Latin Pronounciation

Does anybody else get annoyed about how people pronounce Latin? After all, we don't really know at all. I don't know about abroad, but in the UK, people pronounce it exactly how you would if it were English - but this is obviously wrong.
E.G. the word 'et' meaning and - We pronounce this like the English word 'ate', but this is clearly wrong, if you look at the Italian and the Portuguese, and even the Spanish. They all pronounce it the same way in regard to the t on the end.
French has 'et' the same as latin, but they do not pronounce the 't' either!
The closest surviving language to Latin is Romanian - how do they pronounce their and?
Is it time w admitted we don't know, and tried to do an educated guess based on the romance languages?

How about the English pronunciation of Latin 'pater' as /pEi 4@`/

that annoys me

They already have an idea of how Latin was pronounced based on various evidence such as borrwings in other languages, and IE cognates.

For example. The word wine was borrowed into Germanic languages from vinum. This shows that the latin v was originally pronounced as a 'w', but that it came to be pronounced like a 'v' over time.

I've never heard 'pater' pronounced that way...

I always wondered why Medieval Latin pronunciation is typically used instead of Classical Latin...

"Does anybody else get annoyed about how people pronounce Latin?"

Yes.

Romanian is NOT the closest surviving language to Latin in terms of pronunciation (btw, check your spelling in the title), although it is closer to the Latin pronunciation than other major Romance languages (French, Portuguese and possibly Catalan).
Romanian has a few non-Latin sounds like /ə/ , /ɨ/ , /ʃ/ and /ʒ/ so it's clear that standard Italian and Spanish are closer to the Latin pronunciation than Romanian.

> - how do they pronounce their and?

Well, the Romanian word for the English "and" is "şi" which is pronounced "/ʃi/" in the cities and "/ʃɨ" in some rural areas. The latter sounds more like Chinese than like Latin :))

<<I've never heard 'pater' pronounced that way...>>

This used to be common in the UK, where younger people would refer to their fathers as "pater". And they would pronounce it as above with a long English 'a' sound in "mate"

<<For example. The word wine was borrowed into Germanic languages from vinum. This shows that the latin v was originally pronounced as a 'w', but that it came to be pronounced like a 'v' over time. >>

I am not contradicting the method here with vinum, but it is not always a reliable one to use. For instance, many Middle English words of Scandinavian origin begining with w- came into English from Scandinavian words beginning with v- (weak < veikr; wight < vigt). Using the comparitive method above in the absence of Old Scandinavian records would result in us believing (--falsely) that the Scandianvian word must have begun with w and that it changed to v later as shown by the modern languages. Now, this is true further back in time, but at the time English was admitting these words, the sound was already 'v'.

So oftentimes, a phoneme will be substituted in lieu of another if it doesn't match one to one to fit the speech patterns of the adopters.

Yes, sorry about the spelling of pronunciation!
You use the word 'wine' as an example - I don't understand. If the Latin word was vinum, and the Germanic languages took it and changed the v to a w, then surely the sound would be a v sound? The german pronuciation of 'w' is 'v', so apart from English which is, let's face it, a rather untidy hybrid (I can say that, it's my language), all languages use the 'v' sound, which would indicate that Latin pronounced it as 'v' as well - all the romance languages pronounce 'v' as 'v', not 'w'.

<<Germanic languages took it and changed the v to a w, then surely the sound would be a v sound?>>

For one, Caspian, English is not a hybrid.

Two, the original sound of 'w' in all germanic languages was like the English 'w'.

'w' didn't begin to change in the individual germanic languages to a 'v' sound until after the period of borrowing for 'vinum', so in the case of 'vinum' the original 'w' sound ('winum') holds up

Yes, of course English is a hybrid, how can you possibly deny that? It is a mixture of mostly Romance and Germanic roots, from Latin and Anglo-Saxon, but has many Greek roots as well.

I don't dispute the 'w', but I find it curious that English is the only surviving language that uses a 'w' sound for 'w'. Do we know this for sure, or is it all educated guesswork?

<<Yes, of course English is a hybrid, how can you possibly deny that? It is a mixture of mostly Romance and Germanic roots, from Latin and Anglo-Saxon, but has many Greek roots as well.
>>

To be a hybrid, Englsh would have to incoporate other features of Latin and Greek which it doesn't. It only borrows roots and stems and turns them into germanic words and stems. It does not use Latin or Greek grammatical particles, or sentence structure, or pronouns, etc.

Argument could be made that English is a hybrid of Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse. I could see that, because we say "are" and "they", and we use -en on some strong verbs in the past participle (beaten, taken, forgotten, etc) which is attributed to Old Norse (-ON -inn) etc. Old English past participle ending -en became -e and then -<> like in com-e, sung-<>, begun-<>, etc. And Old Norse changed Anglo-Saxon morphology. So this is a hybridization.

<<I don't dispute the 'w', but I find it curious that English is the only surviving language that uses a 'w' sound for 'w'. Do we know this for sure, or is it all educated guesswork? >>

It's not.

Dutch also uses a 'w' as 'w'
Dutch 'uw' (your) and 'vrouw' (woman) are pronounced 'w' even when followed by another vowel: 'uwe' (yours), 'vrouwen' (women) and even between words as in: dank u well

In many Dutch dialects, 'w' is always pronounced 'w', but in some, it approaches a 'w'/'v' sound. I would get the XSAMPA for it, but I'm at work too ;)

The use of -s in the third person singular indicative of verbs (he sings) as opposed to West Saxon -(e)th is also attributed to Old Norse. Confer Scandinavian -er as in 'hann komer' (he comes)

Three: not "all languages use the 'v' sound" . E.g. Arabic doesn't use it

Four: not "all the romance languages pronounce 'v' as 'v', not 'w' " .
In Spanish 'v' is pronounced more like 'b' than like 'v'.

To be a hybrid, Englsh would have to incoporate other features of Latin and Greek which it doesn't.

So you're saying English just uses Latin and Greek roots as a reference to form new germanic words in English. I can see that.