Disputatio:vitae

There is a huge confusion concerning the pronunciationv(of the -ae mainly). I understand that in different times and places it may vary but I doubt it ever was the pronunciation given on the English version of the page ("-ey"), and the other versions(languages) are rather silent about it. I am thinking that it should be either "-a-e" or "-è" (open "e" as in "share"). Thanks in advance for any information about that.

MFH, I'm not sure, which page you are referring to. On Wiktionary -ey (Suffix) there's no pronunciation given. I guess you mean -ae (Suffix), where three examples of English pronunciation are shown: /-iː/, /-aɪ/, /-eɪ/. That's how native English speakers pronounce "ae" in Latin words, there's no confusion so far, isn't it?

Now let's have a look on how native Latin speakers, living in Rome at about 100 BC, might have pronounced "ae". Of course we do not have tone documents of those days, but we have a linguistically reconstructed correct pronunciation of Classical Latin, saying that the diphthong "ae" was pronounced /ae̯/. This is very close to /-aɪ/, the sound that Latin speakers commonly use nowadays for recitation of Classical Latin text (if they do not use the Church Latin pronunciation, sounding more like Italian).

If you want to learn more, please take a look at "Curriculum vitae", "Latin phonology and orthography" and "Traditional English pronunciation of Latin".

--YaganZ (disputatio) 22:48, 3 Aprilis 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply. Of course I mean the word of which this is the Talk (Disputatio) page, which is "vitae". If native English speakers pronounce it that way ("-ey", i.e., /-eɪ/), this does not justify to say it is the (tacitly understood: correct) pronunciation (unless Wiktionary show how things are done rather than how they should be done). That's the confusion I'm referring to. If most native English speakers think that Africa is a country, that doesn't mean it is one, is it? Yes, I agree (as I wrote) that it should probably be /ae̯/, maybe /e̯/. Also yes, you are correct pointing to "curriculum vitae" that's where I came from (but from Wiktionary's, not Wikipedia's "Curriculum vitae") and where I saw the "-ey" pronunciation given which was the fact that "offended" me. On that WP page, we do read (footnote [1], attached to the pronunciation:

... but vitae is pronounced in various ways depending on how much the speaker knows about Latin. The Classical Latin pronunciation was [ˈwiː.tae̯], but even most people who learned Latin in school are unaware of the linguistically reconstructed correct pronunciation of Latin.

Now that leads exactly to the earlier question: Ignorant people's way to do it is now becoming the official way to do it! -- Is that the way it should be? [There's nothing wrong about being ignorant, anyone's ignorant about almost everything, in a mathematical sense, where "almost everything" means "all but a finite number of items". BUT, we should not let us guide and guide others, through a reference work, by how ignorant people do it.] MFH (disputatio) 14:48, 6 Decembris 2021 (UTC)

Do not consider Wiktionaries to be reference works. Using your words, I tell you: it is true that "Wiktionaries show how things are done rather than how they should be done". Wiktionaries are purely descriptive and are not intended to guide you like textbooks with rules on how to learn a language correctly. Nevertheless you will find a lot of useful information on language-specific details, but there's no authority demanding you to obey. Don't be confused when there are diverging opinions. Did you notice that a huge amount of the English vocabulary is based on Latin?

The pronunciation of ancient Roman Latin is reconstructed by means of linguistic research. There's no absolute truth and correctness in the results. It's only state of the art for the moment. Improved research might deliver different results in the future. It's a pity that not any native speakers of Classical Latin have survived to be asked (just a joke ;-)

I consider human ignorance a general problem of global dimensions, but I'm not sure if this is the appropriate platform for a discussion on that topic. -- YaganZ (disputatio) 19:47, 6 Decembris 2021 (UTC)