Dragaera

Language drift WAS: Re: Vlad and Kiera

James Burbidge jamesandmary.burbidge
Wed Aug 17 19:53:16 PDT 2005

On Tue, 2005-08-16 at 22:22, Mia McDavid wrote:
> 
> James Burbidge wrote:
> 
> >Which church Latin?
> >
> >The church Latin in Italy sounds like Italian; but the "authentic"
> >church Latin in France sounded rather like French, in much of the Holy
> >Roman Empire like German, and in England rather like English.  It shows
> >up most markedly in words like "caeli".
> >  
> >
> 
> Well, here in the US, coeli, meaning heaven, is pronounced CHE-li, to 
> the best of my understanding.  In Classical Latin it would be Ko-EL-i; 
> that is, hard C and prounounce all vowels.  CHE-li seems pretty 
> Italianate; which is not surprising as Italy is the home of the Vatican 
> and the nation of all recent Popes except JPII.  I have no background in 
> Church Latin, nor have I made a study of it, but these are things I've 
> picked up . . .
> 

In English Church Latin -- the form used in the Latin BCP of Cosins, for
example, and pronounced much as in Law Latin (see older editions of
Fowler on the general pronunciation) -- coeli is "coy-lie"; in French
Church Latin it is more or less "say-li"; in German Church Latin
"tsay-li", and in Italinate Church Latin "che-li".

If you listen carefully in "authentic" recreations of older Latin
services, you can hear this depending on the loction a given performance
is recreating.

The Italianate pronunciation tends to be used where there is no "native"
traditional form, as in the U.S.