Template talk:la-IPA

A use for the second parameter
Would it be possible for this template to handle input like and generate a result like: perchance? This would be useful in all cases where a word has variable vowel quantities. — I.S.M.E.T.A. 15:37, 14 November 2014 (UTC)


 * It is not impossible, but needs more effort. I'll do this when I have time. Sorry. --kc_kennylau (talk) 16:37, 25 March 2015 (UTC)


 * There's no rush, honestly. Please, take your time. Thanks for responding at all. :-)  — I.S.M.E.T.A. 19:39, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

Breakup of consonant clusters
This template is used in the page exilis, and produces an odd syllabification: eksˈiː.lis. I think this should be ekˈsiː.lis; the use of a single letter for the consonant cluster doesn't imply that it has to belong to one syllable. Is it possible to make the template create this output? I don't know enough about the language used in the code to figure this out for myself.

Also, I think x+t should be syllabified as k.st, at least if the principle of maximal onsets is supposed to be followed in the case of Latin. (Meaning that if a consonant cluster appears at the beginning of a word, it can be the onset of a non-initial syllable.) Eru·tuon 02:47, 13 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Solved. Next time please ping me or User:CodeCat. --kc_kennylau (talk) 16:35, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I'll do that next time. Eru·tuon 20:27, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

Needs an era parameter
Currently words like are listing explicitly Vulgar Latin pronunciations as "classical". --Tropylium (talk) 18:31, 27 January 2015 (UTC)


 * Ditto words that do not occur before the Late, Mediaeval, Renaissance, or New Latin periods. — I.S.M.E.T.A. 20:16, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

Ecclesiastical fixes

 * /ˈlin.ɡwa/ should be /ˈlin.ɡwa/, [ˈliŋ.ɡwa]
 * /prɔ.pɔˈsi.t͡si.o/, [prɔ.pɔˈsiː.t͡si.o] should be /pro.pɔˈzi.t͡si.o/, [pro.pɔˈziː.t͡si.o]
 * /ˈmɛ.ni.a/, [ˈmɛː.ni.a] should be /ˈme.ni.a/, [ˈmeː.ni.a]
 * /karˈta.ɡɔ/, [karˈtaː.ɡɔ] should be /karˈta.ɡo/, [karˈtaː.ɡo]
 * /ˈrɔ.ma/, [ˈrɔː.ma] should be /ˈro.ma/, [ˈroː.ma]
 * /kaˈlen.dɛ/ should be /kaˈlɛn.dɛ/
 * /prɔˈlɔ.kwi.um/, [prɔˈlɔː.kwi.um] should be /proˈlɔ.kwi.um/, [proˈlɔː.kwi.um]
 * /suk.t͡ʃeˈda.neu̯s/, [suk.t͡ʃeˈdaː.neu̯s] should be /sut.t͡ʃeˈda.neu̯s/, [sut.t͡ʃeˈdaː.neu̯s]
 * /ˈzɔ.na/, [ˈd͡zɔː.na] should be /ˈzo.na/, [ˈd͡zoː.na]
 * /eksˈt͡ʃel.sus/ should be /ɛkˈʃɛl.sus/

Thanks for adding this option, Kenny! —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 15:02, 25 March 2015 (UTC)


 * Some of the above corrections contradict with User:GianWiki's instructions, so I'm calling him. --kc_kennylau (talk) 16:29, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
 * I've been pronouncing /eksˈt͡ʃel.sus/. --kc_kennylau (talk) 16:30, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
 * AFAIK it should be /ɛkˈʃɛl.sus/; x = cs, so excelsus = ecscelsus = ec.scelsus /ɛkˈʃɛl.sus/. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 16:44, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
 * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNEVOlxEQDk uses /ɛkˈʃɛl.sis/; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRpHLsBO-t4 uses /eksˈt͡ʃel.sis/; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JkSeJkpwvA uses /ɛkˈsɛl.sis/. Of course, one would argue that it is the accent that makes the difference. --kc_kennylau (talk) 17:04, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Well, there are different traditions in pronouncing Ecclesiastical Latin. What we're representing here is the Italian tradition, which is the most commonly used one in English-speaking countries today (as well as Italy, of course). The German tradition has /ɛksˈt͡sɛlzis/, the French tradition has /ɛkˈsɛlsis/, the English tradition (now virtually extinct in singing as far as I know, but still used for the names of prayers) is /ɛkˈsɛlsɪs/. See . I've always taken the pronunciation with /-ksˈt͡ʃ-/ to be a hypercorrection and spelling pronunciation. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 17:13, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

Hey, I noticed this discussion just now. I'm curious, what's the rationale for where to use and where to use  in Ecclesiastical Latin pronunciations?

As I noted on the WikiProject Latin talk page, I doubt there's a phonemic distinction between the two. Most Wikipedia pages say that historically long e and o, and oe, are close-mid while short e and o, and ae, are open-mid. However, long e and o aren't marked in Ecclesiastical Latin, and ae and oe are confused in Ecclesiastical Latin Regina Coeli (which would be Regina Caeli in Classical Latin). I'm not sure how speakers are supposed to know which e and o is open-mid and which is close-mid, when these aren't marked in spelling, and the confusion of ae and oe suggests that they are pronounced the same. So, I'm not sure how the phonemic distinction could exist.

