Talk:Latin phonology and orthography

Transcriptions and the issue of "original research" edit

@YanisBourgeois: I want to apologize for the brevity of my comments so far. I've re-added the "Citation needed" label to the transcription of the Aeneid passage because I don't believe Allen p. 74 is a valid source for the entire, specific transcription currently in the article. Making our own transcription of this specific passage based on interpretations of statements Allen makes in general about Latin pronunciation isn't straightforward. In my opinion, this falls under the category of "original research" or "synthesis": Wikipedia jargon for "making inferences based on sources" (rather than reporting things that are stated directly by the sources). Wikipedia has rules against doing this (in general) because it is difficult to agree on exactly what inferences are valid to make.

For example, you commented that you inferred that final -im, -em, -um had the quality of short vowels but the quantity of long vowels. Some other people have inferred this too, but not everyone does: an alternative position is that final -im, -em, -um had the quality of long vowels. Before a stop consonant (a condition that is met in "virumque"), Allen mentions the alternative of final -m being pronounced as a nasal consonant preceded by a short vowel. Because of uncertainties like these, we can't say that Allen provided this specific transcription. Urszag (talk) 11:08, 5 November 2023 (UTC)Reply

Indeed. The phonetic transcriptions in that section may be lovely illustrations, but they do represent Original Research (and would do so even if Allen were followed to the letter) and so are against Wiki policy for that reason alone.
To replace them, perhaps a lengthy transcription could be found in some reliable source and introduced here with a caveat such as ‘here is an example of how a passage in Classical Latin may have been pronounced’. And probably likewise with the passage rendered in modern Italo-Ecclesiastical, which can for example be replaced with the one from Canepari (I don’t believe converting his custom IPA to the standard one is Original Research, given that he himself provides the key). Nicodene (talk) 13:35, 5 November 2023 (UTC)Reply

Tables of orthography edit

A great deal of this article is taken up by tables showing approximations of IPA sounds in English and sometimes other languages. I really don't see the need for this, and it isn't normal practice on Wiki. That sort of thing seems best suited for Help:IPA/Latin.

The tables do contain some phonetic information not found elsewhere on the page (for example, the treatment of Latin /kʷu/ and /wu/) but that seems best placed alongside similar information in the main 'vowel' and 'consonants' sections. Likewise the descriptions of Ecclesiastical pronunciation. Nicodene (talk) 16:06, 5 November 2023 (UTC)Reply

Quality contrast between long and short vowels edit

If you read the article "On the Evolution of Short High Vowels of Latin into Romance" by Andrea Calabrese, you'll see that he contests Allen's Classical Latin vowel system as [iː ɪ eː ɛ ä(ː) ɔ oː ʊ uː]. According to Calabrese, Classical Latin had a vowel system with five different qualities, i.e. [i(ː) ɛ(ː) ä(ː) ɔ(ː) u(ː)], with no quality distinction between long and short vowels, at least until the 1st century AD. YanisBourgeois (talk) 00:14, 26 November 2023 (UTC)Reply

Yes, this has been discussed before (see archives). Calabrese's view, unfortunately popularized by some youtuber, runs counter to the overwhelming scholarly majority in favour of Allen's. It is mentioned in footnote #4 already. Nicodene (talk) 13:17, 28 November 2023 (UTC)Reply
Yet I haven't seen a counterargument against Calabrese's vowel system other than the argument of majority. It has been discarded as a minority view, but not debunked (or maybe I'm wrong, please tell me if I am). Thanks for your response YanisBourgeois (talk) 08:39, 30 November 2023 (UTC)Reply
The reason I'm saying that Calabrese hasn't been debunked is that nobody as far as I know has justified Allen's vowel system for Classical Latin while taking into account Calabrese's objection to Allen. All the sources that justify Allen's vowel system accept as a premise that Classical Latin is the most recent "common ancestor" to the Western Romance Languages (French, Spanish, Portuguese, etc.) which is incorrect. Those languages, used to justify Allen's system, are actually descended from Vulgar Latin. So Allen may very well have described Vulgar Latin while believing to describe Classical Latin. The Romance languages that actually descend from Classical Latin as opposed to Vulgar Latin (e.g. Sardinian) tend to indicate Calabrese's vowel system. YanisBourgeois (talk) 09:47, 30 November 2023 (UTC)Reply
WP:NOTFORUM and WP:FRINGE. We can discuss this on my private talk page or yours, if you like, but such a discussion will have no impact on this article. Nicodene (talk) 11:26, 30 November 2023 (UTC)Reply