The Roman Pronunciation of Latin
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Frances E. Lord >> The Roman Pronunciation of Latin
"To teach a person to read prose _well_, even in his own language, is
difficult, partly because he has seldom heard prose well read, though he
is constantly hearing prose around him, intonated, but unrhythmical. In
the case of a dead language, like the Latin, which the pupil never hears
spoken, and seldom hears read, except by himself or his equally ignorant
and hobbling fellow-scholars, this difficulty is inordinately increased.
Let me once more impress on every teacher of Latin the _duty_ of himself
learning to read Latin readily according to accent and quantity; the
_duty_ of his reading out to his pupils, of his setting them a
_pattern_, of his hearing that they follow it, of his correcting their
mistakes, of his _leading_ them into right habits. If the quantitative
pronunciation be adopted, no one will be fit to become a classical
teacher who cannot read a simple Latin sentence decently, with a strict
observance of that quantity by which alone the greatest of Latin orators
regulated his own rhythms."
"All pronunciation is acquired by imitation, and it is not rill after
hearing a sound many times that we are able to grasp it sufficiently
well to imitate. It is a mistake constantly made by teachers of language
to suppose that a pupil knows by once hearing unfamiliar sounds, or even
unfamiliar combinations of familiar sounds. When pupils are made to
imitate too soon, they acquire an erroneous pronunciation, which they
afterward hear constantly from themselves actually or mentally, and
believe that they hear from the teacher during the small fraction of a
second that each sound lasts, and hence the habits of these organs
become fixed."
The following direction is of the utmost importance (Curwen's "Standard
Course," p. 3): "The teacher never sings (speaks) _with_ his pupils, but
sings (utters, reads, dictates) to them a brief and soft _pattern_. The
first art of the pupil is to _listen well_ to the pattern, and then to