Here's a wide selection of videos in Latin by Luke and others https://duckduckgo.com/?t=avast&q=spoken+latin&iax=videos&ia=videos They give us an idea of what the Romans must have sounded like.

And then there's this video to learn Latin while you sleep https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFN2a30_Bmo Let us know (In Latin) if it works for you....Bona fortuna.

How could I translate the folowing text:

"Praeteritis rerum, bifrons Prudentia, rebus / Elicio, et cauta pondero mente sagax."

Thanks and advance!

A fragment of Roman amphora found in Spain was found to have an inscription of Virgil’s Georgics, which dealt with rural and agricultural themes. 
The amphora shard was initially found seven years ago, but only recently was it translated.

The full passage reads:

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Quid faciat laetas segetes, quo sidere terram

uertere, Maecenas, ulmisque adiungere uitis

conueniat, quae cura boum, qui cultus habendo

sit pecori, apibus quanta experientia parcis,

HINC Canere Incipiam. Uos, or Clarissima Mundi 5

lumina, labentem caelo quae ducitis annum;

Liber et alma Ceres, uestro si munere tellus

Chaoniam pingui glandem mutauit arista,

poculaque inuentis Acheloia miscuit uuis;

et uos, agrestum praesentia numina, Fauni 10

(ferte simul Faunique pedem Dryadesque puellae:

Munera Uestra Cano);

 

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O you brightest lights of the universe

that lead the passing year through the skies,

Bacchus and kindly Ceres, since by your gifts

fat wheat ears replaced Chaonian acorns,

and mixed Achelous’ water with newly discovered wine,

and you, fauns, the farmer’s local gods,

(come dance, together, fauns and dryad girls!)

your gifts I sing.

 

https://amp.theguardian.com/science/2023/jun/21/virgil-quote-found-on-fragment-of-roman-jar-unearthed-in-spain

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/virgil-quote-roman-jar-180982426/

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-roman-archaeology/article/las-georgicas-de-virgilio-in-figlinis-a-proposito-de-un-grafito-ante-cocturam-sobre-un-anfora-olearia-betica/742CDE20EED6987767C896C2A1F01739

How would legionaries call their officers? Would it be domine equally for a centurion, a tribune, a legate or the army's general? Or would they call them by their title only?

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When people respect or mock specific accents, and when they describe some as correct and others as having vitia ʻfaults’, this can lead to confidence or anxiety in people whose speech deviates from what is deemed the norm. We can observe such anxieties in the emperor Lucius Septimius Severus, born in 145 in Leptis Magna, a city located in present-day Libya. His father was Phoenician, speaking Punic, a Semitic language closely related to Hebrew, while his mother was Italian, and when he became ruler in 193, he made history by being the first provincial to occupy this position: provincial not just by place of birth, but also by his paternal ancestry. Septimius Severus had native fluency in Punic, but he was also educated in Latin and Greek. His sister, on the other hand, had not received the same degree of education, and when she came to visit her brother, the emperor, in Rome, her lack of language skills caused him severe embarrassment, as the Historia Augusta reports (Sept. Sev. 15.7): cum soror sua Leptitana ad eum venisset vix Latine loquens ac de illa multum imperator erubesceret … redire mulierem in patriam praecepit (“when his sister from Leptis had come to him, barely speaking any Latin, and the emperor was deeply embarrassed about her… he ordered the woman to return to her country”). We don’t know much about what Septimius Severus sounded like himself, but for an emperor it must have been awkward to have a sister around who could not communicate in the language of the ruling classes.

 

https://antigonejournal.com/2022/05/latin-accent/

The tablets of Vindolanda, Britain of been a source of great insight to daily life in Roman Britain. We have discussed this valuable resource in previous posts before. (See below.)

Research has given new understanding about the development of the Latin language:

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The cursive scripts in Latin documents from this period have traditionally been classified by experts in palaeography into two main categories: Old Roman Cursive (ORC), prevalent in the 1st and 2nd centuries AD and late into the 3rd century, and New Roman Cursive (NRC), which is well attested from the 4th century AD, but is thought to have its origins in the late 3rd.

All of the writing tablets from Roman Britain will belong chronogically to the family of ORC scripts. Even before the discovery of the ink-written leaf tablets at Vindolanda and Carlisle (c. AD 70–130), it had been proposed that there were certain developments and changes in the character and style of the scripts in the early 2nd century AD which are important in relation to the later appearance of NRC.

In the newly-acquired evidence of the Romano-British tablets, including those on metal, we see ORC scripts of the first two centuries using letter forms which were critical for the development of NRC. So the steadily-accumulating evidence from Roman Britain has undermined the idea of clear chronological demarcation of script types, and supports the view that the move to NRC was an evolving process in the 2nd and 3rd centuries, rather than a change in which stylistic canons were imposed – in other words, more of a continuum than a sharp break. What is just as remarkable is that the limited amount of evidence on Latin papyri from Egypt and the Middle East suggests similar trajectories of development at either end of the Empire.

 

The Romano-British Writing Tablets of Vindolanda – Antigone (antigonejournal.com)

Here is a link to the Roman inscriptions found in Vindolanda:

Vindolanda Tablets - Home | Roman Inscriptions of Britain

(Thank you "An Italian Archaeologist in Scotland" for bringing this to our attention)

Here's a delightful rendition of Ovid's Tristia 3.1 in Latin (with English subtitles).

