Re: Boris Johnson & Iliad

I learned that Cicero was pronounced as kikero and Caesar as kaesar. etc. 
i.e. c=k and u is mostly pronounced as 'oo' ; the Greek 'ou'.

Regards Jan van Puffelen
Amsterdam

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Zoja Pavlovskis-Petit" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Monday, July 29, 2019 3:12 PM
Subject: 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
>> >
>>