#9311
11/16/2000 11:46 AM
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You have William the Conqueror and his Norman thugs to thank for this. Eleventh-century social climbers quickly learned it was to their advantage to acquire the language of the court; while peasants doomed to fiefdom ate kuh instead of boeuf.
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#9312
11/20/2000 10:59 AM
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Hi Hearsay:
I was previewing the 1939 film "Goodbye Mr Chips" this afternoon prior to screening it tomorrow night. There's a scene in it when Mr Chips (now an old man) complains about being told to teach the 'new-fashioned'(ie turn-of-the-century) Latin style of using a hard 'C'. He says why should I teach them to pronounce it [Kikero] when they'll say [Cicero - soft 'C'] for the rest of their lives?
So, was there a pronunciation change around that time?
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#9313
11/20/2000 11:27 AM
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My knowledge of Latin is next to nothing, but I remember reading somewhere (??) that we do not actually 'know' how the Romans pronounced Latin. We can make some educated guesses, but the original pronunciation is now lost to us. So is there anything authoritative about the hard 'c' as opposed to the soft one?
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#9314
11/20/2000 11:47 AM
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Pooh-Bah
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Latin Pronunciation
Like the hard/soft "C" debate - we were encouraged (1972-ish) to say "Salwe" for "salve".
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#9315
11/20/2000 12:05 PM
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we were encouraged (1972-ish) to say "Salwe" for "salve".
Exactly. In India (but this was no doubt a corruption) when someone 'kept cave' (for a gang of boys up to mischief), we pronounced it kay-wee.
Your use of 'salve' reminded me of one of my favourite poems - Browning's "Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister". Must LIU.
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My Latin teacher claimed the same regarding "Kikero" and "salwe," circa 1960. I'm sure she was right, since she was old enough to have heard native Latin speakers.
Does anyone here know how it's done in strongly Latin-like languages? Catalan comes to mind. Of course, we have examples from German, wherein "W" is pronounced more like "V," or French, wherein it's"V" and "doubleV."
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I am not sure to have fully understood the question; in any case, in Italian - before the English influence of the last years - there was NO " w" in the alphabet. We Italians - now - say "salve" in this way .
Ciao
Emanuela
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We pronounce 'c' in two different ways in modern English. How can we say for sure that the Romans always pronounced it in one way? Why can't they have been like us and have had more than one pronunciation depending on the word? They (or someone at some stage) had more than one pronunciation for 'v'. Back in the days when 'v' and 'u' were the same letter written down. (MARCVS VINCIT.) My understanding is that it took some time for the separate pronunciations to settle out into 'v' and 'u'. And even more time for 'w' to evolve out as a separate letter. Plus, it evolved differently in English and in German. Think about Vienna. Wien. wsieber or someone will correct me if I'm totally wrong, but 'Wien' in German is pronounced more or less as 'Veen' in English. And the classic fake German accent replaces all our English 'w' sounds with 'v' sounds. 'Vat vill you do?' So tell me, what is 'uet'? Is it an animal doctor or is it the way rain feels? 
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Bridget, I think that is a pretty commonsense notion you have there. In French, we also have different ways of pronouncing the c.
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I guess the arguments about verbal pronunciation versus written language are based on the premise that the written language was designed, rather than evolved. This would also be true of the alphabets we use. We see them as "fixed" and treat them as if they sprang, fully-formed, from some linguistic womb. Think, for a minute, about how we use language in everyday speech, but write it significantly differently.
But from my perspective this simply cannot be true. An interesting little book by the bloke who was until relatively recently the editor of the OED (and I'm sorry, I forget the names of both the author and his microtome, but I'm sure someone on this list will know), traced the development of the alphabet. There were fits and starts. Letters (such as "y" and "j") came and went - almost as a fashion statement like bell-bottomed jeans - and were adopted into positions in words based on a set of "rules" or, more likely, circumstances, that had precious little to do with pronunciation. Remember, when written language first became common in Europe, it was the preserve of Father Steve's friends' religious forebears, scrivening away in scriptoriums.
When I was learning Latin (using the word "learning" in the broadest possible sense), I asked my Latin teacher how he knew that the "c" was hard and that the "v" was pronounced as a "w". He admitted he didn't know. I've never been able to find any evidence, and I've looked, for this assumption. The best explanation I've found came from yet another book which I cannot remember the name of. I remember it was written either very early last century or at the end of the nineteenth century. Anyway, this author believed that modern Latin pronunciation (i.e. how we believe today that it was pronounced up until about 550 AD) probably came down to us via the Catholic Church and Church Latin. This appears to have been taught to new priests, who were often illiterate when they entered the priesthood. Because of this, the language was taught as a formula for ease of presentation.