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This is a condensed version of the lecture I gave at GrecoLatinoVivo's Lilium2 in September 2019. In this video, we read Ovid's Tristia 3.1 for which I simplify the Latin for language learners and I provide a visual representation of the very path he follows on this imagined tour of Rome. Each verse or pair of verses is first presented on a separate screen free of my voice so that teachers can pause the video and analyze the text with students. After each verse I provide a visual representation of it as well as a simplified prose version in Latin.

The background on Ovid's Tristia is very poignant:

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The Tristia ("Sorrows" or "Lamentations") is a collection of letters written in elegiac couplets by the Augustan poet Ovid during his exile from Rome. Despite five books of his copious bewailing of his fate, the immediate cause of Augustus's banishment of the most acclaimed living Latin poet to Pontus in AD 8 remains a mystery.  He spent several years in the outpost of Tomis and died without ever returning to Rome.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tristia

Ovid's final lament in Book 3 during his permanent exile is truly unforgetable:

https://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Latin/OvidTristiaBkThree.php

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But make sure my bones are brought back in a little urn:

so I’ll not be an exile still in death.

No one forbids that: Theban Antigone buried

her brother’s body under the earth, despite the king.

and, mixing leaves and nard with my bones,

bury them in ground near the city:

and carve these lines in fine letters on the marble

for the hurried eyes of passers-by to read:

 

I LIE HERE, WHO TOYED WITH TENDER LOVE,

OVID THE POET BETRAYED BY MY GENIUS:

BE NOT SEVERE, LOVER, AS YOU PASS BY,

SAY ‘EASY MAY THE BONES OF OVID LIE’

 

That suffices for an epitaph. In fact my books

are a greater and a lasting monument,

those, I know, though they’ve injured him

will give their author fame and enduring life.

Summary: This is an entertaining rendition of a portion of the more obscure but delightful poem "Tristia" by Ovid.

Thanks, again, Italian Archaeologist in Scotland for bringing this to our attention.

guy also known as gaius

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Spoken Roman Latin, from TV Show "Barbarians". Language of the Roman Empire.

I love these responses:

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Aleronx904 days ago (edited)

The classical Latin pronunciation is definitely correct! However, as an Italian, I cannot laugh about how strong is the present-day Rome accent of the actor. I guess that makes it even more "authentic" for non-Italians somehow!

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ClemensAlive

18 hours ago

The German therfore was on point, but it was modern german. 100% not the way people spoke 2.000 years ago

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Padawanmage711 week ago

“What did he say?” “Blessed are the cheese makers, I think?”

guy also known as gaius

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Oxford professor Nicola Gardini urges people to read and study Latin. He believes that Latin is the antidote for the modern age, which seems transfixed by the spontaneous, the easy, and the ephemeral.

His new book, Long Live Latin: The Pleasures of a Useless Language, argues that Latin combines truth and beauty with the timelessness of art. People should study Latin for all the reasons people should read literature.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/11/book-review-long-live-latin-pleasures-of-a-dead-language/

I have a Latin-related question that has been buggering me for a long time now, maybe some of you could help me out?
(And yes, I have tried google many MANY times, but haven't come up with an answer yet.. :-/ )

This is the question; 

I know many traders learned the language by selling their wares to the roman military, but I’m guessing there were a lot more possibilities for traders to learn Latin. Also, how did the language spread from those traders to other non-latin speaking communities?

Could you help me out please? 
(Or help me find some usefull links?)
Thanks!

It's hard to get a straight answer out of the wikipedia.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etruscan_language

It appears the best answer for the language is that it is semitic.  The best answer for the alphabet is that it is semitic as well?  But semites used ideograms!  If the alphabet is derived from Greek, let's see the symbols.

If I understand correctly, semitic is a famly of languages that came to dominate the middle east after the old kingdom/new kingdom break.  I suppose it would be a transfer of dominance from Sumer to Akkad in the middle east.  The dominate semitic dialect became Akkadian, but I haven't had enough time to read everything I want to and I never will.  As Gandalf said, there is never enough time.

Anyway, has anyone ever compared Etruscan to Egyptian?  I'm shooting in the dark, but so is the wikipedia.

Isn't pharaoh "Great House" in Etruscan?

What was the "real" title of the Egyptian ruler?  I'm going to head to the library and check worldbook.  I know it used to be there.  It starts with an 'm'?

Professor Eleanor Dickey travelled around Europe to view the scraps of material that remain from ancient Latin school textbooks, or colloquia, which would have been used by young Greek speakers in the Roman empire learning Latin between the second and sixth centuries AD. The manuscripts, which Dickey has brought together and translated into English for the first time in her forthcoming book Learning Latin the Ancient Way: Latin Textbooks in the Ancient World, lay out everyday scenarios to help their readers get to grips with life in Latin. Subjects range from visiting the public baths to arriving at school late – and dealing with a sozzled close relative...

via The Guardian

I despaired at the dumbing down of the Western World after reading this article linked earlier at UNRV:

"Rome finally abandons 'too complicated' Roman numerals"

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/11758563/Rome-finally-abandons-too-complicated-Roman-numerals.html

http://www.unrv.com/forum/topic/18232-rome-finally-abandons-too-complicated-roman-numerals/

Fortunately, this change in the use of Roman numerals at the Super Bowl is only for the 50th anniversary game. Next year's game will be LI. Any education, even unintended, is a good thing.

http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2014/06/04/nfl-ditches-roman-numerals-for-super-bowl-50-logo/

There's hope, yet. 

guy also known as gaius