Ah, yes, the pronunciation of Latin. There are almost as many ways as there are speakers [sic] of Latin. Each of the European nations have ways of pronouncing Latin that are more in line with the phonemic inventories of their standard languages than how Classical Latin may or may not have been pronounced. (Latin changed between the early kingdom, through the Republic, and into the Empire.) Your best bet, if you really, really, want to know is to buy W S Allen's Vox Latina and read it. It's still in print or can be found used on Abebooks or some such site. (There's an older book by Sturtevant that's available, too, but Allen is more up to date.) Take Gibson's Passion of the Christ, for example, the pronuciation they used there was mainly ecclesiastical, because a lot of the actors who played Romans were Italian. (Some Italians even insist, more from political grounds than philological ones that the ecclesiastical/Italian pronunciation is the one that Cicero and his boys used.) The Roman legionaries in Judaea at the time were mainly recruited in Syria, and judging by their names (muster rolls still exist) they were mainly Aramaic speaking. In the Eastern part of the Roman empire official business was conducted in Koine Greek. (Caveat: I have taught and tutored Latin, and studied linguistics.)


Ceci n'est pas un seing.