My son took Latin in high school. I learned that “v” has the “w” sound in Classical Latin. So, phonetically, Caesar’s famous report, as pronounced, would be “Weenie Weedie Weechi.” Kind of takes the majesty out of it.
I grew up hearing the Italian pronunciation and still prefer that...but the linguists appear to know how the language was pronounced in Caesar's time.
That certainly is what is currently taught about classical Latin pronunciation (i.e., v having w sound). As I understand it, the “evidence” for that is primarily how Latin words were phonetically written in the Greek alphabet at the time. IIRC, the Greek equivalent of “ou” (as in “oui, madame”) was often used. With all that said, I must admit that I’m somewhat skeptical. Considering that the hard Vee pronunciation exists in literally ALL the Romance and Romance-influenced languages, it boggles the mind to think that the W sound involved into a hard V independently. What are the odds of any letter changing pronunciation over time? Pretty damned low, right? Maybe 10% or less over 500 years? Now, so what are chances that Italian, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Romanian and probably a few others, all simultaneously and independently took on this different pronunciation? Seems like 1 in a million kinda proposition to me. If V did have the W sound, my guess is that it lost it by around 100 A.D. when Latin had really spread as the empire reached its greatest extent under Hadrian & Trajan.