Re: Boris Johnson & Iliad

About a Hungarian Romanian: after the Second World War a sizable part of
what used to be Hungary became part of Romania.  Furthermore, Transylvania
(now part of Romania) was settled by Germans in the Middle Ages.  Hence the
detail in the story of the Pied Piper of Hameln about the possibility that
the Piper led the children of that German town to Transylvania.  (I'm
talking about the version of the story recorded by the Grimm Brothers in
their collection of German legends -- not their collection of fairy
tales.)  Anyway, more to the point: Tzitzero is the way Germans still
pronounce the great man's name, and Russians, influenced by Germans, say
Tzitzeron.  (I never find Cicero boring; the beauty of his style
compensates for any dull spots!)  Zoja Pavlovskis-Petit, Binghamton
University (NY).

On Sun, Jul 28, 2019 at 10:30 PM Michael Smith <[email protected]> wrote:

> 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
> >
>