How to Pronounce Latin

Sometimes, those brave teachers new to Latin (i.e. those having a go a teaching something they had not previously learned) are worried about how to pronounce the Latin. I try to tell them not to worry about it too much, even if "Mr. Chips" nearly lost his teaching position for objecting to the "modern" approach to Latin pronunciation (1939).

There are several different schools of thought about pronunciation, e.g. "classical," vis-a-vis "ecclesiastical." There is no shortage of material on the subject - one might even consult Quintilian's Institutio Oratoria, Book I.xi.4ff, (Loeb, p. 185) who took the matter quite seriously:

"What then is the duty of the teacher whom we have borrowed from the stage? In the first place, he must correct all faults of pronunciation, and see that the utterance is distinct, and that each letter has its proper sound. There is an unfortunate tendency in the case of some letters to pronounce them either too thinly or too fully, while some we find too harsh and fail to pronounce sufficiently, substituting others whose should is similar but somewhat duller. For instance, lambda is substituted for rho, a letter which was always a stumbling block for Demosthenes . . ."

There you have it. If Demosthenes had difficulty, we might also. We might, then, be attentive, but flexible so that the matter of pronunciation while learning does not altogether become an impediment to the progress which we hope to make.

To this end, some might appreciate this resource: Read it Right (though, if it ought to be "Read it Rightly" some things might be suspect from the outset).This comes to us from the Association for Latin Teaching, which I became aware of through the Classical Association. (When one applies for the free membership with the Association for Latin Teaching, one also get access to their Latin teachers' forum and back issues of The Journal for Classical Teaching.