Page:Notes and Queries - Series 7 - Volume 12.djvu/158

 in pronunciation accompanied a change in religion; but I have lately been going over an inventory of the vestry of Westminster Abbey made in 1388, and the spelling of the monks of Westminster makes one believe that in the fourteenth century the pronunciation of Latin in England must have had several points of resemblance to that which we were taught in England some forty years ago, before we began to learn that everything continental was good, and everything English bad. We find words spelt as follows (see Archœologia, 1890, vol lii. pp. 216–286): "signis" for cygnis, "pissem" for piscem, "cerico" for serico, "magestatem" for maiestatem. C and j could hardly have been pronounced then as the Italian pronounces them now.

To change these habits of five hundred years and more, tells us that we have only

How I should like to see it tried! First find the two scholarly Italians, and then make every one conform. Would an Act of Parliament be enough?



J. B. S.'s proposal that the Italian pronunciation of Latin should be adopted in this country may be accepted without demur for ecclesiastical Latin or any Latin sung or chanted, for which, in fact, that pronunciation is commonly used. Also in the rare event of having to converse in Latin—a practice deprecated by the great Italian scholars of the Renaissance—an Englishman should make shift to pronounce the words as like Italian as he can. But with regard to the classical writers, so rough and ready a mode of solving a difficult problem will hardly commend itself to scholars. The question has given rise of late years to more than one newspaper discussion. Of these far the most important took place twenty years ago, when the late H. A. J. Munro perhaps the first Latin scholar this country has produced in the present century published a pamphlet on the subject, and a syllabus was put forth by him and the Latin professor at Oxford. This revised pronunciation was adopted in many quarters, and a Girton girl who followed it is said to have startled an examiner by reading and translating vicissim as "We kiss him by turns." Apparently, however, the reform is not making way. This is partly through uncertainty. To take the first two words of the 'Æneid.' Should the r in arma be trilled? How should the v and the q in virumque be pronounced; and had um a nasal sound? To form an opinion as to the classical pronunciation a man must consider all the remarks on the subject in the ancient writers themselves. He must have a minute knowledge of the history of Latin prosody. He must acquaint himself with the evidence afforded by transliteration of Latin words into another tongue, and of foreign words into Latin, and that afforded by the forms of words derived direct from the Latin. At present very few are competent for this undertaking, and these few have not been unanimous in their conclusions. There is the further practical difficulty that, assuming the pronunciation to be known, it by no means follows that English organs—for the most part so unsuccessful with French, in spite of all the facilities of acquiring it—would cope better with Latin. Lastly, as the head master of Harrow has pointed out, the school curriculum is now so widened that a teacher is forced to hesitate at introducing an additional difficulty in the acquisition of any subject.

I heartily agree with those who wish that our professors and teachers would adopt the foreign pronunciation of the vowels. Little more is required to assimilate the pronunciation of the Englishman with that of the foreigner. I have found no difficulty in conversing with an Italian priest in (dog) Latin by merely adhering to that rule. The fact is every people pronounce Latin as they pronounce their own language; and in the matter of vowels we happen to differ from the Continent. Not that their usage is uniform. The Frenchman and the Italian differ greatly in the sound of u; neither can they pronounce the Greek x; and neither can Frenchman, Italian, or German pronounce the Greek θ. But in charity I would not therefore call them "brutal, " "vile, " or "barbarous. " Our professors might also warn their pupils not to slur over a final r, as is so common in English.

suggestion that two scholarly Italian latinists should be brought over here, and stationed, the one at Oxford and the other at Cambridge, and that everybody should be obliged to conform to their pronunciation, can hardly have been made seriously. Who is to decide what the proper pronunciation of Latin is? A notion has lately got abroad that our modern system began at the time of the Reformation; but there seems to be no proof of this. In every country Latin is pronounced like the native language, whatever that may be, and our peculiarity is chiefly due to the fact that we pronounce four of the five vowels differently from other European nations. But plan would fail, because the continentalists do not all sound their consonants alike. Take the word dicere, for instance. A Frenchman says dee-sere; an Italian dee-chere; a German dee-tsere, or dee-kere. Does a Spaniard say dee-there? A German always makes g hard; a Frenchman and an Italian make it in most cases soft, but with modifications.

In approximating our Latin to that of the con-