5. E: ē had the sound of English e in "they" or of the French ê; ĕ had the sound of English e in "net".
(a) The position of the vocal organs in pronouncing e is described by Terentianus Maurus (p. 329 Keil); Marius Victorinus (p. 32); and Martianus Capella (III. 261). It is regularly represented in Greek transliterations by ε when short, and by η when long.
(b) The sound of the letter e seems to have varied more than was the case with other vowels. The later grammarians give to ē a sound approximating to the sound of i. (Cf. Donatus in Servius p. 421, Keil [1]). And confusion of ĕ and ĭ in words like timidus, navibos (written timedus, navebos) is to be seen in early Latin. But too much importance has been given to this. The fact is that one short unaccented vowel is very likely to be mistaken, for another, especially by the uneducated and by careless speakers. The hearer cannot detect the difference, and in fact there is none, practically. The extremely accurate and discriminating elocution of which we hear was in all probability confined to the highly cultivated classes.
6. F: had practically the sound of English f.
Latin f is not like the Greek φ, which was a double sound rather than a single one, namely p + h with each element distinctly audible, as in English top-heavy, uphill. Quintilian says: "The Greeks are accustomed to aspirate; whence Cicero in his oration for Fundanius ridicules a witness who could not sound the first letter of that name."[2] The descriptions given by Priscian and Terentianus Maurus of the position of the lips and teeth in pronouncing f show that it was formed precisely as our f, i.e. with the lower lip against the upper teeth.
7. G: g always had the hard sound of English g in "get".
(a) "When g comes before an s it produces x, thus showing that it is a guttural: e.g. lex = leg + s; and rex = reg + s.
(b) No Roman grammarian mentions more than one sound as belonging to g, although they treat of the letters minutely.
(c) All the vowels readily interchange after g in the same root, which would hardly be the case if g had had more than one sound. Thus we have maligenus and malignus; lego, legis, legit; gigeno and gigno; tegimen and tegmen.
(d) Latin g is invariably represented by Greek γ, and the Greek γ is invariably represented by Latin g. St. Augustine remarks: "When I say lege, a Greek understands one thing and a Roman another in these two syllables." This shows that Latin lege and Greek λέγε had precisely the same sound.