Are you guys assuming a phonemic distinction between close-mid and open-mid vowels, or an allophonic one, and what's the evidence? Curious mainly because I removed the distinction between open-mid and close-mid from the table in w:Help:IPA for Latin. Eru·tuon 20:23, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
 * They aren't marked, but speakers are just supposed to know, just like in Italian. My father told me that when he was in Italy, he noticed that singers made a distinction between /e o/ and /ɛ ɔ/ in Latin words, but he didn't see any rhyme or reason for it. So he asked an Italian singer friend how to tell when to use which quality. His friend said, "Oh, it's easy. Just think of the corresponding Italian word. If the Italian word has /e/ or /o/, then the Latin word does too, and if the Italian word has /ɛ/ or /ɔ/ than the Latin word does too." Which wasn't much use to my father, since his Italian was rudimentary, and he didn't know when to use which quality in Italian either. In German-style Latin, they also distinguish between /i u/ and /ɪ ʊ/, with the former coming from ī ū and the latter from ĭ ŭ. I admit the fluctuation between oe and ae is problematic, but if you follow my father's friend's rule then it's /tʃɛli/ since has /ɛ/. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 20:44, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Hmm, okay. Do you know if the distinction would tend to correspond to the Latin long–short vowel distinction, or not? I suppose Latin short e and o would remain open-mid through Romance vowel breaking (while sometimes developing a preceding glide), but I'm not sure how former Latin long ē and ō are pronounced in Italian. If the Italian descendants of ē and ō remain close-mid, I suppose reverting my change to the IPA help page would be accurate.


 * And then there's another question: what about words that aren't in Italian at all? Which vowel would an Italian Ecclesiastical Latin speaker pronounce them with, close-mid or open-mid? (A similar question could be asked about Latin words borrowed straight into Italian without Romance vowel-changes.) Unfortunately, I don't have any examples, since I'm not that familiar with Italian, but I suppose there must be some.


 * I actually found a counter-example: diretto, which had a closed-syllable long ē in Latin: dīrēctus. (This is true despite Wiktionary not marking it in the entry. It's marked in rego, though.) So in some circumstances Latin long ē in a stressed syllable would not be rendered with Italian close e; not sure precisely what circumstances, maybe closed syllables. Eru·tuon 00:10, 26 March 2015 (UTC)


 * A third point: even among Italians, the open-mid and close-mid distinction is not made in unstressed syllables, so the transcription of Athenae should have in the unstressed last syllable, and similarly with several other words. Perhaps you know this and have noticed, but just making sure. Eru·tuon 00:27, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Hmm, we're venturing beyond my ken now! I hope User:GianWiki replies here soon; he's a native Italian speaker. I hadn't thought about unstressed syllables, but probably the /e ~ ɛ/ and /o ~ ɔ/ contrasts are lost there, just as they are in Italian. I can't imagine that Italian speakers would retain a phonemic distinction in Latin in a position where it's neutralized in Italian. (Although on the other hand, apparently the Russian pronunciation of Old Church Slavonic does not have final devoicing even though Russian does, so maybe we shouldn't underestimate people's ability to retain phonemic distinctions in liturgical languages closely related to their native language.) I tried keeping syllable stress in mind when singing in Latin at choir practice tonight, but soon realized that when I'm singing, I don't always have time to stop and think which syllable is stressed! —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 21:09, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
 *  vs. : since ⟨ae oe⟩ phonemically represent, I suggested that ⟨e⟩ be rendered as in all environments in order to avoid ambiguity: of course, due to Italian phonotactics - Italian speakers would pronounce many of those ⟨e⟩ as , but my thought is that avoiding ambiguity might be more important. As for ⟨o⟩, no distinction between close-mid and open-mid exists for back vowels in Latin, so I suggested that it simply be rendered phonemically as ; phonetically, I think that  is the best default rendition (it also maximizes distinction from ), but that  would be better suited to render ⟨ō⟩. Basically - in the way I see it - following Italian phonotactics wouldn't be a bad idea, if not for the fact that it would create ambiguities between ⟨e⟩ and ⟨ae oe⟩. Plus, I don't think that this Ecclesiastical pronunciation should be "Italian" in every way (the aforementioned example of  would be rendered - following an all-Italian pronunciation - as , while - due to the reasons stated above - I would choose ). -- GianWiki (talk) 15:04, 27 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Why do you say "no distinction between close-mid and open-mid exists for back vowels in Latin"? That's not what Vulgar Latin says at all. It implies should be /dɔloˈroza/ and  should be /ˈrɔza/, just like in Italian. You even say yourself that ⟨o⟩ should be [ɔ] and ⟨ō⟩ should be [o]; surely that means they're separate phonemes since they can contrast. All that being said, however, I just found an online copy of the Liber Usualis which denies any distinction between /e o/ and /ɛ ɔ/, instead asserting that e, ae, and oe are all /ɛ/ and o is /ɔ/. It also says on the next page that excelsis has /kʃ/. I don't know how authoritative the Liber Usualis is considered, though. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 22:47, 27 March 2015 (UTC)
 * What I suggested is that ⟨o⟩ and ⟨ō⟩ have phonetically different renditions ( and respectively): those would - phonemically - both fall under  . Also, from what I read here, you seem to be right about the pronunciation of ⟨xc⟩ before front vowels (like in excelsis). - GianWiki (talk) 22:41, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
 * That makes no sense. If they are distinct phonetically and there is no other phonetic feature in the word that decides which of the two pronunciations to use, then the distinction is by definition phonemic. —CodeCat 20:08, 8 April 2015 (UTC)
 * and coexist as phonetic allophones of the phoneme .The different realizations reflect the vowel change from Latin to Italian (on which phonological system Ecclesiastical pronunciation is supposedly based), where Latin ⟨ō⟩ has given Italian . - GianWiki (talk) 23:33, 9 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Like CodeCat, I'm puzzled by what you're saying. According to Wikipedia, in stressed syllables, close-mid and open-mid  are phonemes (though not in some Italian dialects, apparently). And the fact that the Italian phonological system came from the Latin one proves that open-mid and close-mid are phonemically contrasted. Just as Classical Latin had a phonemic contrast between long and short mid vowels, Italian has a phonemic contrast between close-mid and open-mid vowels. Phonemic vowel length in Latin changed to phonemic vowel height in Italian. Eru·tuon 04:25, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
 * I'd add to what Angr says: ae and oe are not both, at least not in Vulgar Latin. ae was open like former short e, and oe was close  like former long ē. I would explain this height difference by the fact that  is the "average" of the vowel heights of open  and mid , while oe has no averaging going on, since it's composed of two mid vowels. However, perhaps Ecclesiastical Latin is different from Vulgar Latin in this respect, and both ae and oe are open? Eru·tuon 19:52, 29 March 2015 (UTC)
 * As far as I know - and also according to Wikipedia - ⟨ae⟩ and ⟨oe⟩ have effectively merged into . - GianWiki (talk) 22:41, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Best not to use the Latin pronunciation article as a source, because I'm not sure if what it says about e, ae, and oeis supported by any sources. See Vulgar Latin instead. In Vulgar Latin, ae became open-mid, and oe close-mid . I think this can be seen in Italian (from ) which has . If Ecclesiastical Latin follows Vulgar Latin and Italian, then ae is open-mid and oe close-mid. Eru·tuon 05:37, 8 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Harold Copeman in this poor photocopy on Google Books says the same thing as the Liber Usualis, though, namely that the distinction between close /e o/ and open /ɛ ɔ/, although present in Vulgar Latin and in Italian, is lost in Ecclesiastical pronunciation, so that ae, oe, ē, and ĕ are all /ɛ/ and ō and ŏ are both /ɔ/. His sample texts include /spɛs/ for spēs and /ˈnɔbis/ for nōbīs. Which is too bad, because I always liked the idea of distinguishing /ˈvɛnit/ "he comes" from /ˈvenit/ "he came" in Ecclesiastical Latin, but apparently that isn't as authentic as I thought it was. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 19:53, 8 April 2015 (UTC)
 * That would certainly make sense of the spelling confusion between caeli and coeli. Eru·tuon 05:44, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

Some more fixes: —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 21:16, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
 * /h/ is lost in Italianate Ecclesiastical Latin, and
 * the /t/ → /t͡s/ before /i/ plus vowel rule does not apply after /s/, so
 * /ˈhos.t͡si.a/, [ˈhɔs.t͡si.a] should be /ˈɔs.ti.a/
 * Fixed. --kc_kennylau (talk) 14:52, 27 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks. According to the Liber Usualis (see link above), the rule is also suppressed after x and another t, so forms like pextia and pettia (if they existed) would have /t/ and not /t͡s/. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 22:47, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

@kc_kennylau et al.: Soooo, is this feature ready for general deployment? — I.S.M.E.T.A. 19:33, 1 May 2015 (UTC)


 * Not in its current state, no. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 20:45, 1 May 2015 (UTC)


 * @Aɴɢʀ: How much more work needs to be done on it, do you think? — I.S.M.E.T.A. 20:53, 1 May 2015 (UTC)


 * We need to come to some agreements about Ecclesiastical pronunciations first. If we follow the recommendations of the Liber Usualis, then excelsis is /ɛkˈʃɛlsis/ not /ɛksˈtʃɛlsis/ and ē ĕ ae oe are all /ɛ/ while ō ŏ are both /ɔ/, but I'm not sure everyone who's commented in this thread will find that acceptable. Also, h needs to be silent, but it still renders as /h/. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 05:39, 2 May 2015 (UTC)


 * Calling User:GianWiki also. --kc_kennylau (talk) 07:58, 2 May 2015 (UTC)


 * @Aɴɢʀ: Well, like you, I like "the idea of distinguishing 'he comes' from  'he came' in Ecclesiastical Latin", but if it means that we can get this feature up and running, I'd be willing to compromise by "follow[ing] the recommendations of the Liber Usualis". — I.S.M.E.T.A. 08:59, 2 May 2015 (UTC)


 * If we're looking to create a somewhat realistic rendition system, it could go like this:
 * ⟨e⟩ = ; ⟨ē⟩ =
 * ⟨o⟩ = ; ⟨ō⟩ =
 * ⟨ae oe⟩ =
 * Otherwise - should the former prove too difficult to implement - ⟨e ē⟩ can be rendered as just (not, to avoid ambiguity), and ⟨o ō⟩ as  (not , because it doesn't quite make an effective default rendering, for example in words like ). -- GianWiki (talk) 23:19, 5 May 2015 (UTC)


 * I'm fine with using /e/ and /o/ instead of /ɛ/ and /ɔ/, though the Liber Usualis does make it pretty clear that they're supposed to be open-mid rather than close-mid vowels. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 09:35, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
 * I only speak from my personal knowledge of Italian-based Latin pronunciation, but I'm pretty sure [phonetically] rendering long vowels as close-mid and short ones as open-mid would be an accurate enough representation of their actual pronunciation. Even if we were to simplify it, and use one same value to render both long and short vowels, open-mid vowels would not be the best suited ones for that (see above, the example).  GianWiki (talk) 20:59, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
 * The reason I prefer to follow the Liber Usualis is that we then have an actual published authority to follow rather than just our own personal experience. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 21:27, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Great. So let's just go for it so we can get this feature up and running. :-)  — I.S.M.E.T.A. 13:54, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Done. Used Gianwiki's first proposal. --kc_kennylau (talk) 16:39, 7 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Excellent. So, can this feature be made independent of specifying eccl? — I.S.M.E.T.A. 17:46, 7 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Two things: h still needs to be silent; hostia should be /ˈostia/ not /ˈhostia/. Also, GianWiki's proposal that ĕ and ē are phonemically the same but phonetically different is impossible. It makes no sense to say that vĕnit and vēnit are phonemically both /ˈve.nit/ but that the former is phonetically [ˈvɛː.nit] and the latter is phonetically [ˈveː.nit]. That's not the way phonemes work. If they're phone t ically distinct, they form a minimal pair, proving that they are phone m ically distinct. But that's not what the only published sources on Ecclesiastical pronunciation that I've been able to find (the Liber Usualis and Copeman's book) say: they say that ĕ and ē (and, in parallel, ŏ and ō, not to mention ă and ā, ĭ and ī, as well as ŭ and ū) are phonetically identical, so vĕnit and vēnit are homophones at both the phonemic and the phonetic level. If we're going to follow the published sources rather than our own intuitions and experiences, vĕnit and vēnit should both be phonetically [ˈvɛ.nit] (or [ˈve.nit] if you prefer; as long as there's no contrast it doesn't matter which symbol we pick). I suppose it's acceptable to put the length mark in too, but I don't think it's necessary for Ecclesiastical Latin (as opposed to Italian), and it might confuse people to see a Classical short vowel like that of vĕnit transcribed with a phonetic long vowel in Ecclesiastical. So while my preference is for [ˈvɛ.nit], I don't actually object to any of [ˈvɛː.nit], [ˈve.nit], or [ˈveː.nit]. But I do object to making a contrast between [ˈvɛː.nit] and [ˈveː.nit] at the phonetic level while claiming that they're phonemically identical, because that's nonsense. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 20:37, 7 May 2015 (UTC)
 * I don't think "it confuses people" is a good reason not to lengthen accented vowels. --kc_kennylau (talk) 13:23, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

