Polski & Italiano (+ Latin) Episode II: StringerBell Strikes Back

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Re: Polski & Italiano (+ Latin) Episode II: StringerBell Strikes Back

Postby StringerBell » Tue Jul 23, 2019 6:36 pm

Does this mean I should just continue ignoring those marks? It seems that both short and long vowel sounds have them, so I can't understand why they are even used at all.
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Re: Polski & Italiano (+ Latin) Episode II: StringerBell Strikes Back

Postby rdearman » Tue Jul 23, 2019 6:46 pm

On Linux there is a utility to conjugate verbs for French & Italian called Verbiste but I'm not sure if there is a Windows port (It would work on a Mac since an Apple machine is just a poorly disguised Unix machine). I found this utility very useful for making Anki Cards since you can copy and paste from the interface and type in any Italian (or French) verb you want. I am sure there are limits to the number of verbs it knows, but I have not encountered it.

Verbiste.PNG
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Re: Polski & Italiano (+ Latin) Episode II: StringerBell Strikes Back

Postby Deinonysus » Tue Jul 23, 2019 7:01 pm

StringerBell wrote:Does this mean I should just continue ignoring those marks? It seems that both short and long vowel sounds have them, so I can't understand why they are even used at all.

I'm not sure what you mean. Texts that use macrons mark all long vowels with a macron, and all unmarked values are short. Some texts don't use macrons at all and vowel length won't be marked; you just have to know which ones are long and which ones are short.

That's for pure vowels. I think that diphthongs are always considered long.

So for example, here are the first two sentences from Lingua Latina: "Rōma in Italiā est. Italia in Eurōpā est".

"Italiā" is in dative ablative? case. "Italia" is nominative case. The only pronunciation difference is that you hold out the final "a" longer if it's dative ablative. The other letters with macrons are also long. The "Eu" in Eurōpā is a diphthong so that's also considered to be long. The rest of the vowels are short.

For more information see:
https://www.omniglot.com/writing/latin2.htm

Edit: All the sources I'm finding online say that there is a vowel quality difference between short and long vowels after all so I guess I heard wrong. See also:

http://www.wheelockslatin.com/chapters/ ... owels.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_spe ... nunciation
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Re: Polski & Italiano (+ Latin) Episode II: StringerBell Strikes Back

Postby Elsa Maria » Tue Jul 23, 2019 9:40 pm

I'll leave it to the more knowledgeable forum members to discuss the meaning of macrons.

I have seen their use differ by textbook. Lingua Latina uses cuius (an interrogative pronoun) without any macrons, and Latin for the New Millennium uses cūius.

Once in a while, they have given me a clue.

audītis is the second person plural, fourth person conjugation verb
capitis is the second person plural, of a third conjugation -io verb.

The same thing happens in the second person singular: audīs and capis.

So if I am looking at a verb that I don't know, the macron can help me figure out whether the verb belongs to the fourth conjugation group or the third -io group. I suppose that it is arguable that there is no need to care which conjugation the verb belongs to unless one wants to compose Latin.

Fun fact: If you want to type with macrons on a Windows device, the Maori keyboard makes it very easy.
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Re: Polski & Italiano (+ Latin) Episode II: StringerBell Strikes Back

Postby Iversen » Wed Jul 24, 2019 2:38 am

.. or try the Latvian one.
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Re: Polski & Italiano (+ Latin) Episode II: StringerBell Strikes Back

Postby StringerBell » Wed Jul 24, 2019 1:44 pm

Elsa Maria wrote:The same thing happens in the second person singular: audīs and capis.

So if I am looking at a verb that I don't know, the macron can help me figure out whether the verb belongs to the fourth conjugation group or the third -io group. I suppose that it is arguable that there is no need to care which conjugation the verb belongs to unless one wants to compose Latin.


So does this mean that the purpose of those macrons is to give information about the conjugation, not about the pronunciation of the vowel?
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Re: Polski & Italiano (+ Latin) Episode II: StringerBell Strikes Back

Postby Deinonysus » Wed Jul 24, 2019 3:22 pm

StringerBell wrote:
Elsa Maria wrote:The same thing happens in the second person singular: audīs and capis.

So if I am looking at a verb that I don't know, the macron can help me figure out whether the verb belongs to the fourth conjugation group or the third -io group. I suppose that it is arguable that there is no need to care which conjugation the verb belongs to unless one wants to compose Latin.


So does this mean that the purpose of those macrons is to give information about the conjugation, not about the pronunciation of the vowel?

