1. Alphabet and Pronunciation

 Latin alphabet is widely used world wide. Some letter that we use today were not used in Classical Latin. Classical Latin contains 23 letter.
They are:
 A  B  C  D  E  F  G  H  I  K  L  M  N  O  P  Q  R  S  T  V  X  Y  Z

 a. Pronunciation of consonants.
 There are consonants which are pronounced the same as in English. I show how to pronounce consonants which are pronounced differently.

•  c is pronounced hard, as in cat.
•  g is pronounced hard, as in Gaul.
•  t is sounded, as in table (never like notion)
•  i is used as a consonant in Latin. It is used as j in Latin. It is pronounced like y in English.e.g.  iam = yam
• r is always rounded.
• s is sounded as in soft.(never like z, as in rose)
• v is often used as a vowel in Latin. It is used as u. However, in many modern text, u is printed. As a consonant, it is sounded, as in woohoo.

 b. Pronunciation of vowels.
 A vowel can be pronounced long or short. It depends on the position of vowel in a word. Long vowels are marked with macrons. Macrons are used to make  pronunciation easy for tvowels. A macron appears as a mark on a vowel. For example: ā, ē, ī, ū

• a is short, as in hat
• ā is long, as in father.
• e is short, as in set.
• ē is long, as in aim.
• i is short, as in inc.
  
• ī is long, as in keep.
• o is short, as in hope.
• ō is long, as in wooo.
• u is short, as in put. ( don't forget that u appears, as v in old texts)
• ū is long, as in tool.
  

 c. Diphthongs.
  A diphthong is a vowel which is followed by another one.

• ae is sounded, as in high.
• au is sounded, as in how.
• eu is sounded, as in deuce.
• oe is sounded, as in toy.
• ui is sounded, as in French oui.