Classical Latin pronunciation?

Question

What are the rules regarding which syllable to emphasize in a given word?

When is the letter e not supposed to be pronounced as 'ay'?

What are the pronunciations for each of the dipthongs?

Answer 1

Caicos Turkey is talking through his/her hat.
Latin and Greek are related languages with a common origin, that's why they are similar. The endings were most certainly pronounced, French only dropped them in the middle ages, and then only because the form of the word adapted after ist had lost its inflections was the ablative.
There is the rule of the stress being on the penultimate syllable, but only if that syllable was not considered "short" because it was part of a suffix. This is an assumption made because of mistakes in transcription, which are much more likely if the vowel in question is short, also from the development of Latin into modern Italian.

About the "ay" thing, the Latin letter "e" was pronounced like the Scottish pronounce the "ay" sound, in "day", i.e. the gap between tongue and palate is closer, and without the little "ee" sound at the end when it was long, the short "e" was probably the same as in English "bed"

In classical Latin the diphtongs were most likely pronounced like two separate sounds, but we can't be really sure about that, there might have been acceptable differences between speakers.

Answer 2

Just a small note Nobody knows what Latin as originally spoken sounded like as it died out as in the country of origin after the end of the Roman empire. Therefore all subsequent pronunciation is subjective. I have heard different pronunciations of ecclesiastical Latin. Does the Vatican have an official source book?

Answer 3

The penultimate syllable is the one to emphasize. The endings are not sounded. The proof is that in French, the modern version of Latin, the -um, -a, -i and -ae endings simply dropped off the words!

"E" is not pronounced as "ay" when it is the first letter of a word or when it is shown as ĕ (e.g. nascĕre). There may be other examples, but they don't come readily to mind.

The diphthongs were lifted from Greek (as was much of the Latin language) and they are pronounced as you would expect from your knowledge of English.

Answer 4

In classic Latin the second syllable from the end of the word should be stressed.