Native speakers of English often have a hard time believing that Latin is phonetic. What you write is what you say, nothing more, nothing less, and every letter has only one value. When you see a double letter, you say each of them separately, so vacuum (“an empty thing”) is pronounced WAH-koo-oom, and mitteris (“you will be sent”) is meet-TAY-rees.

Here is a list of a few consonants and consonant combinations to watch out for.

• C is always hard, as in English “cake.”

• G is always hard, as in English “get.”

• I can be a consonant as well as a vowel, just as the letter y in English can, and makes the same sound as in English “yes.”

• GN sounds more like the ng in English “sing.”

• BS sounds more like ps.

• CH sounds pretty much like a plain c with a whisp of air after it, as in English “deckhand.” It never makes the English “ch” sound like in “church.”

• TH just sounds like a t followed by an h, as in the English word “hothouse.” It never makes the English th sound like in “think.”

• PH sounds like a p followed by an h, as in the English phrase “up hill.” It's not exactly an f sound, but it's pretty close.