(4) A critical comparison of all the modern languages of Europe that are derived from the Latin (Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese) with reference to those points wherein they all agree. This source of information is of less importance than one would think, because these languages are not derived directly from the classical Latin, but from Latin that was either provincial or modified by foreign influences. Still, this comparison is useful in corroborating facts that are elsewhere learned, and is of positive value when not contradicted by other evidence.
(5) The traditions of scholars, and especially of the Roman Catholic Church, which in its rites has employed Latin continuously from the first century down to the present time. The rhymes of the early Christian hymns also have a bearing on this subject.
(6) The general principles of the science of phonology, which are now well established and understood, and are of great value in detecting erroneous assumptions which would otherwise pass unchallenged.
From these six sources can be gained a very accurate understanding of how Latin was pronounced in the days of Cicero and Caesar. It is not too much to claim that the system of pronunciation upon which scholars are now agreed, differs less from that of the Romans of the Augustan Age than does our modern pronunciation of English differ from that of Shakespeare and his contemporaries.
[It is not always remembered that only very gradually was the true pronunciation of Latin lost in Europe. Scholars long retained the essential features of it, and by the fact of their constant intercourse long prevented the growth of local and national variations from the established method. Great teachers like Erasmus passed from country to country, lecturing in Latin at the universities of Italy, Germany, Holland, Trance, and England, teaching pupils of all nationalities, and being everywhere understood without any difficulty, for Latin was the lingua franca of the educated, and one general pronunciation of it prevailed. Even in England, it was only after that country's isolation, political and religious, in the sixteenth century, that an "English pronunciation" arose, and this was long protested against, e.g. by Cardinal Wolsey, by Milton, and as late as the last century by Ainsworth (1746) and Philipps (1750). For the Continental traditions, see Justus Lipsius in his Dialogus de Recta Pronunciatione Linguae Latinae; and Erasmus, De Recta Latini Graecique Sermonis Pronunciatione (Basic, 1528). In Scotland, the Continental sound of the vowels was long retained, on which see the incident imagined by Sir Walter Scott in his novel The Fortunes of Nigel, ch. ix.]
[1]. Schneider in his Elementarlehre der Lateinischen Sprache cites more than fifty ancient authors. Besides those mentioned above, reference is often made to Velius Longus, Servius, Marius Victorinus, Macrobius, and Martianus Capella.
[2]. Others are Josephus, the Jewish historian; Dionysius of Halicarnassus; Appian; and Dio Cassius,—the last a Roman who wrote in Greek.
THE LATIN ALPHABET.
IN its earliest form, the Latin alphabet consisted of 21 characters,—A, B, C, D, E, F, Z, H, I, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, V, X. These letters were derived from the alphabet used by the Dorian Greeks of Campania. At a very early period the letters K and Z fell into disuse, although K continued to occur in a few ancient abbreviations, such as Kal. for Kalendae, K. S. for carus suis, K. K. for calumniae causa (a legal phrase), KK. for castrorum, KA. for capitalis; [and] the use of Z was subsequently revived in transliterating Greek words. Originally, the character C had the sound which was afterwards given to G; but when K was abandoned, C took its place and its sound; while a new letter, G, was formed by slightly changing the original C. Plutarch says that the character G was first employed by Spurius Carvilius about the year 230 B.C. [In] Cicero's time the letter Y was introduced to represent the sound of the Greek Υ; but its presence in a word always marks a foreign origin, so that the character can scarcely be regarded as an essential part of the Roman alphabet. About the year A.D. 44, the Emperor Claudius tried to introduce three new symbols into the alphabet: (1) the inverted diagamma