Without a doubt, nearly no one today nasalizes the final m these days. That doesn't mean you shouldn't know about it. I've got two reasons.
1. If you know about nasalized m, certain aspects of poetry become easier to deal with. Particularly the dreaded elision of final m. But that's for advanced students. My other reason applies to everyone.
2. If you can make the sounds of nasalized m, you can quickly see why there is no -om at the end of words. This could help beginning students work through some of the pops and ticks of the second declension. The declension where o reigns supreme, until you get to the Accusative singular.
Not convinced of the value of this?
Try the experiment for the day. Say "cum" with a good French accent. Make that -um come out your nose! Now, go back and say the antiquated form of it: quom. Again, get a good French accent going on the -om. Now, obviously the initial consonant is different. The vowel sound, if you're doing it the right way, should be very similar.
Of course, you don't have to believe me about this nasalization thing. Check out what other folks have to say here and here (because quoting Cicero is pretty much an argument ender).
This work by Peter Sipes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
No comments:
Post a Comment