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.