But this pitch accent, while alien to us, is not impossible of acquisition, and it is essential to any adequate rendering of any Latin writer, whether of prose or verse. Nor will the attainment be a work of indefinite time if one pursues with constancy some such course as the following, recommended by Professor Ellis:
“The place of raised pitch,” he says, “must be strictly observed, and for this purpose the verses had better be first read in a kind of sing-song, the high pitched syllables being all of one pitch and the low pitched syllables being all of one pitch also, but about a musical ‘fifth’ lower than the other, as if the latter were sung to the lowest note of the fourth string of a violin, and the former were sung to the lowest note of its third string.”
In the foregoing pages an effort has been made to bring together compactly and to set forth concisely the nature of the ‘Roman method’ of pronouncing Latin; the reasons for adopting, and the simplest means of acquiring it. No attempt has been made at a philosophical or exhaustive treatment of the subject; but at the same time it is hoped that nothing unphilosophical has crept in, or anything been omitted, which might have been given, to render the subject intelligible and enable the intelligent reader to understand the points and be able to give a reason for each usage herein recommended.
The main object in view in preparing this little book has been to help the teachers of Latin in the secondary schools, to furnish them something not too voluminous, yet as satisfactory as the nature of the case allows, upon a subject which the present diversity of opinion and practice has rendered unnecessarily obscure.
To these teachers, then, a word from Professor Ellis may be fitly spoken in conclusion:
“To teach a person to read prose well, even in his own language, is difficult, partly because he has seldom heard prose well read, though he is constantly hearing prose around him, intonated, but unrhythmical. In the case of a dead language, like the Latin, which the pupil never hears spoken, and seldom hears read, except by himself or his equally ignorant and hobbling fellow-scholars, this difficulty is inordinately increased. Let me once more impress on every teacher of Latin the duty of himself learning to read Latin readily according to accent and quantity; the duty of his reading out to his pupils, of his setting them a pattern, of his hearing that they follow it, of his correcting their mistakes, of his leading them into right habits. If the quantitative pronunciation be adopted, no one will be fit to become a classical teacher who cannot read a simple Latin sentence decently, with a strict observance of that quantity by which alone the greatest of Latin orators regulated his own rhythms.”
“All pronunciation is acquired by imitation, and it is not till after hearing a sound many times that we are able to grasp it sufficiently well to imitate. It is a mistake constantly made by teachers of language to suppose that a pupil knows by once hearing unfamiliar sounds, or even unfamiliar combinations of familiar sounds. When pupils are made to imitate too soon, they acquire an erroneous pronunciation, which they afterward hear constantly from themselves actually or mentally, and believe that they hear from the teacher during the small fraction of a second that each sound lasts, and hence the habits of these organs become fixed.”
The following direction is of the utmost importance (Curwen’s “Standard Course,” p. 3): “The teacher never sings (speaks) with his pupils, but sings (utters, reads, dictates) to them a brief and soft pattern. The first art of the pupil is to listen well to the pattern, and then to imitate it exactly. He that listens best sings (speaks) best.”