I have a doubt: is rendered as, but - if we're following an "italianate pronunciation" - it should be. --- GianWiki (talk) 22:48, 7 August 2016 (UTC)


 * What is the consensus or unsolved problems? --kc_kennylau (talk) 12:24, 5 November 2016 (UTC)

Exceptions regarding enclitics and compounds
I have no idea how this would be accomplished myself, but I'm curious as to whether or not this template could be changed so that it would change the stress as appropriate regarding enclitics and compounds, e.g. (despite the fact that this entry wouldn't exist on Wiktionary) typing and having /roːˈma.kʷe/, [roːˈma.kᶣɛ] appear, rather than the expected descriptions /ˈroːma.kʷe/, [ˈroːma.kᶣɛ]. Would this be possible? --Joseph Yanchar (User page/Talk page) 15:50, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your suggestion. However, why should the stress fall on the "ma" instead of the "Rō"? --kc_kennylau (talk) 15:15, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
 * According to Allen and Greenough § 12, in words with enclictics, the syllable before the enclitic is stressed, and compounds of "faciō" retain the stress of the original form in "faciō". --Joseph Yanchar (User page/Talk page) 15:50, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
 * A&G also mention penultimate stress in Cornēlī, Vergilī, ingenī, but it might be too much to ask for the template to know whether or not such forms have -ius/-ium in the nominative. Maybe the template should have a manual override for stress, so that correctly gives /aˈmaː.bi.liː/, but   (or however we want to write it) gives /werˈɡi.liː/ ( will give the right result already because of the long ē). —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 21:25, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
 * I agree that that would be the best way to improve this template; any alternatives would be too hard to implement (if not impossible). --Joseph Yanchar (User page/Talk page) 22:10, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Done. --kc_kennylau (talk) 16:09, 2 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks, Kenny! —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 16:39, 2 May 2015 (UTC)

⟨rh⟩ in Ecclesiastical
It's just /r/, not /rʰ/, unless my memory is sorely mistaken. Can anyone else confirm and fix this? —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 23:45, 24 September 2016 (UTC)
 * As far as I know, no language has such a thing as an aspirated r; what is probably intended is, voiceless r. But either way, I think you're right that Ecclesiastical Latin doesn't have it. — Eru·tuon 23:21, 4 October 2016 (UTC)
 * —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 01:42, 5 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Then what is the difference between r and rh? --kc_kennylau (talk) 08:27, 5 October 2016 (UTC)
 * In Ecclesiastical Latin, none. Even in Classical Latin probably none, especially once ῥ started to be pronounced /r/ in Greek. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 16:33, 5 October 2016 (UTC)
 * , this still needs to be fixed. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 03:44, 17 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Done. --kc_kennylau (talk) 13:04, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

Length of nasalized vowels
Nasalized vowels are always long, including at the end of words. The example dēfēnsum should therefore be [deːˈfẽː.sũː]. A classic example of this is the metric scansion of Ītaliam at the beginning of Vergil's Aeneid:


 * Ītali/am fā/tō profu/gus lā/vīn(i)aque / vēnit / lītora
 * [iːˈtalɪãː ˈfaːtoː ˈprɔfʊgʊs laːˈwiːn(j)akᶣɛ ˈweːnɪt ˈliːtɔra]

Please make the relevant changes in the code of this template.--Serafín33 (talk) 02:05, 17 October 2016 (UTC)
 * There is a distinction between metrical length and linguistic length. — JohnC5 02:06, 17 October 2016 (UTC)
 * I think the distinction is that syllables ending in a consonant are "long" (heavy) even when the vowel of the syllable is not. That doesn't apply in this case, because the syllable does not end in a consonant, except in the spelling, so the vowel has to be long. That is often the case when a nasal was lost and the preceding vowel has become nasal: see and . — Eru·tuon 05:15, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

The changes to the this template
The current method by which this template functions (generating the phonemic and phonetic pronunciations, comparing them to see whether they differ, then regenerating the phonetic description if so) is highly inefficient and ugly. If done internally to the module, this means that each pronunciation need only be generated once and the calls the Module:IPA and Module:a may be done internally for added efficiency. Is there a complaint with that? — JohnC5 20:30, 23 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I realize there was a equals sign where a not-equals needed to be in the module. My bad. It should all work the same now. — JohnC5 20:40, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

"Classicistic"?
I'm removing this template whenever I stumble upon a Neo-Latin term, because the label "Classical" is misleading then. Could it be replaced by "Classicistic" when is present? --Barytonesis (talk) 17:51, 19 October 2017 (UTC)
 * No, because Lua modules can't search the wikitext of the page on which they are placed and find out if a template is used there. But a parameter could be added to to change the label. [Edit: Hm, I should say I don't know if a module can search the text of the page. Maybe it can. But I haven't seen that technique used in any module.] — Eru·tuon 23:14, 19 October 2017 (UTC)
 * It's used in several modules, most notably Module:descendants tree. — JohnC5 06:02, 20 October 2017 (UTC)
 * I also noticed today that Module:zh-forms searches the wikitext of the page it's placed on. — Eru·tuon 06:08, 20 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Another fairly clean example is at MOD:term etymology. — JohnC5 06:29, 20 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Well, I meant cases where the module searches the same page that it's invoked on. But I guess it isn't really different. Still, it would be simpler to add a parameter rather than make a page parser. — Eru·tuon 06:34, 20 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Now that I think of it, the use of seems far from widespread anyway, so it would probably be better not to rely on it. --Barytonesis (talk) 06:58, 20 October 2017 (UTC)

Should the ecclesiastical pronunciation not be included by default?
Contrast, which has a range of pronunciations in a neat little drop-down menu without any need for additional parameters specifying their inclusion. — Kleio (t · c) 19:41, 21 November 2017 (UTC)
 * I see this was never answered, and la-IPA hasn't been updated since 2017, seems abandoned, but I concur with this comment, Latin IPA should be changed ASAP to include the Ecclesiastical pronunciation by default, unless someone can provide a convincing reason to NOT provide both pronunciations. Possibly also include Vulgar Latin pronunciation, although maybe should get more specific in description for that first, as is the case with the Ancient Greek. (Specify for example "5th century CE Late Latin" or "9th century CE Medieval Latin"). The shifts in vernacular pronunciation from "Classical" toward medieval Vulgar, Medieval, Ecclesiastical (and then later Proto-/Old Romance languages) had begun as early as the 1st century AD/CE when the Roman Empire was at its peak, just as Classical Greek of 400 BC Athens had become Koine by 100 BC Alexandria. To only provide the (speculatively RECONSTRUCTED) high-register literary Latin pronunciation of Cicero of c. 3rd-1st centuries BC is misleading and clearly flawed. Especially when compared with other old ancient-medieval-modern evolving languages, the lack of any pronunciation besides the "Classical" becomes a glaring absence.
 * As KIeio mentions, the Template:grc-IPA automatically provides not one, not two, but five different pronunciations across nearly 2,000 years each specifically described (5th Century BCE Classical Attic; 1st century CE Koine Egyptian (Alexandrian), 4th century CE Koine, 10th century CE Byzantine Medieval, 15th century CE Constantinopolitan Medieval), 3 shown by default (Classical, Koine, Medieval), just click drop-down to see all 5. Often the later Medieval pronunciations resemble and provide a useful bridge to Modern Greek pronunciation. Even Phoenician Punic, an ancient language the pronunciation of which we know far less about, Template:xpu-ipa-rows automatically provides 3 evolving pronunciations (6th century BCE Punic, 2nd century BCE Late Punic, 2nd century CE Neo-Punic), that likewise serves as a useful bridge to Hebrew and other Semitic languages. Hebrew words can have many IPA pronunciations (e.g. Biblical, Tiberian, Ashkenazi, Sephardi, Yemenite, Modern Israeli)...for 2,500+ year-old language Latin whence eventually evolved Italian and other Romance tongues, we have only ONE IPA pronunciation from BC era, as if Latin ceased to exist as spoken tongue 2,019 years ago.
 * The fact is, the "Classical" pronunciation is reconstructed by best guess of how upper-class Roman Republic citizens like Cicero spoke in Rome during a narrow specific period about 2,200-2,000 years ago. Nobody has ever heard anyone speak Latin like the "Classical" pronunciation, it was not passed down in that form but rather a modern academic reconstruction. Insofar as Latin has remained a living spoken language, it resembled what we call "Ecclesiastical" pronunciation, closer to the Romance languages which evolved from Latin—obviously most closely the Italic Romance languages of Italy whence the Latin language originated in the first place. Medieval Latin was kept alive all over Europe as a language of scholarship and ceremony, but in particular spoken and chanted Latin naturally passed down as the active liturgical language of the Latin-rite Roman Catholic Church based in Roma, Latium. The Pope of the Roman Church assumed the Classical-era Latin title of Pontifex Maximus; the Latin of the Roman Church has been the standard form of living Latin since the fall of the Roman Empire. Until 1969 every Roman Catholic Mass on earth was said, chanted, and sung in Latin—in "Ecclesiastical" pronunciation—and today many Roman Catholics still attend pre-1969 "Tridentine" Latin Mass rather than vernacular service. The Vatican, the only state where Latin is an official language, still produces a Modern Latin lexicon. As a matter of practical concern, anyone who sings in a schola or choir and who looks up any Latin words on Wiktionary to know how to pronounce them (one of few areas where verbal Latin is still regularly used by people of all backgrounds) will find the "Classical" pronunciation useless, or even worse, confuse and embarrass them if they lack foreknowledge about "Classical" vs. "Ecclesiastical" pronunciation differences, or even unaware that there is a difference at all. Wiktionary is useless or worse for most people looking up Latin pronunciations to SAY or SING, to actually put to practical use, unless the person knows about the different pronunciations and knows to edit the source page to add "eccl=yes" to show the Ecclesiastical pronunciation that should have been showing by default.
 * One more thing may be noted: the "Ecclesiastical" pronunciation was not merely the Latin used in Roman Catholic Church. In fact by the 19th century the liturgical Latin in churches of different countries had become corrupted by influence of local vernaculars. This prompted Pope Pius X in 1912 and Pope Pius XI in 1928 to call upon the universal Roman Catholic Church to purify their Latin pronunciation and conform to the pure living Latin of Rome, Latin pronounced more Romano ("in the Roman style"), i.e. the Italianate pronunciation of Latin that developed naturally in Rome alongside the distinct vernacular Italian Romance languages—which we now call "Ecclesiastical" Latin pronunciation.
 * While not widely spoken as vernacular, the situation of "Ecclesiastical" Latin vs. "Classical" Latin is most akin to the development of Classical Ancient Greek to Byzantine Koine/Medieval Greek and onward to Modern Greek spoken by Greeks in Greece. 15th century CE Constantinopolitan Medieval Greek pronunciation is still here categorized as a pronunciation evolution of "Ancient Greek", a distinct language from Modern Greek, although the pronunciation is far closer to Modern Greek then to Classical Attic Ancient Greek. As Constantinople was the capital of the Greek world until 15th century, so Rome was and still is the capital of the Latin world. The way Latin pronunciation evolved in Rome to Italianate "Ecclesiastical" pronunciation should be considered a natural evolution of Latin pronunciation (an evolution into Late Latin that had begun as early as the first few centuries AD) just as Classical Attic Ancient Greek pronunciation naturally evolved into 300 AD Koine and eventually into 1452 AD Byzantine Ancient Greek which is pronounced like Modern Greek (as Ecclesiastical Latin is pronounced similar to Modern Italian). But Wiktionary classifies the language of 1452 Constantinople as "Ancient Greek". With "Latin", we don't even have that slightly misleading "Ancient" label in the name of the language to argue against including post-Cicero Ancient Latin IPA.
 * So again I strongly concur on making an easy and quick change to automatically include Ecclesiastical Latin pronunciation with the la-IPA template to appear under the Classical pronunciation, 2 pronunciations for a language in use for 2,500+ years or so is hardly unusual; having only ONE pronunciation based on reconstructed 2nd century BC literary Latin is downright defective. The Wiktionary language is LATIN, not CLASSICAL LATIN. Unless someone can provide a convincing argument to the contrary, that's a simple change that should be made immediately. Further down the road we should consider more significant reforms of Latin IPA template to mirror that of e.g. Ancient Greek and Punic in showing historical evolution of pronunciation.  Inqvisitor (talk) 19:03, 9 November 2019 (UTC)

