Latin IPA

Every sound of Latin, written in IPA. The main system here is Classical (restored) pronunciation, the one reconstructed for Caesar and Cicero. Ecclesiastical (Church) Latin gets its own comparison table, because the two disagree on about a dozen letters and mixing them by accident is the one real way to get Latin wrong.

To hear the sounds, use the Latin Sound Lab. New to the symbols themselves? Start with the IPA course and the interactive charts.

How to read the transcriptions

• / / encloses a phoneme, the sound as a speaker thinks of it. [ ] encloses the sound as actually said, in more detail.
• ˈ goes before the stressed syllable. . marks a syllable break.
• ː after a vowel means long. /a/ is short, /aː/ is long.
• /w/ and /j/ are the consonant glides: w as in wet, j as the y of yes.

The macrons in this page (ā, ē, ī, ō, ū) are a teaching aid. Romans did not write them, and the course itself does not print them yet. They are here because the IPA needs the information.

The vowels: five qualities, two lengths

Classical Latin has five vowel letters and ten vowel phonemes. Every vowel comes short and long, and length changes the word.

Examples with full transcription:

• equus /ˈe.kwus/, horse
• ōrō /ˈoː.roː/, I pray
• ūnus /ˈuː.nus/, one
• urbs /urbs/, city

Length is not decoration

Length is the difference between words. These pairs are real and worth memorising:

Verse counts a long vowel as two short ones, so in speech hold it clearly longer. It is not a different, tenser sound in English fashion: hold the same vowel longer.

A note on quality

Short and long vowels also differed a little in quality. Short i, e, o and u were more open than their long partners, roughly [ɪ], [ɛ], [ɔ] and [ʊ], so short i leant towards long ē and short u towards long ō. Short and long a differed little except in length.

This page transcribes phonemically, with the plain symbols above, which is the usual practice. The practical rule for a learner: get the length right first, and let quality follow.

Compare Spanish, which also has five pure vowels but no length. Latin gives you the same five and then makes you time them.

Diphthongs

Classical Latin has three common diphthongs (ae, au, oe) and three rare ones (ei, eu, ui). The second half is a glide, written with an inverted breve: /e̯/.

The ae in Caesar is the sound that became German Kaiser, which is neat evidence that the ancient value is not a modern invention. Some books write it /ai̯/. Same sound, slightly different notation.

A diphthong is one syllable, and that syllable is always heavy. This matters for the stress rule below.

Consonants by manner

Latin has a small set of consonants. The Greek loan sounds are the only awkward ones, and they get their own section.

Stops

The soft c and soft g you know from English and Italian are later developments, and they belong to the Church system below.

The voiceless stops /p t k/ were unaspirated, as in Spanish and French and unlike English pen and ten. Say them without the puff of air.

Labialised stops: qu and gu

Q only ever appears before u. The u is a consonant here, a /w/ glide, so qu is one unit, not a letter and a vowel (some books write it /kʷ/).

Being one unit, it does not make the syllable before it heavy: the first syllable of aqua is light. Gu works the same way but only after n, and there the n sounds like the "ng" of English sing, written /ŋ/.

Fricatives

H was a light breath, weak enough to be dropped in everyday speech. Educated speakers kept it, and mocked people who stuck it on where it did not belong. Say it softly, but say it.

Glides: the letters i and u doing a consonant's job

The same letter doubles as the vowel u (urbs), which is why the Romans needed only one symbol. The consonant i works the same way: iam starts with the y of English yes, not a vowel. The alphabet page covers why.

Between vowels, consonantal i is doubled in speech, though written once: cuius, whose, is /ˈkuj.jus/ and maior, greater, is /ˈmaj.jor/. So the syllable before it is heavy.

Nasals

N before a k-type sound is /ŋ/ automatically, as it is in English think. G before n was also /ŋ/: agnus, lamb, is /ˈaŋ.nus/. You do not need to learn a separate rule: just say ancora the way it is easiest to say.

Liquids

R is trilled, with the tongue tip, as in Italian and Spanish. The English approximant is wrong, and so is the French r. A tap [ɾ] between vowels is the lazy form and is fine for speed.

Double consonants are really double

Latin geminates (doubled consonants) are held for twice as long, in both sounds. It is the same contrast as Italian nonno against nono, and a doubled letter in Latin always means it.

Summus is /ˈsum.mus/: the first m closes the syllable, the second opens the next, and you hold the m-sound across the break. Other examples: bellum, war, /ˈbel.lum/; terra, earth, /ˈter.ra/.

X, the dropped final m, and nasal vowels

X is /ks/. It is a double consonant in one letter, and it makes the syllable before it heavy.

• rēx /reːks/, king
• dux /duks/, leader
• lēx /leːks/, law

Final -m was weak. Roman grammarians describe it as barely sounded, and in verse a syllable ending in -m elides before a following vowel just as a plain vowel does. The usual reconstruction is that the lips did not close: the vowel before it was nasalised and lengthened. For learners, the practical approach is to say it lightly: a small nasal hum, not a full /m/.

