# Latin Spelling.



## Ezhyk

Why when I listen to Catholic hymns singing, I always hear "ch" sound in words like sacrificium, conceptus, docebo?
When I studied Latin at college we learned that before e, i, y, ae, oe "c" sounds like "ts". For example, English words, derived form Latin don't have sound "ch" too, for example, Lat. Docere - Eng. Docent (an university teacher), we don't spell it like "ch", but a soft “c”, close to "s"), circle (from latin "circulus" we do not say "ch" at the beginning of the word). In medical latin words like cervicalis, coelia also spelled with "ts", not "ch". But why do in horus always use "ch" for letter "c" before e, i, y, ae, oe? I heared this spelling in Italian words, but not in Latin. Can you explain it to me?


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## pob14

Church Latin, also called ecclesiastical Latin, uses an Italian-influenced pronunciation due to the seat of the church being in Rome.


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## Copperknickers

Ezhyk said:


> Why when I listen to Catholic hymns singing, I always hear "ch" sound in words like sacrificium, conceptus, docebo?
> When I studied Latin at college we learned that before e, i, y, ae, oe "c" sounds like "ts". For example, English words, derived form Latin don't have sound "ch" too, for example, Lat. Docere - Eng. Docent (an university teacher), we don't spell it like "ch", but a soft “c”, close to "s"), circle (from latin "circulus" we do not say "ch" at the beginning of the word). In medical latin words like cervicalis, coelia also spelled with "ts", not "ch". But why do in horus always use "ch" for letter "c" before e, i, y, ae, oe? I heared this spelling in Italian words, but not in Latin. Can you explain it to me?



In Classical Latin, the letter 'c' was always pronounced 'k'. However, as Latin developed into different dialects, it evolved, and became the Romance languages, which obviously have a very different pronounciation. And so although people continued to learn the Latin language, they simply pronounced it according to the rules of their own language. In all Romance languages (languages descended from Latin) the letter 'c' has two pronunciations: a hard 'k' sound before the vowels /o/, /a/ and /u/, and a softened sound before 'e' and 'i' (and thus also y, oe and ae). This 'softening' varies depending on the specific language:

French/Portuguese: soft c = 's'
Spanish: soft c = 'th'
Italian/Romanian: soft c = 'ch' as in English 'church'

In English, we have borrowed the soft 'c' of French, and we also use it when pronouncing Latin, because so much of our vocabulary is French derived that we are used to saying Latinate words in a French way, and because in our early history, Latin was mainly learned by French speaking Norman aristocracy.

In Polish, which is not descended from Latin, the letter 'c' has its own independent pronunciation, 'ts'. Again, this is carried over into Latin simply because that is the way it is pronounced in Polish, and people in Poland have been learning Latin ever since the country converted to Catholicism 1000 years ago (I believe it may be partially due to German influence also).


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## Ezhyk

Copperknickers said:


> In Classical Latin, the letter 'c' was always pronounced 'k'.


Don't confuse vulgar latin and classical latin please. In classical latin c before e,i,y,ae, oe pronounced as "ts", and as "k" before vowels. That's why I asked, I studied at college Classical Latin, and when I heard Catholic horus I couldn't understand why they pronounce "ch" instead of classical "ts", as I have been taught at college. Thanks to pob14's explanation, now I understand.


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## Copperknickers

Ezhyk said:


> Don't confuse vulgar latin and classical latin please. In classical latin c before e,i,y,ae, oe pronounced as "ts", and as "k" before vowels. That's why I asked, I studied at college Classical Latin, and when I heard Catholic horus I couldn't understand why they pronounce "ch" instead of classical "ts", as I have been taught at college. Thanks to pob14's explanation, now I understand.



With respect, your teacher was wrong. 'C' was never pronounced as 'ts' in Classical Latin. Originally, in Old Latin, C was only written before 'e' and 'i', and had a sound that varied between /k/ and /g/. The /k/ sound was also represented as 'q' or 'k' in other situations. But by the Classical period, this was no longer true, and 'c' was always pronounced /k/ and /k/ was always written as 'c', notwithstanding several hangovers from the old period such as the 'qu' representing /kw/, and words such as 'Caius' (pronounced 'Gaius') and 'kalends'.

We have been over this issue many times on this forum but nobody has posted a reliable academic source: so here is one - William Sidney Allen, former professor of comparative linguistics at Cambridge University and one of the world's premier experts on ancient phonology, until his death 12 years ago.

Vox Latina p.14


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## fdb

There is a difference between how classical Latin *was* pronounced, say at the time of Cicero, and how it *is* pronounced in modern school lessons. In ancient Rome “c” was always pronounced as [k]. The modern school pronunciation differs from country to country. In Germany “c” is pronounced [ts] before front vowels, but otherwise as [k]. A word like concilium is read as [kontsilium], analogous to the loan word “Konzil”. In Italy it is pronounced [kontʃilium]. From your question I deduce that Polish schools teach the German-style pronunciation.


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## metaphrastes

@Ezhyk: one clear evidence of the way _"ce" _or _"ci" _were pronounced in Classical Latin are some old bilingual tables found some times ago (a small research will confirm surely what I say you). These tables were written in Greek and Latin, being the Greek text (if memory helps me on this detail) a translation of the Latin, which was a text by Cicerus or mentioning his name. It happens that _Cicerus, _in the Greek text, was transcribed _Kikerus, _with the Greek _kapa._ This is how Greeks heard the Latin in those old times.

For this reason, some refer to the Classical reconstituted pronunciation by the shortcut _"Kikerus Latin". _Today, among Latin scholars, all speak _Kikerus _one to another - although in less specialized institutions, the received pronunciation, through one's cultural lens, may be still in force.

In fact, there is a similar issue about the reconstituted Classical Greek pronunciation made by Erasmus of Roterdam: although it has grounds from phonetic evidence in old texts, modern Greeks react strongly against it, because Greek pronunciation nowadays (and even in the time of the New Testament writings) is _very _different, and they feel it as artificial - not without some reason. However, how can you explain that a sheep, in an old comedy, says _meee, _written with an _eta, _which had a long _e _sound and that today is said with an _i _sound - that most Greeks today think it is the only true sound of that letter? For sure the _eta _had an _e _sound, although no one more who uses Greek as a living language says it so.

Languages are in constant changing, and such things happen, it is natural.


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## Penyafort

It is always stated that these variations in pronunciation are due to the Italianate influence.

But following its evolution in the Romance languages:

Stage 1, before the 2nd century) *K* - Sardinian
Stage 2, 2nd to 5th/6th century) > *CH* - Italo-Romance, Romanian, Andalusi Romance
Stage 3, from 6th century on) >> *TS* - Western Romance (Old French, Old Occitan/Catalan, Old Spanish/Portuguese) >>> S (or TH)​and considering that Church Latin started to be used by the end of the 4th century, isn't it just logical that it didn't follow those Classical _Ciceronian _k's used a few centuries before, but the one already used there at the time?


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