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What is the rule here for using macrons in Latin?
I don't use.
http://tatoeba.org/eng/sentence...lexmarcelo/lat
Diacritical marks don't exist in Latin, they were introduced to ease pronunciation. I don't really recommend.
That's why I think they would be helpful here, because this site is intended for beginners.
Hmm... so how about Arabic? Beginners can't read without the short vowels. We would have to include them, too.
بِنْت = بنت
That wouldn't be easy...
We could do it in Latin and not in Arabic.
I think it should be optional. The reason? Many people know Latin, but cannot pronounce it, so these people wouldn't be able to participate.
I agree. Although these people should try it and they could learn how to pronounce it.
Is everyone allowed to record sentences in
- Latin?
- Esperanto?
- Toki Pona?
It would be interesting to have audio for these languages.
I believe so. You'd have to talk to TRANG about it though.
As for Latin, one should be careful. There are dozens of different "national" pronunciations, like the Italians pronouncing Cicero as /ˈʧiʧero/ and funny things like that. Germans say /ˈʦɪʦɐʁoː/, French people /siseˈʀo/, I think.
If we were to record extinct languages like Latin, I think we should first agree on the kind of pronunciation. Best thing by far in my opinion is the reconstructed, classical pronunciation, where the name was /ˈkɪkɛroː/ or /ˈkikeroː/ (I'd have to read up on the vowel qualities again).
I have a whole book on that topic, so I could help with questions, but I think Wikipedia is quite helpful there, too.
I agree. Classical Latin was used during the Golden Age of Latin literature (that's what I use). Although many people don't like this reconstructed pronunciation, it would be the best choice.
The problem with reconstructed pronounciation is that it differes from scholar to scholar. For example, is _sonus medius_ in l*bet, opt*mus, lacr*ma, max*mus [ɨ], [ʉ], or [y]?
It is unlikely that we will ever know this. From our sources we just know it’s _medius_...
(I tend to think it’s unlikely to be [y] since it was rarely spelled with y. But I may be biased towards [ɨ] since it exists in my mother tongue. ^^")
Well, some description of an ancient scholar about the sounds of Latin isn't the only source we have. Personal, I believe that [ɪ] might be meant, but I don't know it either.
When I was in High School, in Latin class we pronounced it /ˈkɪkɛroː/ or /ˈkikeroː/ (I'm not good at IPA), I don't know where you get that French people would pronounced it /siseˈʀo/, maybe some French who have never learnt latin?
Oh?
Well, I vaguely remembered a recording back in Encarta Encyclopedia, where "Cicero" was pronounced by a German, Italian and French person. I remember the French speaker was a woman and pronounced it like "Sisséreaut" (or so). ;)
But maybe that's not standard and maybe it only wanted to show how different people WOULD pronounce the word "Cicero" when the saw it.
Actually nowdays we write it "Cicéron", which sound more or less like you said, but I'm pretty sure in Latin class it is pronounced "correctly". But yep I get what you wanted to explain :)
For other "without native" languages, they certainly have an IPA, for them, as long as it pronounced "correctly" even with a local accent that's okay, but I think for this it would be more "judged" by other speakers
Now *that* makes sense! While repeating the *.wav file in my head, I remember it had a nasal sound at the end, which I found so weird and misplaced that I ignored it. Yeah, that file there definitely had Cicéron.
So yeah, Esperanto, Lojban, Toki Pona and also Klingon could be pronounced by anyone capable of pronouncing the words correctly. Users should also be strict and complain when someone's accent makes him pronounce different consonants (as I, for instance, sometimes pronounce Esperanto "sed" like "zet" due to my German accent, when I don't pay attention). I agree. ;)
I could pronounce Klingon quite well... but my voice isn't deep enough, haha. :D
Seriously, it would be amazing to have recordings for Klingon! I think you should record some! ;)
I'll send sysko some Latin recordings, so you tell me what you think. If you like them, I can record more.
At our Latin class we pronounced it /'tsɨtsero/, using a Mediaeval pronounciation. :P
J'ai appris à prononcer /siseˈʀo/ dans mes cours de latin en France. Je pense que c'est une question de génération...à confirmer...
[not needed anymore- removed by CK]
Yes you are right. But we are constructing a multi-lingual sentence dictionary, and Latin dictionaries contain these macrons.
However, I did realise a problem with bloating of the corpus that could exist.
If I add "Salvē." and someone else adds, "Salve.", we have two duplicates that won't be automatically joined.
> Yes you are right. But we are constructing a multi-lingual sentence dictionary, and Latin dictionaries contain these macrons.
Same goes for other languages like Russian, where dictionaries usually mark the accent (because it's quite important for pronunciation there), but no one writes it that way.
And this could be said about Arabic too, where at least many dictionaries indicate the vowels. Dictionaries of Serbocroatian and Baltic dictionaries also often contain the tonal accents, but no one ever writes them out in texts. I think these are comparable cases.
Also: I'd prefer to see macrons in Latin too, but that makes it a little difficult for some people to add; plus, many people who do know Latin ignore the lenghts altogether and for many words wouldn't know where they have long or short vowels if not in the "important" endings.
Yes, it would be nice if there were some automatic system like for Chinese.
I think it would be alright to use diacritical marks, if you wanted to.
I'm going to. It will be beneficial to the corpus I believe.
I've never learned it like that at school in austria, but i feel that it would be okay if it's easily removable. I guess for the latin its only adding macrons on top of the normal letters, so i guess a "remove all macrons" script should be easily feasable.