically right before the verb. Ecclesiastical speakers typically don't even bother.
And apparently some native speakers didn't either; specially in Sardinia and Africa proconsularis, the local dialects merged long/short pairs early on. (Eventually other dialects would do the same, but they first rearranged the vowels. It seems that Latin in those parts did something German and plenty Arabic varieties do, short vowels get centralised.)
* the ones that I remember, besides luteus/lūteus and NOM/ABL: