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THE ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION OF LATIN: ITS RISE AND FALL

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 November 2012

Andrew Collins
Andrew Collins*
Affiliation:
University of Queensland, St Lucia, Australia
*
*Email: andrew.collins@uq.edu.au
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Abstract

Before the modern Restored pronunciation of Latin, the English language had an Anglicised system for pronouncing Latin, whose legacy is still quite clear in the modern language. This paper examines the English system of pronouncing Latin, and the collapse of that system in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This includes a short review of the history of the pronunciation of Latin in Britain from the Middle Ages until the nineteenth century; a review of the rules and historical development of the English system, in the form it reached by the mid-nineteenth century; the reform of that system in the late Victorian era; and its erosion from the late nineteenth century and replacement with the Reformed pronunciation of Latin.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Cambridge Classical Journal , Volume 58 , December 2012 , pp. 23 - 57
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2012. Published by Cambridge University Press

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