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Thread: Pronunciation of Latin or Greek words in English

  1. #1
    Elephant Feirefiz's avatar
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    Default Pronunciation of Latin or Greek words in English

    A diplodocus discussion in chat reminded me of something I always wanted to ask.
    How does the pronunciation of (neo-) Latin and Greek words in English work?
    Of course I picked up the pronunciations of many specific words but the big picture eludes me.

    A few random impressions I've got so far:
    • Usually there seems to be a clear consensus which pronunciation is preferred.[/*:m:2rfj5r68]
    • It's not unusual for native speakers to get it wrong if they aren't familiar with that particular word.[/*:m:2rfj5r68]
    • It's not immediately obvious from ordinary English orthography. (Then again, what is? :wink: )[/*:m:2rfj5r68]
    • Classical pronunciation has little to do with it.[/*:m:2rfj5r68]
    • Source-language morphology is also largely ignored. [/*:m:2rfj5r68]

    Does it follow general rules? Are the pronunciations just conventions on a case-by-case basis?

  2. #2
    Oliphaunt
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    Default Re: Pronunciation of Latin or Greek words in English

    Do you have some specific examples? As far as Latin goes, there can sometimes be a discrepancy between those who favor "Church" pronunciation over "Classical". For instance, pronouncing "caeli" as "CHEH-lee" as opposed to "KAI-lee". Or See-zar rather than Kai-sar (for Caesar).

  3. #3
    Elephant Feirefiz's avatar
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    Default Re: Pronunciation of Latin or Greek words in English

    I try to think of good examples, but it is surprisingly difficult. Yes, I know that that isn't very helpful.
    It's just that often when I heard a word of Greek or Latin origin pronounced for the first time I thought that I would never have guessed the pronunciation.
    Btw. I'm not so much referring to people with an English background speaking those languages but words with foreign origins in English speech.

    For example stressed third-to-last syllables seem surprisingly popular. How regular is that?

    omnipotent
    anticipate
    But: antisocial (I'm aware that the last two aren't related etymologically.)

    I'll see if I can think of better examples.

  4. #4
    Oliphaunt
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    Default Re: Pronunciation of Latin or Greek words in English

    Quote Originally posted by Feirefiz
    For example stressed third-to-last syllables seem surprisingly popular. How regular is that?
    I think that's just a standard English pronunciation of some multisyllabic words. Alpha-BET-ical.

  5. #5
    Curmudgeon OtakuLoki's avatar
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    Default Re: Pronunciation of Latin or Greek words in English

    Here's a related question: How did reveille end up three syllables in English? It's a fairly regular French word, and I can't see any reason for that trailing e to end up pronounced vice silent.

  6. #6
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    Quote Originally posted by OtakuLoki View post
    Here's a related question: How did reveille end up three syllables in English? It's a fairly regular French word, and I can't see any reason for that trailing e to end up pronounced vice silent.
    http://www.answers.com/topic/reveille --

    [Alteration of French réveillez, second person pl. imperative of réveiller, to wake, from Old French resveiller : re-, re- + esveiller, to awake (from Vulgar Latin *exvigilāre : Latin ex-, ex- + Latin vigilāre, to awake , from vigil, awake).]
    In other words, because we dropped the z.

  7. #7
    Porosity Caster parzival's avatar
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    If you're primarily looking at stress, Latin had a fairly regular pattern of stress. English has a common pattern too but also uses the Latin pattern at times, and they're often kind of similar.

    more here, especially a few pages on from there.

    I think (this is a guess) that prefixes with the same meaning generally keep the same stress pattern when they can, like mul'ti- or an'ti-. But keeping a 'poetic' pattern of strong and weak seems to be more common in English : homoph'ony but ho'mosexual. The imaginary word homofoody would likely get pronounced ho'mofoody because food isn't weak. (Note those aren't the primary accents; I'm just trying to indicate how the prefix would be stressed.)
    I can't think of exceptions off the top of my head but they're probably older words influenced by Latin when it was more familiar to English speakers.

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