Palatalized /k/
Shouldn’t we represent the realization of and  as palatal or palatalized before front vowels in Classical pronunciation, as in ? Instead of the current, we could have ,  or ,. After all, it must have been a palatal stop first before changing into an affricate and I see no reason why it wouldn’t have been so already in the Classical period. There is a very strong trend of palatalization in European languages and we have plenty of examples of allophonic palatal. Also, it seems to be basically impossible to maintain especially before  or ; e.g., Italian, Spanish, French, English, German, Danish, Icelandic, Faroese all have a palatal k before these sounds. There is more variation before mid-front vowels. English and Faroese show that after palatals have changed to affricates, newly created sequences of velar stop + front vowel are quickly palatalized once again. In Slavic languages there are even at least four layers of palatalization (the satem shift + post-alveolar sibilants + alveolar sibilants + recent unaffricated/unfricativized palatalized velars)! Sorry about the long-winded post, but in short I would like to see alveolar stops rendered as palatals or palatalized velars (only in the phonetic transcription, not the phonemic one). – Krun (talk) 23:03, 20 September 2019 (UTC)
 * The velar stops remained velar stops in Sardinian, so I guess the question is whether they're phonetically palatalized in that language. If not, then that's a reason to believe there was no noticeable palatalization in Classical Latin. —Mahāgaja · talk 08:56, 21 September 2019 (UTC)

Word-internal clusters with /s/, and palatalizated /lʲ/ in Classical Latin
I think words like festus should be syllabified as /ˈfeː.stus/, instead of /ˈfeːs.tus/. In dividing clusters between syllables, you move as many consonants to the syllable onset as possible. /ˈfeː.stus/ would only happen in languages that don't permit word-initial clusters with /s/ like Spanish (e.g. rastro [ras.tɾo]).

Also, what about the sequence /li/, why is it transcribed as [lʲi] (as in liber)? I'd never read about that palatalization process, are there any sources about that? I'd be interested in this issue. Thanks!
 * After a short vowel, a word-internal consonant cluster starting with s was definitely heterosyllabic rather than a homorganic complex-onset cluster. We have metrical evidence for that: in Classical Latin, the first syllables of words like vester or costa regularly scanned as heavy despite containing short vowels. That kind of evidence doesn't exist for the syllabification of s-clusters after long vowels. However, based on the behavior after short vowels, it seems questionable that Latin really "moves as many consonants to the syllable onset as possible". It seems like it works just as well or better to say that Latin avoids empty onsets, but doesn't always use the maximum possible onset. That alternative formulation would also be more consistent with the behavior of obstruent+liquid clusters, which are well known to be sometimes heterosyllabic despite being valid as syllable onsets.


 * The transcription of /li/ is currently given as [lʲi] because [lʲ] has been implemented as the transcription of the "clearest" allophone of Latin /l/ based on Ranjan Sen's phonetic transcription. See the discussion here for more context: Allophones of L.
 * --Urszag (talk) 05:52, 29 February 2020 (UTC)
 * While 'tis true generally Latin tries to maximize the onset, medial /s/+consonant is a notable exception (based on fairly solid evidence) and must split syllables so [ˈfeːs.t̪ʊs] would be correct. Alkire and Rosen's Romance Languages §1.1.3: «one unexpected fact about Latin syllabification concerns /s/+consonant occurring word-medially. The syllable boundary in this case runs between /s/ and the consonant, which seems contrary to the principle of maximizing the onset. Even though /s/+consonant can begin a word, it cannot begin a medial syllable. For example SPA.TA, but CRIS.PA, not *CRI.SPA. This fact is inferred from clear linguistic evidence (§1.2.5).» And §2.2.1: «Clusters of /s/+consonant cannot begin a syllable word-medially: festa is syllabified FES.TA.»
 * In Popular (Vulgar) Latin, this prohibition on /s/+consonant beginning a syllable already tended to apply even word-initially, with the addition of a prosthetic vowel before /s/+consonant, as /s/ could never syllabify in the onset. Hence Classical Latin ‹sponsa›→ Old Italian /isposa/, Old French /espose/, Spanish /esposa/; Lat. ‹spatha›→ Old Ital. /ispada/, Old Fr. /espede/, Sp. /espada/; Lat. ‹scriptu(m)›→ Old Ital. /iscritto/, Old Fr. /escrit/, Sp. /escrito/, etc.
 * Modern Italian lost this rule and mostly shed the prosthetic vowels. Modern French instead typically deletes the preconsonantal /s/ e.g. Lat. ‹studiu(m)›→ Old Fr. /estude/→ Fr. ‹étude›. As you note, Spanish is one Romance language where this rule is still active.
 * The palatized "L" is more speculative and debatable; some scholars interpret L exīlis ('thin' L, as opposed to velarized dark 'fat' L pinguis [ɫ]) not as a plain alveolar (or dental) lateral approximant but as palatized [lʲ] or even [ʎ] when occurring before a front vowel /li-/ /le-/, or only before front vowel -i as /li-/, and also when geminated /ll/, hence e.g. ‹Apollō› too is rendered palatized on here in Classical pronunciation as [aˈpɔl.lʲoː].
 * In truth the pronunciation of /L/ probably varied not only based on word placement but also varied considerably over the centuries of Latin usage across all different regions that Wiktionary currently groups all together as one "Classical" pronunciation (which was probably only used among educated Romans c. 1st century BC-2nd century AD, possibly as a Ciceronian affectation versus the genuine Sermo Vulgaris heard on the streets of Rome). For example Wikt applies the palatalization [lʲ] to the /l/ of Classical Latin ‹lingua› as [ˈlʲɪŋ.ɡʷa], when in Old Latin the word was found as ‹dingua› (from Proto-Italic *denɣwā /ˈden.ɣwaː/) suggesting that initial /li-/ sound originally rather resembled an alveolar tap or alveolar stop, which would suggest an alveolar lateral approximant [l] sound virtually identical in place of articulation to alveolar stop [d]–easy to confuse and conflate the two alveolar sounds. Perhaps the later phonemic shift to /l/ originated with a lateral release of /d/ as [dˡ], a tendency that can be seen in English where /d/ and /l/ can merge e.g. ‹middle› [ˈmɪdəl]→ [ˈmɪdˡl̩].
 * —Inqvisitor (talk) 17:44, 29 February 2020 (UTC)
 * The /d/ > /l/ shift found in and  is almost certainly not a regular sound change, as the vast majority of words with initial d- in Proto-Italic and Old Latin still had d in Classical Latin, so dingua > lingua is a red herring in this discussion. —Mahāgaja · talk 19:26, 29 February 2020 (UTC)

