Latin phonology and orthography

Letterforms

Letters and phonemes

1. The letters,,,, and, each of which could represent either a short vowel or a long one. The long vowels were sometimes marked with apices, as in,,, and, while long could be marked with long I. Since the 19th century, long vowels have been marked with macrons, as in,,,, and ; sometimes, breves may also be used to indicate short vowels, as in,,,,, and.
2. The letters and, which could either indicate vowels or the consonants and, respectively. In modern times, the letters and began to be used as distinct spellings for these consonants.
3. Digraphs such as, and, which represented the diphthongs, and. In a few words, these could also stand for sequences of two adjacent vowels, which is sometimes marked by the use of a diaeresis in modern transcriptions, as in, and.
4. The digraphs, and, standing for the aspirated consonants, and .

   Consonants

Phonetics

• Latin may have had the labialized velar stops and as opposed to the stop + semivowel sequences and . The argument for is stronger than that for.
• The former could occur between vowels, where it always counted as a single consonant in Classical poetry, whereas the latter only occurred after, where it is impossible to tell whether it counted as one consonant or two. The labial element, whether or, appears to have been palatalised before a front vowel, resulting in or Voiced labial–palatal approximant . This palatalisation did not affect the independent consonant before front vowels.
• and before were not distinct from and, which were allophonically labialized to and by a following such that writing a double was unnecessary. This is suggested by the fact that equus and unguunt are also found spelt as ecus and ungunt.
• , and were less aspirated than the corresponding English consonants, as implied by their usually being transliterated into Ancient Greek as, and, and their pronunciation in most Romance languages. In many cases, however, it was not the Latin and, but rather and, that were used to render Greek word-initial and in borrowings, especially borrowings of a non-learned character. This might suggest that the Latin and had some degree of aspiration, making and more suitable to approximate the Greek sounds.
• , and were pronounced with notable aspiration, like the initial consonants of the English pot, top, and cot respectively. They are attested beginning c. 150 BC, in the spellings, and, at first only used to render the Greek, and in loanwords. From c. 100 BC onward, and spread to a number of native Latin words as well, such as pulcher and lachrima. When this occurred it was nearly always in the vicinity of the consonant or, and the implication is that Latin, and had become aspirated in that context.
• was found as a rendering of the Greek in borrowings starting around the first century BC. In initial position, appears to have been pronounced, and between vowels it appears to have been doubled to .
• was unvoiced in all positions in Classical Latin. Previously however Old Latin appears to have voiced to between vowels, ultimately turning to. Cicero reports the family-name Papisius being changed to Papirius in the fourth century BC, which may give some idea of the chronology. Afterward new instances of developed between vowels from sound-changes like the degemination of after long vowels and diphthongs, which Quintilian reports to have happened a little after the time of Cicero and Virgil.
• In Old Latin, final after a short vowel was often lost, probably after first debuccalizing to, as in the inscriptional form Cornelio for Cornelios. Often in the poetry of Plautus, Ennius, and Lucretius, final did not count as a consonant when followed by a word beginning with a consonant. By the Classical period this practice was described as characteristic of non-urban speech by Cicero.
• was labiodental in Classical Latin but may have been a bilabial in Old Latin, or perhaps in free variation with. Lloyd, Sturtevant, and Kent make this argument based on misspellings in early inscriptions, the fact that many instances of Latin descend from Proto-Indo-European, and the outcomes of the sound in Romance.
• In most cases was pronounced as a bilabial nasal. At the end of a word, however, it was generally lost beginning in Old Latin, leaving compensatory lengthening and nasalization on the preceding vowel. In Old Latin inscriptions, final is often omitted, as in for virom. It was frequently elided before a following vowel in poetry and lost without a trace in the Romance languages, except in a number of monosyllabic words, where it often survives as or a further development thereof.
• and merged via assimilation before a following consonant, with the following consonant determining the resulting pronunciation: bilabial before a bilabial consonant, coronal before a coronal consonant and velar before a velar consonant. This occurred both within words and across word-boundaries.
• assimilated to a velar nasal before. Allen and Greenough say that a vowel before is always long, but W. Sidney Allen says that is based on an interpolation in Priscian, and the vowel was actually long or short depending on the root, as for example rēgnum from the root of rēx but magnus from the root of magis. probably did not assimilate to before. The cluster arose by syncope, as for example tegmen from tegimen. Original developed into in flamma, from the root of flagrō. At the start of a word, original was reduced to, and this change was reflected in the orthography of later texts, as in gnātus, gnōscō > nātus, nōscō.
• In Classical Latin, the rhotic was most likely an alveolar trill, at least in some positions and when doubled. Gaius Lucilius likened it to the sound of a dog, and later writers described it as being produced by vibration. In Old Latin, intervocalic developed into , suggesting an approximant like the English, and was sometimes written as, possibly suggesting a tap .
• was strongly velarized in syllable coda and probably somewhat palatalized when geminated or followed by. In intervocalic position, it appears to have been velarized before all vowels except.
• generally appeared only at the beginning of words, before a vowel, as in iaceō, except in compound words such as adiaceō. Between vowels, it was generally as a geminate, as in cuius except in compound words such as trāiectus. This is sometimes marked in modern editions by a circumflex on the preceding vowel, e.g. cûius, êius, mâior, etc. could also have varied with in the same morpheme, as in iam and etiam, and in poetry one could be replaced with the other for metrical purpose.
• was pronounced as an approximant until the first century AD, when and intervocalic began to develop into fricatives. In poetry, and could be replaced with each other, as in ~ or ~. Unlike it remained a single consonant in most words, e.g. in cavē, although it did represent a double in borrowings from Greek such as the name Evander.
• was generally still pronounced in Classical Latin, at least by educated speakers, but in many cases it appears to have been lost early on between vowels, and sometimes in other contexts as well. Where intervocalic survived, it was likely voiced.