Main Page | See live article | Alphabetical index

Latin phonemes

Phonemes (transliterated into SAMPA):

A /a/ (as in father)

B /b/

C /k/

D /d/

E /e/ (as in bet)

F /f/

G /g/

H /h/

I /i/ (as in English see) or
I /j/ (as in English yet)

K occurs in very few words (mostly loanwords from Greek), and is pronounced like C.

L /l/

M /m/

N /n/

O /o/ (as in oboe)

P /p/

Q /k_w/

R /r/

S /s/

T /t/

V /u/ (as in English boot) or
V /w/

/N/ written g, called agma. Minimal pair: agnus /aNnus/ - annus /annus/

Other minimal pairs:

/anus/ 'old woman' - /a:nus/ 'ring, anus' - /annus/ 'year'

/palam/ 'public' - /pa:lam/ 'spade (acc. sg.)' - /pallam/ 'woman's robe (acc.sg.)'

See also : Latin language