What Ancient Latin Sounded Like, And How We Know It

Latin is a lan­guage

As dead as dead can be; 

It killed the Romans long ago, 

And now it’s killing me.

That famed dit­ty isn’t like­ly to res­onate with many mod­ern school chil­dren, but inter­est in ancient Rome remains fair­ly robust. 

We’ve come to accept that those state­ly ruins were once cov­ered in graf­fi­ti.

We can recre­ate their meals from hors d’oeuvres (Boiled Eggs with Pine Nut Sauce) to dessert (Pear Pati­na).

Ther­mae Romae, a pop­u­lar Japan­ese man­ga-cum-fea­ture-film, took us inside Emper­or Hadri­an’s bath­house.

But what did the Romans sound like?

Kirk Dou­glas’ Spar­ta­cus? Or Lau­rence Olivier’s Cras­sus?

The HBO series Rome upheld the tra­di­tion of British accents.

Ani­ma­tor Josh Rud­der of NativLang did a fair amount of dig­ging in ser­vice of find­ing out What Latin Sound­ed Like, above.

(And he seems to have done so with­out the help of Derek Jarman’s NSFW Sebas­tiane, the only fea­ture film to be filmed entire­ly in ser­mo vul­garis or vul­gar Latin.)

Instead, he draws from ancient rhetori­cian Quin­til­ian and Virgil’s poet­ic meter. Scroll back­ward through the Romance lan­guages, and you’ll see Ger­man­ic tribes trad­ing with and fight­ing ancient Roman troops.

The result is not so much a recon­struc­tive pro­nun­ci­a­tion guide as a lin­guis­tic detec­tive sto­ry.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2016.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Sto­ry of Lorem Ipsum: How Scram­bled Text by Cicero Became Used by Type­set­ters Every­where

Can Mod­ern-Day Ital­ians Under­stand Latin? A YouTu­ber Puts It to the Test on the Streets of Rome

Hear Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” Per­formed in Clas­si­cal Latin

Dis­cov­er the World’s Old­est Sur­viv­ing Cook­book, De Re Coquinar­ia, from Ancient Rome

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist in NYC.