Re: Latin vowel inventory

Tristan McLeay scripsit:

> So in the English one, was long a pronounced as ay, long e as ee, long i
> as igh? Was long o oo (boot) or oa (open)? And was long u ue (hue) or or
> ow (how)?
Just so, with "open" and "hue" respectively.  The Great Vowel Shift of
the 14th-15th centuries affected not only English itself, but also the
spoken Latin of the English monasteries before Henry VIII broke them up.
Similarly, c and g before i or e are pronounced as s and English j,
respectively.  But there are limits: Latin final e is not silent.

In Umberto Eco's _Name of the Rose_, Adso several times comments on the
comparative unintelligibility of William of Baskerville's Latin.

> Double consonants were geminate, weren't they?
Sic (or "hoc ille", as they said in Gaul).

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