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Latin Pronunciation Guide (view source)

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With the great number of differences in pronunciation between Classical Latin and English, a troper may be confused as to how to transcribe [[Ominous Latin Chanting]] or how to read a [[Pretentious Latin Motto]]. This page will help.
 
It should be noted that until very recently, Latin has commonly been pronounced ''according to the phonetic rules of the native language of the speaker.'' Thus a name like "[[Cicero (Creator)|Cicero]]", pronounced "Keekayro" by the man himself, would have been pronounced "Sissuhro" by an Englishman or American, "Seesayro" by a Frenchman, "Tseetsayro" by a German, "Cheechayro" by an Italian, "Theethayro" by a Spaniard, "Tsitserohn" by a Russian, and so on. "''Classical'' Latin" was a formal, somewhat artificial language - the common people definitely didn't speak it (Greek was the ''lingua franca'' of Ancient Rome), it already had its regional dialects, and thus was confined to the educated elite. Its pronunciation is a reconstruction, based on philological principles, of how scholars think the language was probably pronounced in the age of Augustus (around the 1st century BC/AD).
 
Note, however, that in the Christian religious context, there is an similar different pronunciation guide for it, based largely on the standard modern pronunciation in Rome. This is known as '''Ecclesiastical Latin''' or Church Latin, and is the pronunciation you'll typically hear in [[Ominous Latin Chanting]] (e.g. Mozart's ''Requiem'' or Beethoven's ''Missa Solemnis''). Even there, though, regional variations exist; a recording of, say, the current (German) Pope will sound somewhat different than that of one of the modern Italian popes. The pronunication guide below details only '''Classical''' Latin, not the Ecclesiastical variant.
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First off, the biggest difference between Classical Latin and English/Ecclesiastical Latin, '''the letter "V" in Latin is pronounced like the letter "U" or "W" in English.''' The ancient Romans didn't have separate letters for U and V.
 
It has become the convention in modern printing of Latin works to print "v" where a consonant is indicated, and "u" where is a vowel. Classical orthography made no such distinction, but used "V" in both cases -- thus "VIDEO, AVDIO" (all in caps, by the way, small letters being a mediaeval or perhaps very late-Imperial invention). Inconsistently, modern printing prefers "i" for both consonant and vowel, where older printings substituted a "j" for the former -- thus where Augustus would have written "IVVAVIT", [[Goodbye, Mr. Chips|Mr. Chipping]] would have written "juvavit", and a modern Latinist "iuvavit". It all gets very confusing.
 
With that out of the way, let's begin explaining the lesser differences.
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