School Latin (was Bella???)

[davewitley]

Jen wrote:

> English school Latin is, of course, different from American school 
Latin
> (in either the Classical or ecclesiastical pronunciation systems), 
but
> I'm very surprised to read that you would stress the first 
syllable,
> Eloise.  Do you all use different rules of stress than we do?  The 
rules
> we have are quite simple:
> 
>    1. In a two syllable word, stress the penult.
> 
>    2.  In a three (or more) syllable word, stress the 
antepenultimate,
>    unless the penult is long, in which case you stress that.  The 
penult
>    is long if it contains a long vowel or a short vowel followed 
by two
>    or more consonants.
> 
> By these rules, it is indeed bel.LA.trix.  [1]
> 
> I ask because I have long been curious about English school
> pronunciation of Latin, since I do think it's different from the
> accepted American Classical method?  It's that whole "may-ter" 
thing of
> British period films, you see. *g*  (It's "mah-ter" using accepted
> American pronunciation.)  Was that an affectation, or were/are 
those
> mythical sixth-form boys taught to pronounce mater with a long eh 
in the
> first syllable?  What are you all taught?  Is it different 
once/when
> you're at university or become a Latinist?

I studied Latin for four years at school in England in the 
seventies, and have an 'O' Level in the subject.

My understanding is that at some point there was a change in the 
Latin pronunciation that was taught, probably not that long before I 
started the subject.  I was taught "mah-ter", for example, though I 
can't remember now if the first syllable was long or short.

We were not introduced to any rules of stress of the kind you 
describe, and our textbooks indicated by means of a bar over the 
vowel if it was long.  In consequence we probably followed either 
our British rules or imitated the teacher's pronunciation: in any 
case I assumed Bellatrix is stressed in the first syllable.

The pronunciation scheme involving "May-ter" I associate with 
British public schools of the pre-war era and earlier.  The Nigel 
Molesworth books (written in the fifties, I think) refer to it, for 
example the nonsense sentence "Caesar adsum jam forte" (Caesar had 
some jam for tea) is mentioned, as is "hujus, hujus, hujus", both 
illustrating how "j" sometimes replaced "i" and was then pronounced 
as such.

IIRC what we were taught was:

short a as in mat
long a as in ah
short e as in met
long e as in eh
short i as in bit
long i as in feet
short o as in hot
long o as in moan
short u as in uh
long u as in moot
And if it was between two vowels, or before a vowel at the beginning 
of a word, u was written v and pronounced w.

It looks like there is quite a lot of inconsistency there.

I don't know anything about the relationship between either scheme 
and ecclesiastical Latin.

David