Re: Boris Johnson & Iliad

True, true. Every region had its own local version of Latin (and no 
doubt Greek, too). I knew a distinguished lady from Romania (though she 
considered herself Hungarian, and had a German surname) who pronounced 
the Great Bore's name as 'Tzitzero'. My impression is -- I speak with 
deference here -- that the English put Latin through the Great Vowel 
Shift alongside English itself, so the older English pronunciation is a 
bit of an outlier, but the difference is at best quantitative. French 
Latin certainly fronted all the 'u's, which to an Anglophone ear gives 
French Latin a Pythonesque flavor.

On 7/28/19 1:31 PM, Ralph Hancock wrote:
> Michael Smith wrote:
> 
>> The Brits have always done that. Speak every language as if it were
>> English. Some amusing survivals of Brit Latin are to be found in the
>> thieves' argot of lawyers. 'A fortiori', for example, sounds like "Ah,
>> fer sure-ee."
> 
> To be fair, the French, Germans, Italians and Spanish have long pronounced
> Latin in their own ways, and no doubt other European nations too. It's only
> in the last 100 years that much attempt has been made at conforming to a
> hypothetical 'correct' style. The ecclesiastical pronunciation of Latin
> remains far out, and still varied; the French and Germans do not conform to
> the Italianate pronunciation we are used to, as can be found by listening
> to recordings of liturgical music.
> 
> The normal old-fashioned British pronunciation of _a fortiori_ is 'eh forty
> your eye', a survival of the days when the English pronounced Latin in
> their peculiar way. The classical Greek I was taught at school in the 1950s
> and early 60s was pronounced far more barbarously than Boris Johnson does
> -- something I've already discussed on this list.
> 
> RH
>