No, the only purpose is pronunciation. There is some grammatical information where the only pronunciation difference is vowel length, and if the macron isn't written you would need to guess whether the vowel is long or short from context. As Elsa Maria said, these pronunciation differences can also tell you which conjugation group a verb belongs to.

From Wikipedia:

Latin graphemeLatin phonemodern examples
⟨a⟩[a]similar to u in cut when short
[aː]similar to a in father when long
⟨e⟩[ɛ]as e in pet when short
[eː]similar to ey in they when long
⟨i⟩[ɪ]as i in sit when short
[iː]similar to i in machine when long
⟨o⟩[ɔ]as o in sort when short
[oː]similar to o in holy when long
⟨u⟩[ʊ]similar to u in put when short
[uː]similar to u in true when long
⟨y⟩[ʏ]as in German Stück when short (or as short u or i)
[yː]as in German früh when long (or as long u or i)

In a text with macrons, a vowel with a macron has the second (long) pronunciation, and a plain letter will be the first (short) pronunciation. In a text without macrons you will need to make an educated guess.

I think "cut" is the approximation given because in British English most of the "a" sounds are long in duration, and they had to pick from the short vowels and thought that the [ʌ] in "cut" was closer to the Latin short [a] than the [æ] in "cat". But I don't think I agree. And in General American English there is no vowel length distinction so it only makes sense for British Received Pronunciation. Since you speak Italian, a better contrast would be the short a in «mamma» vs the long a in «fare».

Note that the "y" is only for Greek loanwords and not all Romans would have been able to pronounce it.
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Re: Polski & Italiano (+ Latin) Episode II: StringerBell Strikes Back

Postby StringerBell » Wed Jul 24, 2019 6:31 pm

Deinonysus wrote:And in General American English there is no vowel length distinction so it only makes sense for British Received Pronunciation. Since you speak Italian, a better contrast would be the short a in «mamma» vs the long a in «fare».


In the Italian example you gave, I don't hear any difference between the "a" in mamma vs. fare, so I'll just trust that you're not screwing with me! :lol: I often can't perceive very slight auditory differences, which can cause problems sometimes with Italian. I still don't hear a difference between single and double consonants, even though I know it supposedly exists. I've tried minimal pair training for this and it didn't make a difference. I also have this issue with music. I can't hear a difference between piano keys that are next to each other, I can only detect a difference when the notes are farther apart.

Perhaps it seems to me that the Cambridge book is using those macrons totally randomly because whatever small difference in pronunciation there is I'm just not capable of perceiving - or maybe there really is no difference for me since I speak American English.

In any event, I appreciate the help.
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Re: Polski & Italiano (+ Latin) Episode II: StringerBell Strikes Back

Postby Deinonysus » Wed Jul 24, 2019 7:19 pm

StringerBell wrote:the Italian example you gave, I don't hear any difference between the "a" in mamma vs. fare, so I'll just trust that you're not screwing with me! :lol: I often can't perceive very slight auditory differences, which can cause problems sometimes with Italian. I still don't hear a difference between single and double consonants, even though I know it supposedly exists. I've tried minimal pair training for this and it didn't make a difference. I also have this issue with music. I can't hear a difference between piano keys that are next to each other, I can only detect a difference when the notes are farther apart.

Perhaps it seems to me that the Cambridge book is using those macrons totally randomly because whatever small difference in pronunciation there is I'm just not capable of perceiving - or maybe there really is no difference for me since I speak American English.

In any event, I appreciate the help.

Okay, so that's what the problem is. I think you're just not hearing the differences. As an American English speaker myself, I also struggle with vowel length differences.

For consonant length/gemination, it can be useful to think of a doubled consonant as splitting a word into separate words. So mamma would be pronounced like the two words "mom ma" in American English rather than "mama". English does have doubled consonants, but only between words, not in them.

Vowel length in Italian isn't necessarily phonemic but depends on other factors; any vowel in a stressed, open syllable will be long. An open syllable means that it does not end in a consonant. You may want to consider dabbling in a language where vowel length is phonemic, such as Japanese, Finnish, or Hawaiian. That could help your Italian pronunciation in the long run and should also help you hear the differences in your Latin recordings. More examples of languages with phonemic vowel length are here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vowel_length
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Re: Polski & Italiano (+ Latin) Episode II: StringerBell Strikes Back

Postby rdearman » Wed Jul 24, 2019 8:00 pm

macrons .... I seem to be confused. I was thinking ...

FRENCH-STYLE-MACAROONS-544x600.png


or possibly

Emmanuel_Macron_in_Tallinn_Digital_Summit._Welcome_dinner_hosted_by_HE_Donald_Tusk._Handshake_(36669381364)_(cropped_2).jpg
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