How do we know what ancient languages (Latin) sounded like if

>>2480475
people still speak latin

>>2480475
In the case of languages which are not spoken, notwithstanding latin as >>2480487 has observed, I remember that archeolinguists/whatever the term is use poetry to discover the amount of syllables of the word and which is accented.

This technique does not perfectly replicate the language spoken at the time but it would be comprehensible to a speaker of it.

We don't but we can make educated guesses based on many things.

>>2480475
Because the Romans actually wrote down what their language sounded like. They weren't ignorant of grammar or linguistics.

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Did ancient Romans really say "Kee-keh-roh"?

>>2480511
We know *exactly* what Latin sounded like. We have for centuries.

>>2480532
Kih-kay-roe
Wenee widee wikee
Kayser

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>>2480475
The comparative method (palatalization, what made c and g become 'soft' before the vowels i and e is relatively common cross linguistically, and caused by the tongue moving forward to be closer to them to make it easier to pronounce, so the reverse doesn't make sense and isn't recorded in any language. Since Sardinian doesn't display palatalization and is unlikely to have lost it we can assume it represents the original state of affairs.

poetry (words had to be pronounced a certain way to fit the metre or style)

loanwords (in ancient loanwords from Latin v is pronounced as w, as in wine, but from the medieval period onward they are pronounced as v)

>>2480487

>Latin spoken today is the same as Cicero's Latin

/his/

Does anyone have a good video of spoken Roman, preferably a speech? And not that Polish trash movie. I can hear the Slavic accent and I don't even know Latin.

>>2480991
Actually Classical Latin that is being teached today is based on Cicero`s latin. Cicero`s latin is sort of ancor point for any latin classes. If you are talking about church latin that is different of course.
>>2480475
I am studying linguistics so i can give some sort of answer. There are variety of ways. You can look at borrow words. You can look at language manuals(romans had lots of them). Poetry. And mistakes in writing. If i remember correctly one of writers of ancient rome whined about existence of ``c`` since it sounded exactly same as k(%100 sure bout the story). Back tracking from its dialects could also help.

>>2481118
I mean`t not sure bout the story my bad.

>>2480548
CAESAR was probably pronounced Ky-eh-sar towards the earlier periods as italians converted AE to a monotheme rather early on.

>>2481163
So why did English change it to be pronounced as "See-zer"? What happened there? Why did the hard "c" transform into the soft "c"?

>>2481176
Why did English do anything to any word? It's a clusterfuck.

>>2481176
short version shit happens

Long version mix between principle of least effort and socio-economical reasons caused by various events.

>>2481198
That's true. I remember from my Linguistics class that English is very unique in that not only does it borrow much of its vocabulary from Latin, Greek, Norse, and French, but due to the ultra dynamic nature of the language itself and its grammatical, syntactical, phonetic, morphologic and semantical structures, it has virtually no limit to the amount of words to express and in what order and conjunction. Its only limiting factor is the limit of the human mind to develop new words on objects and abstractions.

That right there is fascinating, and it's probably the reason why English is becoming the standard language of business and commerce in the world.

>>2481176
Because we learned the word from the French, who pronounced it with a soft c.

This guy makes a pretty good video about it.

In fact, his channel as a whole has some pretty interesting videos about language.

It's borderline John Green shit with horrible fucking animations, but what can you do.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_enn7NIo-S0