0.6 Reading Aloud: First Sentences — Epoché
What you will be able to do Read an unseen Latin sentence out loud without stopping in the middle. Decide the stress of every word in it yourself, from the spelling. Read a text that carries no macrons at all, supplying the lengths you know. Say what remains to be learned before the words on the page mean anything. Read sentences like Pater tuus est. [31] — He's your father. — without looking anything up. Prerequisites : 0.5 — syllables and the penultimate rule. Five lessons have given you the letters, the lengths, the consonants, the combinations and the stress. This one spends them. Nothing new is introduced; instead you take twelve sentences you have not seen, built entirely from the five hundred commonest words in the corpus, and read them aloud. If you can do it without stopping, the volume has done its job and you are ready for the Cognates volume, where the words start to mean things. How it sounds Before the twelve, here is the whole volume on one page. Run through it once, out loud, and then close it. Rule Test Twenty-three letters; no j , no u in Roman capitals, no w IVLIVS reads Iūlius Every vowel short or long; the long one held twice as long malum against mālum c and g always hard; s always hissed; consonantal v as w Cicerō vīvit = KEE-keh-roh WEE-wit ae oe au are one syllable each; qu is kw quaesō is two syllables Two syllables: stress the first. Three or more: the penult if heavy, else the one before a-MĪ-cus against DO-mi-nus One habit to carry with you. When you meet a word and cannot tell where the stress goes, the question to ask is never "what does this word feel like" but "is the second syllable from the end heavy". That is a mechanical question with a mechanical answer, and the answer is always in the spelling. Reading without the bars The twelve sentences below come from the corpus and therefore carry no macrons . This is deliberate. Editions of Latin do not print them, so the sooner you start supplying lengths from memory the better. Three shortcuts will carry you a long way in this volume: Endings you already know. The verb ending -ō is long ( volō , sciō ). The adverb nōn is long. The preposition dē and the pronoun tē are long. Two-syllable words need no decision. Stress the first one and the lengths cannot change the answer. Most of the twelve are made of such words. When in doubt, guess light. Short open syllables are much commoner than long ones, so retreating the stress is the better bet when you have nothing to go on — and the mistake will be small. There is also a bigger thing to notice while you read, and it is the reason this volume comes before any grammar. Look at the word order. Ubi est liber meus? and Liber meus ubi est? are both in the corpus and both mean "where is my book?". English cannot do that; move the words and you change the sentence or break it. Latin can, because the work that English does with order Latin does with endings. You are about to spend thirty lessons on those endings. It is worth seeing, once, before you start, what they buy. Read it aloud Twelve sentences, none of them used in the previous five lessons. Read each one out loud, straight through, without stopping to think in the middle. Then read the whole set a second time, faster. Only after both passes should you look at the third column. Latin English Check yourself Ubi est liber meus? [1] Where is my book? U-bi · LI-ber · ME-us Liber meus ubi est? [2] Where is my book? the same words in another order; same stresses Hic liber eius est. [3] This book is hers. eius = EY-yoos , consonantal i Domus mea domus tua est. [4] My house is your house. DO-mus twice; TU-a two syllables Haec domus non mea est. [5] This house is not mine. haec is one syllable — the diphthong ae Feles esse iam volo. [6] Now I want to be a cat. FE-les · ES-se with a held s · iam = yam Ego sum tu et tu es ego. [7] I am you and you are me. E-go with a hard g , both times Non ego, sed tu! [8] No I'm not; you are! nōn long; sed short Hodie non est mihi opus. [9] I don't work today. hodiē is HO-di-ē — penult light, so the stress retreats Quid id ad nos? [10] What does this have to do with us? three one-syllable words; nōs long Eo hoc nomen mihi est. [11] That's why I have this name. NO-men ; MI-hi with a breathed h Nomen tuum mihi non placet. [12] I don't like your name. PLA-cet , hard c — the old trap Two of the twelve are worth a note. In the ninth, hodiē looks as though the stress should land on the di , and English speakers put it there; but the penult is a short open syllable, so it retreats to the front. In the sixth, esse has a doubled consonant, which means the s is genuinely held — ES-se , not E-se . That doubling is the first of many places where Latin writes something English speakers are inclined to skip. If you stumbled on more than three of the twelve, read the whole set again tomorrow rather than moving on. The Cognates volume asks you to say Latin words that look like English words, which is harder, not easier — the familiar spelling pulls your mouth back into English. New words Six words from the twelve sentences. They are all extremely common, and you will meet every one again within three lessons. Word (dictionary form) Meaning Note hīc la here, in this place Part of speech adverb How it differs from English distinguish from the pronoun hic "this", which has a short vowel Hic liber eius est. This book is hers. meus la my, mine Part of speech adjective ( -a, -um ) How it differs from English agrees with the thing owned, not the owner — domus mea , liber meus Ubi est liber meus? Where is my book? Liber meus ubi est? Where is my book? tuus la your, yours (of one person) Part of speech adjective ( -a, -um ) How it differs from English singular only; for several people Latin uses vester Domus mea domus tua est. My house is your house. Ego sum tu et tu es ego. I am you and you are me. sed la but Part of speech conjunction How it differs from English always first in its clause, unlike autem , which c