Qualis vir, talis oratio

[Dale]

From "LATIN PROVERB OF THE DAY"
www.righthandpointing.com/latin/


Qualis vir, talis oratio.

However the man is, so also his speech.

(pron = KWAH-lis weer, TAH-lis oh-RAH-tee-oh)

Comment: Both Seneca and Publilius Syrus have written this same line, almost identically, so it is not really anonymous. And, one can easily amass quite a long list of quotations about the correspondence between a human being's life and speech--or the lack of such correspondence. An internet search produced such a list within 10 seconds, and as I read those quotations, the word "integrity" kept coming to my mind.

Really, if we are honest, there is only a correspondence between our lives and our speech if we have some degree of integrity--some wholeness--to us. One quotation from an Anglican Bishop of the 17th century (Bishop Robert South) proclaimes that speech was given to ordinary folks in order to proclaim their minds, but to wise individuals in order that they might conceal their minds. He seems to identify the ability to separate one's language from one's life as a virtue.

I think there may be some real value in knowing when to keep silent. I fail often enough at that one! I have also often enough experienced the power of knowing when to keep silent and the power of those occasions when my words do aline with my life. Speech, which for me is so easy to pump out of my face in almost any occassion, really only has strength and power when it consults my life first. And, when my speech has been otherwise, it is either the waste of breath, or damaging.

Bob Patrick

[Innocent Bystander]

When I wor a lad at skule, t'maister towd us te pronounce it

Kwalis Vir, Tal-is Or ashy-o

Can tha na spik Latin wor tha be, Dael?

"Wir"? Dinna be daft!

[Jack]

Nobody knows for sure how Latin was pronounced. The modern form of Vatican Latin is pronounced similiarly to modern Italian or modern Spanish. Since I've studied Spanish but not Italian or Latin, whenever I have to read something in Latin (which is very very rarely) I say it as though it were in Spanish.

[gonzo914]

Nobody knows for sure how Latin was pronounced. The modern form of Vatican Latin is pronounced similiarly to modern Italian or modern Spanish. Since I've studied Spanish but not Italian or Latin, whenever I have to read something in Latin (which is very very rarely) I say it as though it were in Spanish.

Actually, we do know -- Here's a write-up from a linguistics prof at the University of Georgia -- Latin Pronunciation Demystified

Do we know how the Romans pronounced Latin? Surprisingly, yes. The details of the reconstruction are given in W. Sidney Allen, Vox Latina (written in English), Cambridge, 1965. There are several main sources of knowledge:
• The Latin alphabet was meant to be entirely phonetic. Unlike us, the ancient Romans did not inherit their spellings from any earlier language. What you see is what you get.
• Language teaching was big business in Roman times, and ancient Roman grammarians give us surprisingly detailed information about the sounds of the language.
• Languages derived from Latin give us a lot of evidence. In fact, many of the letters of the alphabet are pronounced the same way in French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian. It stands to reason that the original Latin pronunciation has survived.
• Spelling errors made by the ancient Romans are very informative. If two letters are often mixed up, they must sound fairly similar. Likewise, if two letters are never mixed up, we know they sounded different.
Here’s an example. In classical times, the natives had no trouble keeping ae distinct from e; if they ever misspelled ae it came out ai. Later on, they started changing ae to e. That enables us to pinpoint when the sound of ae changed.
• Finally, transcriptions into other writing systems, such as Greek and Sanskrit, often pin down the ancient pronunciation of Latin very precisely.

He also has some interesting things to say about the "4 rival ways of pronouncing Latin," but I'll let you dig those out yourself.

[fearfaoin]

Yes, gonzo, you beat me to it. We may not know how
Proto-IndoEuropean was pronounced, but we are pretty sure about
Classical Latin pronunciation. There were plenty of people of the time
writing about the decline of proper speach patterns in the Empire, and
gave specific examples of how to treat vowels and consonant clusters
and diphthongs. The pronunciation that Dale posted is considered
Classical Latin, and is taught in most college-level Latin texts,
including the excellent



BTW, if anyone is ineterested in teaching themselves Latin with an
online group, check this site:

http://www.atrium-media.com/atriumlatin ... arted.html

The group has already been going at the rate of 2 chapters of
Wheelock's a month since January. A new group should start in
September. I learned this way, and it's not too difficult, if you put
the time in.