Re: Boris Johnson & Iliad

Yes. My girl had an interesting history. She was from Cluj, but her 
antecedents were definitely Austro-Hungarian, and I think a bit aristo. 
Cluj, I gather, ended up in Romania earlier. She told me the whole story 
once, and ended up with "And do you know who did zat? YOUR PRESIDENT 
VILSON!" Wagging an admonitory finger. I assured her that I had not 
voted for the gentleman in question, which got a laugh, and made the 
rest of the afternoon much more pleasant.

On 7/29/19 9:12 AM, Zoja Pavlovskis-Petit wrote:
> 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
>>>
>>