Ecclesiastical _a_
Why is _a_ transcribed as [ɑ] in Ecclesiastical, as opposed to Classical [ä]? Ecclesiastical Latin has a triangular system very much like Italian, Spanish, or modern Greek, where the lowest vowel is always central [ä]. No Romance language I know has /ɑ/, with the partial exception of French, where /ɑ/ is recessive anyway. German doesn't have it, either. I think [ä] should be used for both Classical and Ecclesiastical. Stick Daze (talk) 14:31, 17 September 2021 (UTC)
 * [ä] shouldn't be used at all as it is meaningless in a system that doesn't also include [a]. Just use [a]. —Mahāgaja · talk 15:52, 17 September 2021 (UTC)
 * The transcription of /a/ was discussed on the module talk page in March. Incidentally, does everyone active on this talk page also look at that one? There has not been much activity there since the module was locked due to edit wars; I have usually posted there as the module is where the actual logic of the template is implemented, but I could post here if more people will see it. I'd appreciate input on the transcription of /r/ as I'd like to request for a mod to alter the current behavior there.
 * The reasoning for the [ɑ] transcription is a little unclear to me. I'd be fine with [ä] for both, or [a] as a broader transcription. The difference between [a] and [ä] is not meaningless, as [ä] is explicitly central and [a] is ambiguous (in practice) between front, central, or even back. While it's questionable whether our reconstruction of Latin is certain enough to give narrow transcriptions like [ä], it does include more detail than [a]. The lack of contrast with [a] only is "meaningless" in the context of a phonemic transcription, not a narrow phonetic one.--Urszag (talk) 18:45, 17 September 2021 (UTC)

Indeed. The vowel in question was in all likelihood low central and the same in quality as present-day Italian and Spanish a. The low back unrounded vowel is usually found in languages with at least two vowels in the low front area, which as far as we can tell was never the case with Latin. When sung (plainsong, etc.) in Church, it's usually centralized and invariably so if the singer is Italian, Spanish, or even German. It may well be the case that judgment here has been influenced by the phonetics of English, where the most open vowel is the low back unrounded vowel for most native speakers, except in dialects where "short-a" has retracted to low central position (e.g. often in Northern Britain), or "short-o" has advanced to the same position (the "flat" Midwestern accent), or "broad a" has advanced to the same position (in Australia). Stick Daze (talk) 20:55, 17 September 2021 (UTC)


 * I agree that [ɑ] in all environments is exceedingly unlikely, considering that (Standard) Ecclesiastical pronunciation is based on the speech of Roman clergy. The main realization should be central. The Nicodene (talk) 00:11, 19 September 2021 (UTC)

Transcription of syllable-initial semivowels
Currently, the module (and thus, template) generates Classical Latin pronunciations where the non-syllabic glides corresponding to the spellings I and V are displayed as [i̯] and [u̯] respectively in all contexts.

Furthermore, a phonetic dissimilation rule is implemented where phonemic /u̯u/ and /i̯i/ are displayed as phonetic [u̯o] and [i̯e] respectively (e.g. in and ), in contrast to our usual phonetic transcriptions of pre-consonantal /u/ and /i/ as [ʊ] and [ɪ] respectively.

I think that we should instead use [j] and [w] for the syllable-initial consonant sounds, and not indicate any kind of dissimilation of a following vowel. Therefore, I think we should transcribe vulgus and the pronunciation of obicere that started with a closed syllable as [ˈwʊɫ̪gʊs] and [ɔbˈjɪkɛrɛ] respectively.

