# pronunciation of rostochiensis



## sergtab

Please tell me, how should I pronounce Latin word *rostochiensis* ?


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## relativamente

Rostochiensis means "from Rostock" that is a city in Germany.
The combinations of letters CH in latin is used to transcribe the Greek letter Chi.This combination does not exist as far as I know in words originally Latin.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Χ
I would pronounce it as K in this word, like in German


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## pantarhei

It depends from the country you're living in. In italian is _/rosto'kjensis_/ for example, but in English it sounds in a different way, in German in another way, in French too and so on


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## Ben Jamin

relativamente said:


> Rostochiensis means "from Rostock" that is a city in Germany.
> The combinations of letters CH in latin is used to transcribe the Greek letter Chi.This combination does not exist as far as I know in words originally Latin.


 
So, what about *pulcher *?
The Romans pronounced the ch the same way as the Greeks did, didn´t they?


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## relativamente

Ben Jamin said:


> So, what about *pulcher *?
> The Romans pronounced the ch the same way as the Greeks did, didn´t they?



Pulcher is of course a Latin word.I dont know why has this combination CH. Maybe there are more words but I suppose there are not many.
Besides I have found this in an on line dictionary.
pulcher, chra, chrum, and less correctly pulcer, cra, crum, adj. for pol-cer, root pol-ire, akin with parēre, apparēre,


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## bibax

The Latin words with CH like pulcher or Gracchus are extremely rare.

CH was pronounced like the English C in can, i.e. aspirated K (the Latin C was pronounced with no aspiration, unlike in English).

In some period there was a fashion to pronounce all C with aspiration (eg. chenturio, chommoda, chorona).


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## pantarhei

bibax said:


> In some period there was a fashion to pronounce all C with aspiration (eg. chenturio, chommoda, chorona).



But Catullus tells us this was just a ridicolous way through which people not knowing greek tried to pretend they were educated. As if a person learning English wanted to pronounce all the _t_ with _a th_ sound to show off (and so he'd say "t_h_able, t_h_ry, t_h_ime, ...)


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## Ben Jamin

bibax said:


> The Latin words with CH like pulcher or Gracchus are extremely rare.
> 
> CH was pronounced like the English C in can, i.e. aspirated K (the Latin C was pronounced with no aspiration, unlike in English).
> 
> In some period there was a fashion to pronounce all C with aspiration (eg. chenturio, chommoda, chorona).


 This has survived in the florentine dialect.


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## pantarhei

Ben Jamin said:


> This has survived in the florentine dialect.



Truly in Toscan dialects only /k/ between vowels is affected, but the consonant usually turns into /h/ or falls totally. If this were a classical latin residual, it should be strongly diffused in Rome, but it is not actually.


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