Re: Boris Johnson & Iliad

Cicero/3rd Yr Latin was not taught in Birmingham AL when I was 
considered ready for it, so my mother hired a retired teacher to tutor 
me for credit. It was purely gruesome, being the only person in my class 
& responsible for translating about 20 lines a week.  The teacher told 
me about Kikero and Kaesar, but said she personally thought they sounded 
silly.  I did, too, and that was the one bit of relief in the year.

DW



On 7/29/2019 11:19 AM, Jan van Puffelen wrote:
> 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
>>> >
>>>