To ask those who know Latin, how to pronounce..

[CarrieErbag]

Lucere?
Thanks in advance.

Is it right that we don't actually know how to pronounce Latin because it is a dead language learnt only from written sources? For some reason I have that lodged in my mind from o level 😂

It depends if you want classical pronunciation (hard c) or mediaeval/church pronunciation (sometimes hard, sometimes not).

Sometimes you might want traditional English pronunciation, too — you might get funny looks referring to Kikero or Chichero. It turns up in a legal context sometimes, where traditionally people in the field have always pronounced the Latin legal terms in a particular way, and other people pronounce them according to the reconstructed classical system because they've learnt Latin at school.

I am the only one who really wants to know why someone sent you a letter calling you 'Lucere' (unless that is your actual name but in that case surely you already know how it's pronounced). It's a verb that means "to shine" or more figuratively to glow, to stand out, to be resplendent, so quite a flattering nickname but an odd choice of tense, the infinitive, I would have gone for 'Lucet' (s/he shines') or 'Lucens' (shining) myself but maybe the classic prof can elucidate?

Well, yes and no, as I understand it. It depends which kind of Latin you mean? Latin as it was spoken in Ancient Rome, obviously we have no recordings of people speaking it so yes you have to extrapolate from written material and there are different theories as to how it would have been 'really' pronounced. But church Latin is still regularly spoken today in the Vatican and elsewhere so in that sense it is a live language and we can easily find recordings of people speaking it, in some ways we have just as much an idea how to pronounce Latin as we do medieval English, we equally don't have recordings of how Beowulf would have sounded when read aloud at the time it was written. And in between 'Roman' times (which itself spanned many hundreds of years so the language did evolve in that time) and now, Latin was still regularly spoken, mainly in the church but also right through until at least the English civil war, Latin was often used as a common language for purposes of trade, diplomacy and the law as it was the language you could assume all educated people in Europe would speak so there are much more detailed and recent sources from these times than just what we have from classical Rome... when you think about it all languages and pronunciations do vary and evolve so much across time and space you could argue there's no single 'right way' to pronounce anything

@maxelly No it's not my name, I am indeed flattered by the nickname. As for the choice of tense, the sender is even less educated than me, so tenses wouldn't have figured at all.
I will likely write back and sign off Lucere but needed to know in my head how it sounded like if that makes sense.

I think in that context (a personal name/nickname) I'd go with traditional English pronunciation, which roughly means pronouncing it according to English pronunciation rules. Just to be awkward

Loo-che-re

Maybe I'll ask him how he would pronounce it and take it from there..

I would say 'look-air-ay' if it was 'classical Latin' as in a piece of Latin prose.

If you're singing it it's slightly different and would be 'looch-air-eh' (not looch-air-ay!!!)

I read more latin than a speak but 90% sure it's loo sherry.

Loo keer eh. from my Latin o level days.

That was how I was taught Latin too.

Mind you, that was so long ago it wasn't a dead language.

🤣🤣 me too!