• rosam, rose (accusative): /ˈro.sam/, probably said close to [ˈro.sãː]
• amīcum, friend (accusative): /aˈmiː.kum/, probably said close to [aˈmiː.kũː]

Scholars reconstruct a similar weakening for n before s or f, as in cōnsul and īnfāns: the n faded into a nasalised vowel. The evidence is indirect (the abbreviation COS. for cōnsul, and inscriptions that leave the n out), so treat it as reconstruction rather than something to drill.

One fact here is firm: a vowel before ns or nf is always long, which is why both words carry macrons. If you lengthen the vowel and say a light n, nobody has been misled.

The Greek loans: y, z, ph, th, ch

Latin borrowed Greek words and kept a few Greek letters for them. Educated Romans pronounced them as Greek sounds; the mass of speakers often simplified them. This is the only part of Latin where there is real tension between "correct" and "spoken".

y /y/ is the French u or German ü: lips rounded as for oo, tongue as for ee.

z is the least certain letter. Allen's Vox Latina gives a plain voiced [z], doubled between vowels, as in gaza, treasure, [ˈɡaz.za]. Many textbooks write /dz/, which is also the Church and Italian value.

This site follows Allen for classical Latin and gives /dz/ for Church Latin, here and on the alphabet page. The Attic Greek original was probably [zd]. Any of the three is defensible; none is a native Latin sound.

ph, th, ch are a stop followed by a puff of air, as English p, t and k at the start of a word. The aspiration is the point: ph is not /f/ in the classical system, though it became /f/ later.

Stress: it depends on syllable weight

Latin stress is predictable. You do not need to memorise it word by word, but you do need to be able to tell a heavy syllable from a light one.

Heavy and light syllables

A syllable is heavy if it has any of these:

1. a long vowel (ā, ē...)
2. a diphthong (ae, au...)
3. a vowel followed by two consonants, or by x, z or a consonantal i between vowels, so that the syllable is closed (qu counts as one consonant)

Otherwise it is light: a short vowel with at most one consonant after it.

Note the third rule. The vowel itself can stay short while the syllable is heavy. In magister, the i is short, but it is followed by s and t, so the syllable gis is heavy by position. The vowel is short; the syllable is heavy; they are separate facts.

One caveat. A stop plus l or r (as in patrem) can be heavy or light, and Latin poets used it either way. For stress, treat it as a single consonant: pa.trem.

The rule

• Two syllables: stress the first. rosa /ˈro.sa/, amor /ˈa.mor/.
• Three or more: look at the second-to-last (penultimate) syllable.
  • If it is heavy, stress it.
  • If it is light, stress the one before (the antepenult).

The last syllable is not stressed in a word of two or more syllables, apart from a few clipped forms such as illīc, there.

Worked examples

Notice that a long penult attracts the stress, while a short one pushes it back. This is why vowel length is not decoration: without it you cannot place the stress in amīcus against dominus, which have the same shape on the page.

Enclitics shift the stress

The little words -que (and), -ne (question marker) and -ve (or) attach to the previous word and pull the stress onto the syllable just before them, even when it is light. Arma is /ˈar.ma/, but armaque, "and arms", is /arˈma.kwe/, where the plain rule would have given ÁR-ma-que. This is the rule the Roman grammarians state; whether everyday speech always obeyed it is less certain.

Ecclesiastical Latin: the differences

Church Latin is Latin pronounced with Italian sounds. It is the tradition behind sung Masses and church music, and it is as legitimate as the classical one. The difference is purpose, not correctness. For the full rule list, see the Church Latin pronunciation guide. For the two systems animated side by side, use the Sound Lab.

Four remarks:

• ti is not always /tsi/ in Church Latin. After s, t or x, it stays /ti/: hostia is /ˈos.ti.a/, Christiānus is /kris.tiˈa.nus/. Everywhere else before a vowel, it is /tsi/.
• h is silent in Church Latin, with the traditional exception of mihi and nihil, said as /ˈmi.ki/ and /ˈni.kil/.
• gn in Church Latin is the ny of canyon, held long between vowels as in Italian, hence /ˈaɲ.ɲus/.
• Length is not heard. Church Latin does not time vowels. The stress rule still follows the same syllable weight, so the stressed syllable in a word is normally the same under both systems.

Qu as /kw/, consonantal i (often printed j) as /j/, x as /ks/ elsewhere, the rolled r and the double consonants are shared too.

One word, two Latins

Veni, vidi, vici shows nearly the whole split at once.

Same words, same stress, but a different v, a different c, and no vowel length in the Church version. Pick one before you start and stay in it.

Which one to learn

If you are reading Virgil, studying Roman history or learning Latin as a language: classical. Vowel length and the reconstructed sounds are built into the verse and the grammar.

If you are singing, praying or reading the Vulgate and church texts: Church. That is the living tradition those texts belong to.

The Kilo Lingo Latin course teaches classical values in the core chapters and gives Church Latin its own chapter. Most word clips are classical, but a few short words are recorded in a different voice and can sound church-style. Where they disagree with this page, trust the page.

What the IPA gives you

For Latin, the IPA does two jobs the spelling cannot. It shows vowel length, which ordinary editions do not print, and it shows which Latin you are reading, because the same spelling is two sets of sounds. That is why a Latin dictionary's pronunciation guide is worth being able to read. When you want to hear any of it, go to the Sound Lab.