Vox Latina

As I approach the last chapter in the Harrius Potter book, I have acquired a copy of W. Sidney Allen's VOX LATINA: The Pronunciation of Classical Latin. I have worked with similar material on the subject, but have always wanted to get the opportunity to read through Mr. Allen's work. Already just reading the foreword, I like him. His words mirror exactly the way I feel about Latin — always giving much importance to an accurate, reconstructed Classical pronunciation. Ultimately, bringing Latin back to life, and, thus, creating a living Latin.

Foreword (Excerpt)

In discussions on the subject of Latin pronunciation two questions are commonly encountered; they tend to be of a rhetorical nature, and are not entirely confined to non-classical disputants. First, why should we concern ourselves with the pronunciation of a dead language? And second, how in any case can we know how the language was originally pronounced?

In answer to the first question, it may reasonably be held that it is desirable to seek an appreciation of Latin literature, and that such literature was based on a living language. Moreover, much of early literature, and poetry in particular, was orally composed and was intended to be spoken and heard rather than written and seen. If, therefore, we are to try and appreciate an author's full intentions, including the phonetic texture of his work, we must put ourselves as nearly as possible in the position of the native speaker and hearer of his day. Otherwise, however full of grammatical and lexical understanding of the work, we shall still be missing an important element of the contemporary experience.

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