This explanation may also be a load of codswallop, but it does sound reasonable. Especially since Latin scholars are now studying Latin graffiti (some of it on unburned walls in Pompeii and Herculaneum) and they're finding out what I would have thought would have been intuitively obvious - not everybody spoke Latin the same way across the entire Roman world.
Why do I think this is so obvious? Look at English as spoken in various parts of England alone, ignoring Scotland, Wales and Ireland which all learned it as a foreign language in the first instance. Sometimes you'd be hard put to believe that RP and Brummie English were the same language.
Again, looking at how English as spoken elsewhere affects common usage at the source, England, both the pronunciation and the usage are influenced by repeated usage from elsewhere. English may be ever so slightly more prone to take these changes "on board", but I'm willing to bet that there was Iberian Latin, Mauretanian Latin, AEgyptian Latin Syriac Latin, Aramaic Latin, Graeco-Latin, yadda, yadda, yadda. And the legions would have picked up the local pronunication and usages as they were often posted to a province for a long time at a stretch and recruited locally. Even where the soldiers were not actually Romans, they often went to Rome, taking their linguistic usages with them. And let's not forget all of the "Roman citizens" who were certainly not Roman by birth, but who all saw Rome as a mecca and went there if they could, taking their version of the language with them.
I'm willing to believe that in the high patrician households, perhaps the imperial household and in the top plebian households "pure" Latin was maintained, in much the same was as Oxbridge and RP English is. But I would find it hard to credit that Marcus the tanner who worked in a leather shop at the base of the Aventine and who lived in a filthy and damp apartment on the fourth floor in one of the jerry-built insulae which Rome was littered with in imperial times would have given two figs about correct Latin usage. Any more than the residents of Seven Dials in London did in the mid-nineteenth century. Letters would have been pronounced hard or soft, omitted, inserted, replaced with others - or whatever - with gay abandon.
And since virtually the only written Latin that has come down to us over the ages was written by scholars of one ilk or another, and who would probably have made a fetish out of correct usage of the language, Heaven alone knows how the vernacular would have been written down, if it ever was!
Does this view seem unreasonable? I'd love to debate this with people who are interested!
Sorry for the outpouring ... spam me.
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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the original pronunciation is now lost to usNot quite! there are no limits to the capacity of the latest high technology of unraveling ancient mysteries  . Recently, I seem to remember, I read an article in a scientific journal about the close examination of Roman pottery. The contour of some well-preserved vases was adorned with very fine wavy lines which, to the astute researcher, resemled the sound traces on old grammophone records. He put the vase on a rotating potter's wheel, and fixed a grammophone head to its side, and - lo and behold, the distinct voice of the potter, who sang a hymn to the glory of his imperator Kaesar, emanated from the loudspeaker...
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#9322
11/22/2000 10:34 AM
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This was supposed to be wordplay and fun and you've made it all grown up and serious!
To be honest, I agree with you. Here are some more instances which, IMO, support this notion.
1. RP is not what it used to be. Recordings of BBC radio programmes from 50 years ago show that the pronunciation in those days was quite different from what we consider 'good' British English today. AS I mentioned in another thread (a long time ago in a forum far far away), even classic films like "Brief Encounter" are now less than easy to understand because of the change in accents. We do not have reliable knowledge of any accents before the invention of the gramophone. To claim otherwise is, I believe, disingenuous.
2. It isn't just Latin that has these problems. I learned in college that we do not 'really' know how Chaucer pronounced all those ownderful words in his "Canterbury Tales". We make some guesses based upon the rhyume scheme (much as we do with Shakespeare), but by and large we are guessing. There is no assurance that a Middle English scholar, if plonked by time machine in Chaucer's era, would be able to make herself intelligible. And this was a mere 700 years ago, not 1500 or more.
3. Whilst some may claim that the 'oral' tradition ensured some consistency, or purity, of pronunciation, we have instances today that show this not to be the case. Latn American Spanish and Spanish Spanish haave clearly marked pronunciation differences - the values given to the 'z', for inctance, or the 'c'. Similarly (and bel can maybe help us here), Quebecois French is not identical to French French, which is again different from West African French or Algerian French. A few generations is all that is required (even with the utmost care taken by speakers to 'preserve' the mother tongue) for a language to change greatly. In a few such changes (a few hundred years) it can become genuinely unintelligible.
