School Latin (was Bella???)

[punkieshazam]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "davewitley" 
<dfrankiswork at n...> wrote:

>Considerable snippage<

> 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

Punkie:

I had two years of Latin in high school in the '50's in the US. The 
above was the way we were taught pronounciation. Our teacher told us 
that the hardest thing for most students to get used to was accepting 
the ah sound for a long a. It drives me nuts to hear that the 
*proper* pronounciation of Draco's name is Drayco. It should be 
Drahco.

God! I'm getting to be a picky old lady.

Punkie