The relevant facts regarding /wu/ are as follows: whenever /wu/ appears in Latin, it is the outcome of older /wo/ where vowel raising turned /o/ to /u/ (raising occurred either in non-initial syllables or before dark L). Raising of /o/ to /u/ was indicated later in spelling after /u/, /w/, /kʷ/, /gʷ/ than after other sounds (in contexts where raising is expected to apply, the spellings "VO", "QVO", "GVO" were used up until around the middle of the 1st century AD, after which they were replaced by the spellings "VV", "CV"/"QVV", "GV"/"GVV"). Some sources hypothesize that that the period of conditional V/O spelling (e.g. with forms like "SERVOM" alongside "PVERVM") indicates a phonemic reality of some stage of Latin: that there was a phonological dissimilation rule that replaced /u/ with /o/ after /u/, /w/, /kʷ/, /gʷ/. However, I don't think that this hypothesis is a good basis for us to transcribe vu as [u̯o]. The spelling change to VV (corresponding to the normalized spelling vu that we use in our entries) seems like fairly strong evidence that by the first century AD, the vowel was phonemically identified with /u/, and therefore that it phonetically sounded more similar to Latin speakers' ears at that point to [ʊ] than to [ɔ]. Hypothesizing that even after the vowel was phonologically reinterpreted as /u/, speakers actually used a special intermediate value of [o] after /w/ seems dubious to me, and I don't know of a source that describes that situation. (The Wikipedia article makes a different assertion that I find equally dubious: that despite the spelling change to VV, the vowel remained phonemically /o/ and phonetically [ɔ]). W. Sidney Allen says that VO is "certainly to be pronounced as uu in imperial times, and almost certainly earlier" (Vox Latina p. 18). The current transcription also seems inconsistent in that it shows /kʷu/, /gʷu/ as [kʊ] [gʊ] not [kʷo] [gʷo], even though O spellings seem to have persisted about as long after labiovelars as after V/U.

The case with /ji/ is somewhat similar, although more complicated, and there are fewer affected words (exclusively compounds of iacio). While some sources hypothesize a stage involving [je] in these words, there are practically no attested spellings with E, and the words seem to have been pronounced with the regular short /i/ vowel, with [j] variably present or lost.--Urszag (talk) 01:33, 19 September 2021 (UTC)


 * That was bothering me as well. The approximants in question are best transcribed as [j w].
 * On chronological grounds, Classical spellings of the ⟨seruom⟩ type would more likely indicate a temporary persistence, in this environment, of Old Latin /o/ after /w/ rather than the /o/ > /u/ > [o] implied by the module comment ("dissimilation after homorganic glides").
 * That such spellings must have had a basis in phonetic reality is, as Allen hints, questionable. Adams (2013: 63) comments:
 * "Any statistic account of spellings showing o for ŭ which does not cite the evidence must also be treated with suspicion (so that of Gaeng 1968), because many such spellings turn out to be special cases irrelevant to developments in the later vowel system. Some old spellings very persistent. Most notable among these is the writing of uo rather than uu, where the first letter represents a semivowel ([w]) and the second a short vowel. There was a reluctance to repeat the letter with a different phonetic value, and for that reason old spellings such as seruos persisted. Prinz (1932: 50–4) has a detailed discussion of the matter, along with statistical tables showing the incidence in inscriptions at different periods of uo versus uu. There is also a good discussion by Carnoy (1906: 51–4)."
 * I was not able to find a copy of Prinz (1932). Carnoy (1906: 51–54) had this to say:
 * "Until the end of the republic, and even until [the time] of Quintilian, the nominative and accusative singular endings of the o type were written os, om in traditional fashion whenever preceded by u̯. It is far from certain that this corresponded to the actual pronunciation. A grammarian of the first century [C.E.], Velleius Longus (Lindsay 267) explicitly says that: ‘[The words] primitivus, adoptivus, and nominativus were written with u and o [i.e. ⟨uo⟩] by most of our precedessors, clearly because they knew that the vowels could not be mingled with each other [when written] this way [...] It seems that they wrote this type of noun one way and pronounced them another way, as they would pronounce u despite writing o.’ This is simply a means to avoid confusion between uu ( = ū), u̯u, and uu̯. A look at the various examples of uo and uu spellings in Hispania confirms that this has nothing to do with pronunciation [...] It is clear from one of Varro's texts that, already in the Republican period, u was pronounced in the word vulnus. The author chose as examples of initial u̯ before all vowels in the alphabet the words vafer, velum, vinum, vomis, and vulnus (Liindsay 236). Accordingly, even if volnus were written, it was pronounced vulnus." (Translation mine.)
 * On the whole, [wʊ] seems likely to me.
 * Adams, James Noel. 2013. Social variation and the Latin language. Cambridge University Press.
 * Carnoy, Albert Joseph. 1906. Le latin d'Espagne d'après les inscriptions: Étude linguistique. Brussels: Misch & Thron.
 * Prinz, Otto. 1932. De o et u vocalibus inter se permutatis in lingua latina. Halle: Eduard Klinz.
 * The Nicodene (talk) 23:19, 19 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Adams, James Noel. 2013. Social variation and the Latin language. Cambridge University Press.
 * Carnoy, Albert Joseph. 1906. Le latin d'Espagne d'après les inscriptions: Étude linguistique. Brussels: Misch & Thron.
 * Prinz, Otto. 1932. De o et u vocalibus inter se permutatis in lingua latina. Halle: Eduard Klinz.
 * The Nicodene (talk) 23:19, 19 September 2021 (UTC)

New Latin pronunciations
Some users have been removing Classical pronunciations (e.g., here; ), leaving only the Ecclesiastical ones, which do not distinguish vowel length; however, the usage note of states “There is no unity among those users of New Latin who distinguish vowel length as to whether the "a" of the stem should be long or short”. As they (the mentioned users of New Latin) Classically distinguish vowel length those pronunciations should not be removed. J3133 (talk) 19:00, 21 May 2022 (UTC)


 * Considering that there isn't agreement over the 'o' either, we should in theory have four different pronunciations. It's a bit silly in the end. Having phonetic transcriptions of Classical Latin in the first place is also silly to me, but that's another matter. Nicodene (talk) 19:06, 21 May 2022 (UTC)

Specifying that the phonetic transcription is a reconstruction
Shouldn't we specify that the current phonetic transcription given for Classical Latin is a reconstruction (maybe with an asterisk in front of it?), and possibly also indicate what book/study/scholar's theory it's following? There are other reconstruction theories out there, not necessarily agreeing with the one we are giving on Wiktionary.

Also, shouldn't we specify that the Ecclesiastical Latin pronunciation we give is the Italian one? While it is true that recently the Vatican has pushed to "unify" Latin pronunciation (read: spread the Italian one everywhere), every European country has its own traditional church pronunciation of Latin. Sartma (talk) 13:30, 31 May 2022 (UTC)