4. The greatest case in point, I think, is Chinese. 1.3 billion people who can write to each other and make themselves undestood (I understand that the Chinese script, being composed of ideograms, is universally intelligible), but cannot conduct oral conversations with each other. I think Bridget made this point in a post somewhere.
In sum, when we speak of the pronunciation of Latin, even if we restrict ourselves to Latin 'RP', we would have to take into account at least the time difference. The Latin Caesar spoke would almost certainly sound different from the Latin that Jerome used, or that Constantine did. By analogy, another classical language, Sanskrit, had a number of phases, during which periods it was most likely close to unintelligible to users from other periods: the Vedic period (and yes the Rig Veda and others were composed in this language) approx 3200BP to 2400BP; 'Panini' Sanskrit - where the formal grammar was laid down - approx 2400BP to 1600BP; and 'golden age' Sanskrit - when Kalidas and others were wowing the Gupta court - approx 1600BP onwards. Sanskrit had, by about 1200 years ago, pretty much vanished as a living language, but we know from commentaries and texts throughout its life, that by the time Panini came along, there were already controversies about the meanings of various words and phrases in the Vedas. During Kalidas' period, Panini was archaic and difficult to interpret. And so on. I find it difficult to imagine such great formal changes without corresponding changes in pronunciation.
So there... spam me too.
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>Not quite! there are no limits to the capacity of the latest high technology of unraveling ancient mysteries. Recently, I seem to remember, I read an article in a scientific journal about the close examination of Roman pottery. The contour of some well-preserved vases was adorned with very fine wavy lines which, to the astute researcher, resemled the sound traces on old grammophone records. He put the vase on a rotating potter's wheel, and fixed a grammophone head to its side, and - lo and behold, the distinct voice of the potter, who sang a hymn to the glory of his imperator Kaesar, emanated from the loudspeaker...
But if you run it backwards it says that Paul is dead!!! But we're still not sure which Paul it means.
TEd
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You are right Shanks, in the mere 500 years since official colonization of Canada, the French language has undergone a number of changes. French and Québecois do not sound alike at all, the tone of voice and where the letters are pronounced in the mouth are quite different. The manner (and order) in which the syllables are stressed are also often different. There are also words that have been 'invented' here, that the French do not use. Oddly, the Québecois can readily understand the French but the opposite is not always the case – thus their assertions that we are speaking the language incorrectly (grrrr!!)
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Hang on, hang on, guys! I was trying to start a fight, not a cosy "I agree" arrangement!
So fight - yes, I was long-winded, but I hoped was being just a teensy-weensy bit controversial, too!
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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But why CapK? Your argument makes a lot of sense.
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#9327
11/22/2000 11:43 PM
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So fight - yes, I was long-winded, but I hoped was being just a teensy-weensy bit controversial, too!The only possible reason someone could choose to pick a fight with you over that post would be to accuse you of stating, in the words of Basil Fawlty, "the bleeding obvious." 
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but I hoped was being just a teensy-weensy bit controversialThe trouble is, in order to merit the qualification of "controversial", a theory needs to be disprovable, i.e. one should at least be able to imagine the kind of facts that would make the proposed theory unlikely .
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Oddly, the Québecois can readily understand the French but the opposite is not always the case – thus their assertions that we are speaking the language incorrectly That just means the French are fairly even-handed in their attitude to foreigners speaking their language, methinks! Were you expecting favouritism, just because French is also your language? More likely the expectations are higher.  Bless 'em! We love 'em to bits, we do.
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I guess you're right, Fisk choux; but have you ever tried to have a conversation with someone who is constantly correcting your pronunciation. Arrrgh. Don't you just want to throttle them and say "listen to what I am saying, not how I say it dag nabbit."
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#9331
11/24/2000 12:02 PM
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Don't you just want to throttle themPaz do toot, shoe pet.
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Pooh-Bah
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>Oddly, the Québecois can readily understand the French but the opposite is not always the case – thus their assertions that we are speaking the language incorrectly (grrrr!!)
I think we discussed something similar a while ago. I was trying to find charitable reasons why the French never seem to be able to understand other people speaking (or attempting to speak) their language - we didn't discover any!
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Hel-Lo ... Let us get back to the basic how-it's-pronounced.
Ahem (throat clearing for pronouncement! Pay attention now.)
When I studied music, singing to be exact,I learned the "Panis Angelicus" and in it is the word coelicus (heaven) which I learned to pronounce chay-li-cus NOT Koe-li-kus.
