Pronunciation - Latin

[AleisterCrowley]

de facto
de minimis
de jure
etc
How is 'de' pronounced - "Dee" or "Duh"? Or 'other'...
Also ...jure - "Jaw" "Jury", "Jawray"?

[Alaric]

How is 'de' pronounced - "Dee" or "Duh"? Or 'other'...
Also ...jure - "Jaw" "Jury", "Jawray"?

I would say "day" and "Jury"", but that may well not be how the Romans would have said it. Catholic Church Latin is another guide, but that's believed to have wandered well away from the original.

[bluedonkey]

No idea if I'm right but I've always pronounced it "day jew-ray" and "day fac-to"

On the other hand, how Latin was pronounced in ancient Rome may be unknown. At school, we were taught to pronounce "v" as "w". Previous generations had I think been taught to pronounce "v" as "v".

No doubt Mary Beard knows if anyone does.

[bungeejumper]

I have a distant recollection of my Latin master telling me that the Romans didn't have a long "e" sound, so that it would have been a short "de" (as in death), rather than a "day". But I don't believe anybody knows for sure. The best clues might come from rhyming poetry (which they also didn't do much of) or from wordplay and puns.

"jure" wouldn't have had a j at all, because the Romans didn't use it at all. It would have started with an i, as in "yooo-re" (presumably with the short "e" at the end.

Edit, sorry Buedonkey, I just saw your post There's more. Did the Romans pronounce a v as we would, or as a w? I doubt that anybody knows, but Mary Beard uses the w, and I'd trust her to have read more everyday Latin than most modern scholars.

BJ

[Dod101]

de pronounce 'di' by me anyway.

jure pronounced 'joor' with a soft 'j'

But what do I know? I am no Latin scolar.

Dod

[kempiejon]

As discussed we don't really know how the Latinish would pronounce it but youtube has clips of people pronouncing it today.
De facto https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dqmEtR8LLU
De Jure https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3C49aGtzCYM

[bluedonkey]

Ever since I discovered the "Quick Links / New Posts", my enjoyment of TLF has increased greatly! I previously bookmarked a specific folder/forum.

[AleisterCrowley]

As discussed we don't really know how the Latinish would pronounce it but youtube has clips of people pronouncing it today.
De facto https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dqmEtR8LLU
De Jure https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3C49aGtzCYM

So, if that is correct;
It's Duh Facto
And Day Juray

!?

[Dod101]

As discussed we don't really know how the Latinish would pronounce it but youtube has clips of people pronouncing it today.
De facto https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dqmEtR8LLU
De Jure https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3C49aGtzCYM

So, if that is correct;
It's Duh Facto
And Day Juray

!?

To me De is pronounced 'Di' in both cases and Jure is clearly Juray with a soft 'J'

Dod

[bungeejumper]

As discussed we don't really know how the Latinish would pronounce it but youtube has clips of people pronouncing it today.
De facto https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dqmEtR8LLU
De Jure https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3C49aGtzCYM

So, if that is correct;
It's Duh Facto
And Day Juray

!?

American reader, by the sound of it. And what would they know? (I've checked out pronunciations for some other Mediterranean words, and they were way off.)

In fairness, the only pronunciations that would be familiar to an American speaker would be from European immigrants, whose language might have undergone several generations' worth of evolution from the way their ancestors might have spoken it. And Mexican Spanish differs from Castilian Spanish in all kinds of ways.

But, as noted, there are three distinct ways and contexts in which Latin is spoken - by schoolteachers, by priests, and by lawyers. All of whom have spent the last 1,600 years mangling what the Romans left behind for us. And all in their own inimitable ways.

BJ

[bluedonkey]

And then of course there's Classical Latin which we are talking about, as opposed to Vulgar (Common) Latin.

[AleisterCrowley]

Well, it's going to be duh facto and duh juray in my case.
Clearly nobody can tell me I've got them 'wrong' as there are so many 'right' ways to pronounce them ..

[GoSeigen]

Well, it's going to be duh facto and duh juray in my case.
Clearly nobody can tell me I've got them 'wrong' as there are so many 'right' ways to pronounce them ..

Since Italian comes from Latin I think you'll not be far off pronouncing it the Italian way. True for many languages actually as Italian transliteration is the most common. Might sound a bit foreign to the average British ear though.

GS

[UncleEbenezer]

There's no One Right Way.

Just consider modern English. Even within one country we have many pronunciations: think RP vs Cockney vs Geordie vs Brummie vs [continued on page 94]. That's just one small part of what was the Roman Empire[1], and has been much-homogenised even within our own lifetimes by the effect of radio and telly.

And that's before the effect of time. From Caesar to mediæval church latin (which is kind-of a root for modern usages such as the OP's examples) is about as long as from Beowulf's english to our times.

Modern Latin - which kind-of encompasses at least a millennium of evolution since it was a language of regular plebs - is Latin As A Foreign Language. Best analogy would be English for Foreigners.

[1] Noting that my example avoided drawing on anything north of the wall.

[UncleEbenezer]

Well, it's going to be duh facto and duh juray in my case.
Clearly nobody can tell me I've got them 'wrong' as there are so many 'right' ways to pronounce them ..

Since Italian comes from Latin I think you'll not be far off pronouncing it the Italian way. True for many languages actually as Italian transliteration is the most common. Might sound a bit foreign to the average British ear though.

GS

Italian as we know it today is a pretty recent evolution. It only really standardised (on a core of something akin to what had been Florentine) with the Risorgimento in the mid-19th century, and still has a lot of regional variation.

Having said that, yes, it is the modern bird to ancient Rome's dinosaur.

If you take modern Italian as your guide, v is never w. Unless perhaps spoken by Michael Palin in Life of Brian ;)

[torata]

Well, it's going to be duh facto and duh juray in my case.
Clearly nobody can tell me I've got them 'wrong' as there are so many 'right' ways to pronounce them ..

Since Italian comes from Latin I think you'll not be far off pronouncing it the Italian way. True for many languages actually as Italian transliteration is the most common. Might sound a bit foreign to the average British ear though.

GS

As part of my Latin degree, I got a departmental grant to go to Italy to look at the ruins. There I met an Italian friend of a friend who was a Latin teacher in a secondary school. Couldn't understand a bloody word of the Latin he insisted on quoting to me.

torata

[EssDeeAitch]

I asked a friends son who has recently completed his classics degree at Oxford and he offers the following.

The 'de' is always pronounced 'day' as opposed to a Frenchy 'de'.

Strictly 'ii' at the end of the word should be pronounced 'ee-ee'.

It's the case of the Latin word which controls this ie genitive or ablative

So 'day facto'
'day minimees'
'day yuray'

Latin 'Genii' would be pronounced 'gen-ee-ee'