In the NYT, Jon Grinspan...

[Wilson Gray]

On Fri, Aug 10, 2012 at 3:19 PM, Dan Goncharoff <thegonch at gmail.com> wrote:
> Does anyone actually know how Latin was pronounced?
>
> By the ancient Romans, I mean...

Yes. You start with the Romance languages, add in Latin words borrowed
into non-Romance languages, and compare them.

Of course, it helps to believe in the so-called "comparative method"
of language-reconstruction. ;-)

And the Romans had their own presriptivists, some of whose works have
survived, though they aren'r particularly useful, because it's not
easy to figure out what their technical terms meant, except on the
basis of the outcomes of the comparative method.

--
-Wilson
-----
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint
to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-Mark Twain

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