Who was my teacher? Father Daniel O'Leary, whose credentials included a stint as one of the private secretaries at the Vatican.There, because there were clerics from many lands in residence or visiting, Latin was the preferred language for conversing one to another and in conferences. I other words, Latin was the lingua franca of the day in Vatican City. (I am talking the 1930s through the early 1950s.) There's the link. The church has been around as long as the Romans...well, nearly... Also, may I submit that the Romance languages all favor the softer, more euphonious pronunciations? I await replies with anticipation and glee. I live to shake beehives. wow
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>>Oddly, the Québecois can readily understand the French but the opposite is not always the case – thus their assertions that we are speaking the language incorrectly (grrrr!!)
I think we discussed something similar a while ago. I was trying to find charitable reasons why the French never seem to be able to understand other people speaking (or attempting to speak) their language - we didn't discover any!<
Surely this is just the Francophone equivalent of US English as an international standard?
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This explanation may also be a load of codswallop... FishOnABike, you gonna take this sitting down?
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The French are indeed even-handed in their treatment of foreigners speaking French -- they treat them all with suspicion. From my years in Europe, I have this observation to make: The Italians love anyone who tries, however badly, to speak Italian. The Germans will insist on correcting anyone who errs in speaking German. The French are insulted at French spoken badly.
If you don't speak French very well, you are asking for grief if you try it in France. In this context, I have to tell one of my favorite stories, which has to have the dialogue in French: In the early 60's, we were on a trip to France and one morning, driving down the Champs Elysees from the Place de l'Etoile to the Place de la Concorde, I heard the shriek of a whistle and saw a gendarme coming up. I stopped and rolled down the window. "Monsieur," he informed me, "Vous avez passe le feu." I looked around and saw no traffic light nearby -- the last one I saw was several blocks back. As I spoke French well with very little accent, I asked, "Monsieur l'agent, quel feu?" He pointed at the intersection I had just gone through: "Ce feu la-bas." I looked again, and succeeded in making out a traffic light behind the trees, which made it virtually invisible, so I replied, "Monsieur, je vous demande pardon, mais je n'ai pas vu le feu a cause des arbres." He drew himself up to full height, sniffed indignantly, and replied, "Monsieur, vous avez du le voir!" with great emphasis on "du", so that was that. He then motioned me on my way, but I'm convinced that if I had spoken English, or, worse yet, spoken French badly, it would have cost me dearly, even if I escaped being thrown into the bottommost dungeon of the local bastille.
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I have it on good authority that during the active warfare part of Desert Storm there was a dearth of tourism in Europe, particularly in France. It was so bad, 'tis said, that the French had to be rude to one another.
TEd
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I regret to say that compared to the Germans, the French are models of poiteness and consideration. It's not bad enough that those bloody Krauts (I can say this because I am of German family on both sides) still have dozens of dialects and various accents and pronuncations with which to drive you crazy, but they have the infernal nerve to correct anybody making a grammar or pronunciation error. I have been subjected to a lecture just for asking for zwo Pfund Hackfleisch.
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#9339
11/27/2000 10:01 PM
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Sorry, Bob, but I think your two stories lose something in the non-translation. Can you provide just a little more interpretation for those of us with a command of 1.3 languages or less? Nothing worse than missing the punchline.
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The story falls flat in English, but here's the dialog: As I was going down the Champs Elysees, the cop came up and said, "Sir, you ran the red light." I asked, "Officer, what red light?" He replied, "That one over there." (The one behind the trees.) I replied, "Sir, I didn't see the light on account of the trees." He drew himself up in real Gallic fashion and replied, "Sir, you SHOULD have seen it."
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Merci beaucoup, Bob. I followed the original easily enough until the "avez du" which was the key word! And to think I breezed through five years of French in secondary school. I SHOULD have known it!
And the "zwo Pfund Hackfleisch"? (My 0 years of school German are no use at all to me here).
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okay Marty, I'll give the first word--zwo should be zwie (as in zweibach-- a nabisco cracker/biscuit for teething babies.) It means two- (zwie Two - bake --in english Twice baked-- )
You might know zwiebach as rusks. I don't know what a rusk is, but i am told it's the same as a zwiebach. It sort of look like a "biscotti" a slice of 1 inch high, 3 inch wide loaf, that has been toasted to make it very dry and crisp. In the US they are almost exclusively used for teething babies, but i understand in other part of the world, very similar type bread is eaten by adults.
the second word in english is obviously pound,(but i suspect like zwo/zwie is not quite right) and the third i am guessing is ground meat (Hack fleisch) and again is slightly off--but i have 0 foriegn language skills its been dogs ages since i took french in HS. i was able to get a BA in 3 years while working full time, and in the middle of it all got a divorce, and moved. did i mention i had two teenagers at the time? but i was allow to complete my degree- with out any language requirements.
but i know fleischman is translated at butcher. (meatman)
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#9343
11/28/2000 10:10 PM
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In reply to:
okay Marty, I'll give the first word--zwo should be zwie (as in zweibach-- a nabisco cracker/biscuit for teething babies.)
