Teaching Pronunciation

It is important that we teach our students the “correct” classical pronunciation of Greek and Latin. I say “correct” because the way we learn to pronounce Greek and Latin isn’t in fact correct (e.g. we don’t nasalize Latin con- or -am/-um/-em; native English speakers normally can’t distinguish between aspirated and un-aspirated voiceless dental stops; and so forth). So the “correct” classical pronunciation of Greek and Latin is correct insofar as classicists nowadays have generally agreed to pronounce things in a way that approximates one classical pronunciation (ignoring the reality of phonological differences over time and space).

Anyway, this is partly a gatekeeping alert: there are people out there who may take you or your students less seriously if words are mispronounced or stressed the wrong way. But this is also practical. See Why Macrons Matter for some examples in Latin. For the “correct” pronunciation of Greek, see the videos under Chapter 2 here. Until we produce a video for Latin, see here for Latin pronunciation.

Practicing Pronunciation

It is standard practice to have your student read a sentence aloud before translating. This, however, may not be the right way to do things. Ideally, the student will read with intonation, vocally chunking word groups, and thinking about the meaning of the sentence before actually translating. This might be a useful exercise, but in reality the activity tends simply to be students practicing their phonetics. This is a different activity altogether from translating, so we may as well keep it separate.

Here are some ideas:

• If we are just practicing our phonetics, why not have students read the whole passage aloud before translating. That way they practice phonetics without disrupting the flow of the translation.

The purpose of reading a sentence aloud right before translating should be to think about syntax and general meaning before diving into the details of the grammar. Students aren’t usually able to read for this purpose, so why don’t you, the teacher, do so for them? Read the sentence (or passage) with intonation, chunking word groups as you go, as a way of modeling reading. They won’t know how to do this correctly unless you show them. Ideally they will learn how to read with intonation themselves after hearing you do it for a while.

• VoiceThread (see here for its use and integration with Canvas) is a great way to test phonetics outside of the actual classroom.

—James F. Patterson, 12/23