No inherited verbal knowledge of the ancient pronunciation of Latin exists.

It m
ust be reconstructed. Among the data used for reconstruction are explicit statem
ents about pronunciation by ancient authors, misspellings, puns, ancient etymolo
gies, and the spelling of Latin loanwords in other languages.[31]
Consonants
The consonant phonemes
Labial Dental
plain labial
Plosive
voiced
voiceless
p
Fricative
voiced
voiceless
f
Nasal m
n
Rhotic
r
Approximant

of Classical Latin are shown in the following table.[32]

Palatal
Velar Glottal
b
t

d
k

g
k?

z
s
l

h
j

During the time of Old and Classical Latin, the Latin alphabet had no distinctio
n between uppercase and lowercase, and the letters ?J U W? did not exist. In pla
ce of ?J U?, the letters ?I V? were used. ?I V? represented both vowels and cons
onants. Most of the letterforms were similar to modern uppercase, as can be seen
in the inscription from the Colosseum shown at the top of the article.
The spelling systems used in Latin dictionaries and modern editions of Latin tex
ts, however, normally use ?i u? in place of Classical-era ?I V?. Some systems us
e ?j v? for the consonant sounds /j w/, except in the combinations ?gu su qu?, w
here ?v? is never used.
Some notes concerning the mapping of Latin phonemes to English graphemes are giv
en below.