[John (J.D.) Smith]

A query for the more learned than myself:

In the sentence "Timor mortis conturbat me," does "me" rhyme with "flea" (long e) or "day" (long a), or is either acceptable?

Thanks for any help you can provide.

[John Whitworth]

Strictly speaking it should rhyme with 'day' according to the new pronunciation (what I learned at school). But William Dunbar seems to have rhymed it with 'dee' in accordance with the old pronunciation (what my father learned at school0, and what's good enough for Dunbar should be good enough for the likes of us.

The stait of man dois change and vary,
Now sound, now seik, now blith, now sary,
Now dansand mery, now like to dee;
Timor mortis conturbat me.

[Maryann Corbett]

To look at the question more generally: There are four different sets of rules for pronouncing Latin, as explained here.

[John (J.D.) Smith]

Thank you both very much for your erudite and lightning-fast responses.

[Skip Dewahl]

Well, if you adhere to the correct pronunciation, there is no perfect rhyme in English, seeing that the -e of Latin "me" is not a diphthong nor the familiar ee sound of our pronoun "me", but was probably equivalent to French accented é, which same sound is found in all Romance tongues. The closest to this is the i- of "it", but unfortunately, no English word ends in this short vowel, well not unless you drop final consonants like the British Cockneys do: A bi' of ( A bit of). Not just the Cockneys, but increasingly nowadays many educated Brits are sloppy with final consonants. Sorta reminds me of the Spanish almost ignoring final -s and -z. And, is it me, or am I imagining that there are more Brits than any other nationality with the inability to pronounce inter-syllabic -r-, as in "co-wect", for "correct"?

[John Whitworth]

Southern English like me, Skip. Northerners have no problem and nor do I when I do my Scottish accent.

[Ann Drysdale]

It's called rhotacism, which is particularly cruel for those who have to confess to it.