pronunciations

[Anne Kilmer]

hossleew wrote:
> 
> Classical Latin, as I was taught in college by professors who persisted in
> exactness, pronounces all C's hard and sounds the same as our "K". "AE" is
> always pronounced like the letter "I", so to answer your question "ceae"
> sounds like "kay-eye."
> 
> Then again, in the two thousand plus years since Latin came about, I am sure
> that much has been changed or lost. For example, I hear they teach Latin
> pronunciation slightly differently in England.
> 
> Eric Hossler
> BS Classics, Class of '01
> 
But ... why would you pronounce your scientific names using the
arbitrary and improbable rules applied by your professors to Classical
Latin? 
My brother is a Classics professor, and has told me that he gets an
amazingly wide range of pronunciations going through ... but nobody
knows how Romans pronounced their language, and there were of course
many regional differences, as there are in English now. 

Latin, as the universal language of science, commerce and religion, had
changed a good bit at the point where Linnaeus (whose common name was
Linne) created order out of chaos. 
Therefore, we should be using the Latin handed down by the Church,
probably with a Swedish accent (out of respect).
(Excuse me a minute; I must just talk to this wren on the window sill.)
The Ericaceae therefore, are pronounced eh-rih-Kay-see-ay. Ae is a
long-a sound. The accent goes on the antepenultimate syllable, of
course. Next to next to last. In this case, the Kay. Leave it to Latin
to *expect* more than three syllables in a word.  
If you are from Boston, you will not sound the way I do when you
pronounce these syllables. It really doesn't matter, either. 
I, having had 12 years of Latin before I left high school, pronounce
scientific names with elegance and ease, as the Holy Mother Church
taught me. I can rip through them syllables as to the manor born. 
I have forgotten all the grammar, let alone the declensions and
conjugations, but by golly I can pronounce the hell out of it. 
The C is sometimes a K sound; sometimes an S, according to the vowels it
hangs with, just as in English. 
When "I" makes a consonant sort of sound (Y), we spell it with a J now;
that's where we get Julius.  The damnedest things happen to that letter
J, according to what language is using it; you must have noticed. 
The trick is to sound sure. Thus, even if you are mispronouncing
everything you say, others will quail and imitate you. 

I think Ron and I are on the same page in this one. 
Anne Kilmer
Mayo, Ireland

 
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