Most importantly, bear in mind that the whole idea of reconstructing classical Latin pronunciation only dates from the 19th century, when practitioners of the new science of linguistics started looking at things like borrowings into other languages at the time classical Latin was spoken (vinum -> wine, etc) up to that time, what would people do but speak Latin words like they would speak their own? Note also that the English are a race capable of pronouncing Don Quixote as Don Quicksote :O) OK, folks, can anyone confirm nonsmokingmirror’s contention? How would Newton have pronounced Principia? **įirst, try common sense – note, for example, that English words (such as ‘principle’) borrowed from Latin, many dating from Newton’s time, ALL show the soft ‘c’. **I would think that the “correct” pronunciation in this case is the one Newton would have used himself, which would almost certainly have been prinsippia. This is not by any means the same thing as saying that that’s how Newton himself would have pronounced the word, though… Having said that, Princhippia sounds right to me too – but that’s because I’m used to singing in Church (Italianate) Latin, which is the normal singing Latin here in Ireland. I’d be willing to bet that Newton pronounced it that way, even though it’s not “Classical”.Īs I’ve said already, there are more than just two historical ways of pronouncing Latin – and the “Church Latin” which CalMeacham is talking about is, specifically, an Italian way of pronouncing Latin, spread throughout the world by (as the name suggests) the Catholic Church.īut Newton was most certainly not a Catholic – indeed, in the 17th/early 18th centuries, it would have been utterly impossible for a Catholic to be a Cambridge Don, as Newton was – rather, he was a member of the Church of England (more or less an Episcopalian), a Church which was at the time extemely suspicious of anything that smacked of Popery, including, presumably, Italianate Latin. **As everyone above has stated, Church Latin is different from “Classical” Latin. It’s possible to hear some of this variation in recordings of classical music – a German recording of, say, Mozart’s Requiem will generally feature the ‘ts’ pronunciation of cs, whereas an Italian one will have them pronounced as ‘ch’… To take ‘c’ (before a slender vowel (i or e) – pretty much everybody pronounces c before a o u as ‘k’) as an example, we have: Right up until the 19th century, few users of Latin gave much thought to how actual Romans would have pronounced what they were reading and writing, and instead pronounced it more or less in line with the general spelling rules of their own language. I would think that the “correct” pronunciation in this case is the one Newton would have used himself, which would almost certainly have been prinsippia. In referring to Newton’s masterpiece Principia (shortened from the full title Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica ( The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy), how is Principia correctly pronounced? Specifically, is the “c” hard or soft?
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