Sounds and letters

Latin uses the alphabet you already know, minus a few letters. Classical Latin had no j, u (as a separate letter), or w; the Romans wrote I for both the vowel i and the consonant we spell j, and V for both the vowel u and the consonant w. Modern editions, and this library, print i and u for the vowels and i and v for the consonants, so you will see Iūlius and vīnum. K, Y, and Z appear almost only in Greek loanwords.

Every letter is pronounced, and each letter has one sound. There are no silent letters, and no letter changes its sound depending on its neighbours, which makes Latin spelling a far more honest guide to pronunciation than English.

Each of the five vowels comes in two lengths. A long vowel is held roughly twice as long as a short one, and the difference is part of the word: malum with a short a is "evil", mālum with a long a is "apple". Editions for learners mark long vowels with a macron (ā ē ī ō ū); the manuscripts and inscriptions did not. This library marks them so you can learn each word's quantity as you meet it.

Two vowels can join into a single diphthong, one gliding sound. The common ones are ae (like English eye: Caesar, puellae), au (like out: aut), and oe (like boy: poena). A diphthong always counts as long.

Most consonants sound as in English. The ones that trip up English speakers: c is always hard, as in cat, never as in city (so Cicero is KIH-keh-ro); g is always hard, as in get; v is the English w (vēnī, vīdī, vīcī is WAY-nee WEE-dee WEE-kee); consonantal i is English y (iam is yam); r is trilled; s is always the s of sit, never a z; and qu is kw as in queen.

Doubled consonants are held, as in Italian: anus "old woman" and annus "year" differ only in that held n. ch, ph, and th are simply c, p, and t with a puff of breath, not the sounds of church, phone, and thin.

Stress in Latin is entirely predictable, and it depends on the second-to-last syllable, the penult. In a two-syllable word, stress the first syllable: AMō, PUella. In a longer word, stress the penult if it is long, that is, if it contains a long vowel or diphthong, or if its vowel is followed by two consonants; otherwise stress the syllable before it, the antepenult.