Getting started on Classical Latin

3 The pronunciation of Latin

Contrary to what many people think, we do know how classical Latin (the Latin spoken in the first century BC and the first century AD) was pronounced. One of the main clues is provided by the spelling of Latin names in Greek: thus, since Latin Valeria, for instance, was spelled in Greek, we can tell that Latin V (capital u) was pronounced as a w. Alternative spellings and misspellings on inscriptions also help to show common pronunciations, as do the regular metres of Latin verse, the remarks of ancient grammarians and other writers, and comparison of Latin with other languages.

The Roman alphabet is still very much in use today: it is the alphabet used for English and many other languages throughout the world, and it owed its original spread to the use of Latin in the western Roman Empire. In classical times, the alphabet consisted of 23 letters, not our 26, as it lacked j, v and w.

Below is a letter-by-letter guide to Latin pronunciation.

Letter Pronunciation
a (short) as in a man (i.e. nearer cut than cat)
ā (long) as in father
ae (diphthong) as in aisle
au (diphthong) as in cow
b as in English
c always hard, like k
ch rougher than in Scots loch
d as in English
e (short) as in get
ē (long) as in grey
eu (diphthong) pronounced as e+u (eh-oo elided, not as in you)
f as in English
g always hard, as in get
gn in practice, as in ignorant (should really be ng+n as in hangnail)
h as in have
i vowel (short) as in miss
ī vowel (long) as in meet
i consonant as in yellow (becomes j in English derivatives)
k as in English
1 as in English
m as in English
n as in English
o (short) as in not
ō (long) as in note
oe (diphthong) as in toil
p as in English
ph in practice, as in foot (should really be an aspirated p, i.e. p with an exhaled breath)
q only in the combination qu, as in queen
r strongly pronounced, as in Scots and Italian
s unvoiced, as in hiss , i.e. not as in his
t as in English
th in practice, unvoiced, as in thin, i.e. not as in then (should really be an aspirated t)
u vowel (short) As in put (written as V as a capital letter)
ū vowel (long) As in school
u consonant as in wet
x unvoiced, as in exercise
y Always a vowel, short or long, like French u, German ü, or Scots guid
z as in English

In many older Latin texts, and even in current schoolbooks, the consonant u is sometimes written as v. Many people pronounce it, incorrectly, as v, but in fact this pronunciation did not develop in Latin until after the classical period.

In RLT and GVE, long vowels are helpfully marked with a macron (a line over the vowel, for example amīca), to indicate the pronunciation, but the macrons are not part of the spelling, so you need not write them in yourself.

As for the stress accent in Latin, it falls on the first syllable of a word of two syllables, for example séruus, ámo. In a longer word it falls on the penultimate (second to last) syllable, if that syllable is long, for example amícus, honóres, and on the antepenultimate (third to last) syllable, if the penultimate syllable is short, for example família, ígitur.

If you would like to know more about the pronunciation of Latin, you could consult W. Sidney Allen's book Vox Latina (1965).