Latin "c"

[Sean Fitzpatrick]

The Jesuits taught me the pronunciation sanctioned by Holy Mother Church.  This didn't prevent my sisters, who learned the "Classical" pronunciation at their convent school across town, from correcting my "Seeser" and "Sisseroh" to "Kayzar" and "Kickeroh".   One of them later told me that anticlerical *philosophes* of the "Enlightenment" disassociated themselves from the Church and its corrupt monkish Latin by confecting the "Classical" pronunciation.  Perhaps not.  In this 1900 foreword (http://tinyurl.com/2ua7w), prominent Latin teacher and textbook author Prof. Charles Bennett of Cornell declared the attempt to introduce the "Roman", i.e., "Classical", pronunciation into America to be a pedagogical blunder, even though the quantities of the pronunciation were well founded.  However, Bennett's *New Latin Grammar* (3d Ed., 1918) still prescribed the "Classical" pronunciation.

Google(latin pronunciation classical church) finds many sites with practical and historical information, including:  a chart of the "Classical" phonetic values at http://tinyurl.com/3aayg, a bibliography for the history of Latin pronunciation at  http://tinyurl.com/2jxsw, and chart comparing the ecclesiastical and "Classical" provided by the Franciscans at http://www.shrinesf.org/latin.htm.  

In *1066 and All That*, Caesar's conquest of Britain was attributed to his demoralizing the Britons by declaring them "Weynie, Weedy, Weaky".  The Val-girl variant "Veni, vidi, Vicki" is translated "I came; I saw; I'm like all, oh my god!" [I apologize if I've told this before].

Seán Fitzpatrick
Baghdad Lutetia Matriceque delendi sunt
http://www.logomachon.blogspot.com/