I wonder if anyone can confirm my suspicion that "zwo" is the Low German equivalent of "zwei"? I remember reading somewhere that English has more in common with Low German than with High, and the zwo/zwei comparison was cited as an example. Also, if my high school German has not totally abandoned me, doesn't "Zwieback" literally mean "twice baked"? If so, a zwieback biscuit would be a near perfect example of the Germanic/Norman redundant pairings that tsuwm and Father Steve were talking about. The one thing that interest me is how "zwei" became "zwie" in Zwieback. Any ideas?
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#9344
11/28/2000 10:50 PM
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The one thing that interest me is how "zwei" became "zwie" in Zwieback.
After consulting my German-English dictionary, I have found that "zwie" as a prefix, means double; thus, "double-baked".
By the way, the "zwo" was the only error. "Pfund" and "Hackfleisch" are perfectly normal.
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#9345
11/29/2000 10:58 AM
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It is true that, etymologically, Zwieback and Biscuit are exact correspondants, yet here in Switzerland, they are well-distinct items on the bakery shelves. Zwieback is a sort of bread in slices that is made durable by dehydration, while Biscuits are (generally sweet, but otherwise plain) cookies.
"Zwo" is used in Swiss dialects besides "zwei". Genuine Bernese dialect uses "zwo" with feminine nouns, "zwee" (pronounced "zwey") with masculine ones.
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If I knew how to include diacritical marks in postings, I would have spelled "du" with a circumflex, since it's the past participle of "devoir". That would probably have been a great help in deciphering that sentence. Also, to all those who have been cogitating on "zwo Pfund Hackfleisch", "zwo" is indeed the low German or slang equivalent of "two" and the phrase means "two pounds of ground beef."
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To all those writing about German for "two", it's spelled ZWEI, not ZWIE.
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Joined: Oct 2000
Posts: 5,400 |
thank you bob, all the german, or french or italian i know i have learned on the streets of ny, from shop signs, and imported food. the best are the packets of Japanese foods my sister sends me! I can usually work out directions from food imported from europe-- but figuring out how to cook something when all you have to work on is kanji is something else. it makes for interesting dinners!
i often frequent shops where the owners/managers speak no english, and i don't speak a word of (pick a language!)
my first introduction to foreign culture is always a first taste!
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Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 1,289
veteran
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veteran
Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 1,289 |
Well, I have to tell you another story. Back in the early 60's I was in the Army, stationed in Verona in northern Italy. My wife came over and we lived in an apartment in the city, not in military housing, and we did all our shopping in the local stores. Although I spoke Italian well, my wife couldn't get the hang of it. The local merchants, all of whom were, in typical Italian fashion, more than glad to help her out, would get her through a transaction most of the time, when she didn't know the Italian for anything. They used to start laughing as soon as they saw her coming, and by the time we left Italy, the grocer, the fishmonger, the costermonger etc. all had learned a good deal of English. The highlight of this association came one day when she went into the salumeria (grocery store) to get some mortadella (bologna) for our lunch. That morning, she had asked me how to say "a quarter kilo" and I told her "un quarto kilo". She went to the store and asked for quattro kilo mortadella (4 kilos = 9 lbs.). The clerks burst out laughing, as usual, and said, "no, Signora, no Signora" but she kept on insisting on quattro kilo. Finally, one of them picked up a whole mortadella (about 6 in. in diameter and 2 feet long) and held it up in front of her and said, "Quattro kili, Signora!" She finally figured out what she had said.
Then there was what she told the neighbors when our son was born. He weighed 7 lbs., but she told the neighbors he was 7 kilos! When I found this out and told her the neighbors would be looking for a 15-lb. baby, we decided we could only take him out after dark for the first 6 months.
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Joined: Aug 2000
Posts: 3,409
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Aug 2000
Posts: 3,409 |
It is true that, etymologically, Zwieback and Biscuit are exact correspondants, yet here in Switzerland, they are well-distinct items on the bakery shelves. "Zwo" is used in Swiss dialects besides "zwei". Thanks, Werner. I was confident that you would be able to come to my rescue on this one, even though I think Schweizerdeutsch sounds as much as like Hochdeutsch as does Cantonese!
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