I've been following this discussion about the Latin pronunciation
of the Latin words and as a shell lover and archaeologist by formation,
during my years of studies in the university I learn a lot about the
controversy around the Latin pronunciation of the words.

Being portuguese, means that most of our language is developed upon a
Latin and also arabic roots (as well as other languages of Europe like
spanish, etc.)

There were to points which were very clear to my Latin teacher:

1º There is classic latin and the late adopted and adapted by the church.

2º There are significant differences between them:

Example 1:

        - In classic Latin the syllable - 'ae' has the sound of the american 'y' in
'by'
        - The clerical reading of the same syllable is 'e' like the american 'e' in
'red'

Example 2:

        - In classic Latin there are no 'v'-what we see in epigraphs with the form
of 'v'
        is indeed a 'u'. It was much easier to engrave this form of the
letter because
        it has no curves.
        - The clerical read the 'v' like the 'v' of the american 'v' in 'violent'
        (they write and read villa, but in archaeology I write and read
'uilla')

These are just two examples of differences between two currents of latin.

As a curiosity I found very recently that the Vatican, which official
language is Latin,
translates every year thousands of new words to Latin, words such as -
e-mail, computer,
internet, etc. - words that the Romans didn't use in their Latin language
2000 years ago...
So Latin is not a dead language after all....


Alexandra Oliveira