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--- In romanceconlang@yahoogroups.com, "Etherman23 <etherman23@y...>" <etherman23@y...> wrote: > > Under no circumstances should you allow anglicised > > pronunciations of Latin words tempt you to the Dark Side... > > The zodiac sign Gemini is pronounced "jemmy-nigh" in English, > > but the Latin |geminî| (long i at the end) is pronounced > > "ghemmy-nee"! > > So let me get this straight. The first i is pronounced with short > quality and short quantity, and the second is with long quality and > long quantity? So the two always correlate? I still don't quite know what you mean by "short quality"... laxness, maybe? If so, then yes, they do correlate. I'm not sure whether we know these finer details of Classical Latin pronunciation for sure, though. > > > However, it doesn't do it consistently. > > > > I doubt that... see below. > > A quick example would be abdi(ca-ti(o You're right, that's a bit weird. My dictionary marks length consistently, giving |abdicâtiô, -ônis|. > 1) A vowel is short if > a) it's followed by another vowel or h > b) it's followed by nd or nt > 2) A vowel is long if > a) it's derived from a diphthong > b) it's followed by ns, nf, or sometimes gn > c) it's formed from a contraction > 3) A diphthong is long Those rules might be intended for people who read Latin texts with totally unmarked vowels out loud... they help to guess the vowel length under certain circumstances. They sure don't do so comprehensively (since vowel length is a degree of freedom). > There's a separate set of rules for determining long and short > syllables. That part actually makes sense to me :) Ah, OK, my mistake. =P -- Christian Thalmann