Church Latin Pronunciation: Every Rule vs Classical

Latin has two living pronunciations, and neither is wrong. Ecclesiastical (Church) Latin, heard at mass and in chant, reads Latin spelling with Italian sound values. Classical Latin, heard in classrooms, reconstructs how Romans spoke. The spelling and grammar are the same; about a dozen sounds move.

c and g: hard or soft

In church Latin, c and g go soft before e, i, ae, oe and y, exactly as in Italian. Everywhere else, and always in classical Latin, they are hard.

In excelsis Deo is the best single test: the xc before e gives k-sh, so it is een ek-SHEL-sees DEH-oh at mass and een eks-KEL-sees in classical Latin.

gn, ti, h and v

Two notes the table cannot hold:

• ti stays tee after s, t or x: hostia is HOS-tee-ah in both.
• mihi and nihil (and their compounds) are the only words where church Latin turns h into k.

The vowels: ae, oe and y

Collapsing ae into e has a cost: aequus (fair) and equus (horse) sound the same in church Latin. Classical Latin keeps them apart.

What both systems share

Most of Latin sounds the same either way:

The stress rule is the same too: on the second-to-last syllable if it is heavy, otherwise on the third-to-last. A syllable is heavy if its vowel is long or if two consonants (or x) follow it, even after a short vowel. So salutare is sa-loo-TAH-reh in both, and fenestra (window) is feh-NEH-strah, because the s and t make the short e heavy.

Words you may already know

The last row is a reminder: only the highlighted letters move, and credo has none.

Why there are two

Church Latin is inherited. Latin has been read aloud in Italy without a break, and as spoken Italian changed, the reading of Latin changed with it. Other countries read Latin with their own accents until Pope Pius X, in a 1912 letter to the Archbishop of Bourges, encouraged the Roman way for the sake of chant and unity. Many churches followed; German-speaking ones partly kept their own.

Classical Latin is reconstructed, from good evidence:

Scholars worked it out in the nineteenth century, British schools adopted it in the twentieth, and W. Sidney Allen set it out in Vox Latina (1965).

Which one when

Pick one system at the start of a piece and keep it to the end. A choir that sings VEH-nee and then KAI-lee in one phrase sounds like a mistake rather than a choice. The mass responses are said in church Latin.

This course's audio speaks classical Latin, because the course is built for reading texts, where long and short vowels carry grammar. (Some one-syllable clips such as cum and est come from a different voice; where a clip and these rules disagree, trust the rules.) For church use, apply the eight changes in the first table.

Mistakes English speakers make

What to do next

1. Read the first table aloud in church Latin, then in classical.
2. Try both on the Pater Noster, the next lesson.
3. Learn the cases: pronunciation gets you into the room, grammar lets you follow what is said.