Lorem ipsum dolor

"Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum."

This is a famous quasi-latin phrase used as a dummy text for typesetting purposes. I might want to write a choir work with this text as a basis, but are there any experts in latin here? Graham?

How would you pronounce it? Where would the accentuation be in each word?

...are there any experts in latin here? Graham?

How would you pronounce it? Where would the accentuation be in each word?

That's a very complicated question. I would recommend doing some Googling and seeing how much effort you're going to want to put into this.

Also... this is a forum for completed Choral/Vocal works. Questions like this belong in the discussion forums.

Yeah, this is the wrong forum.

But on-topic - This isn't real Latin, so who cares? :P

Eirik, the pronunciation would depend upon whether you intend to interpret this text as being in Classical (historically spoken) or Church (liturgical) Latin. Inasmuch as most choirs are more familiar with liturgical works in Latin, Church Latin might be a better choice.

If this is really something you want to do, I can transliterate it for you fairly easily.

Lorem Ipsum - All the facts - Lipsum generator

first google result

Church latin would be better for consistency of pronunciation.

i would give you this writing for the complete parts of the text "Lorem ipsum" that you can find between section 1.10.32 and 1.10.33 of the "De finibus bonorum et malorum" that means "On the Ends of Goods and Evils" over where it was taken from:

I don't really care about what it means or anything (lipsum is supposed to be just rubbish), I'm just curious, how it should be pronounced if it were real Latin (like "lorem ipsum dol_o_r" or "lorem ipsum d_o_lor")

How long would it take to outline the places where the pressure on each word should be? If it takes 5 hours, I won't ask you to do it. ;-)

There are standard pronunciation rules for Church Latin.

This is for Classical: Latin spelling and pronunciation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Google and wiki are your friends.

But it's not "rubbish"; in fact it is fairly deep in meaning.

LOrem Ipsum dOlor sit Amet, consEctetur adipisIcing Elit, sed do Eiusmod tEmpor incIdidunt ut labOre et dolOre mAgna Aliqua. Ut Enim ad mInim vEniam, quis nOstrud exercitAtion Ullamco labOris nIsi ut Aliquip ex ea commOdo consEquat. DUis AUte irUre dOlor in reprehendErit in voluptAte...

but half of the words are damaged in that version anyway. There is no real way to accent a damaged Latin word.

Eeirik, I am a little puzzled here in three ways:

First as to why you care about the pronunciation, when you consider this piece of text as just "rubbish", and secondly why - if you are convinced that this text is but fake Latin - its meaning could be and thirdly: why would one take the pain of putting a rubbish non-text onto music, when there is so much more which can be put onto music?

When it is supposed to be rubbish without meaming it would remain the same how words are pronounced. Was not it G.B. Shaw, who ones demonstrated that you could pronounce "Ghoti" as "Fish"? Yet, I presume that if none of the two words had a meaning I would not care as to where I would put the emphasis in either of the words. It is only when a word has a true meaning that it becomes important to respect the accents (depending on the language a very tricky task).

As to the text which you consider "rubbish", it is no rubbish indeed. It is indeed an extract of one of the works by Cicero, a orator - philosopher, who lived during the late republican days. Admittedly, the text is accidental, but this does not mean that it cannot be read. Perhaps the text is even deliberately accidental.

In ancient times, it took people a whole lot longer to write something than in our modern world where we have computers and typewrites all by hand. Even although after the invention of bookprinting, words spread rapidly, "rapidly" is but relative as each letter had to be set seperatedly by hand and the pages of the book were manually printed and dried. Hece, during the Renaissance and even much later, a kind of short hand was used. This was not a new idea. It was a normal custom in the ancient world to leave out the letters which were not necesarrily to understand the word, thus only keeping the "body" of the word which was needed to understand its meaning. Hence "dolorum" becomes "lorum", and so on. For one as familiar with the Latin language as you are with the English language, this caused no problem in understanding or reading the text. The Greeks used it, the Romans used it. You just have to think about the S.P.Q.R. which you so often see on monuments... . So treating this piece of text as "rubbish" is a bit unfair as it is by one of the greatest roman philosophers.

As to the pronunciation, Ferungamabooboo suggested a church Latin, opposite to a pronunciation of classical Latin. I would be inclined to use the latter, rather then the former. Cicero lived during the later days of the republic, well near the end of the republic would be more precise. Hence his Latin is of a completely different structure then the Church Latin. The pronunciation of Classical Latin is unclear, as nobody really knows on how it was spoken. I now than Americans tend to pronounce Cicero as 'Siseroo' although there is as much evidence for a pronunciation as "Kikero" using a K-sound for the C instead of an S-sound for the C.

Kind regards,

B

Thank you for all your help!

My thought was to compose a work in the style of "Songs without words", but using Latin instead. By using "rubbish" latin (As it's mostly used as rubbish text, even though it has a meaning) the composition can be centered around the music and harmony (and so on) and experiments on the word pronounciation, instead of trying to express anthing meaningfull with the text.

That was my thought.

Again, thank you everybody!

Eirik, I had a similar idea which used Dada poetry; maybe looking into that would help, especially if you have more experience with German or something...

I would be extremely interested in hearing this if you finish it :toothygrin: