Celtic vs Celtic: Which is Correct?

Subject: Celtic vs Celtic: Which is Correct?
From: Naemanson
Date: 24 Oct 02 - 09:32 AM

This weekend I heard a performance by a duo calling themselves Celtic Aire. Their pronouciation of Celtic uses a soft c, i.e., sel-tik. I had always heard it pronouced with a hard c, i.e., kel-tik.

The primary singer of the duowas introduced as being mutilingual with her primary language being gaelic. When I asked her after the show she confirmed that the proper gaelic word is pronounced with a soft consonant.

I'm confused but not an authority. Can anyone out there confirm her explanation?

Whatever the result, if you get a chance, hear these women. I wish I could remember their names. The harpist also plays accordion. The singer also plays pennywhistle. They are from the Canadian maritimes and do a lovely job.

Subject: RE: Celtic vs Celtic: Which is Correct?
From: JedMarum
Date: 24 Oct 02 - 09:37 AM

In latin class, reading Caesar's Commentaries on the Gallic Wars, it our teacher pronounced it Keltic.

But then could Red Aurbach and the Boston Seltics be wrong, all those years?

Subject: RE: Celtic vs Celtic: Which is Correct?
From: MMario
Date: 24 Oct 02 - 09:39 AM

I have heard arguments for both ways - but while growing up in the Boston Celtic region - our english teachers always said the correct ENGLISH pronunciation of the word used a hard "c"; since then I have heard this is not true, but who knows.

Subject: RE: Celtic vs Celtic: Which is Correct?
From: Snuffy
Date: 24 Oct 02 - 09:42 AM

Glasgow Celtic have always been Seltic, not Keltic

Subject: RE: Celtic vs Celtic: Which is Correct?
From: greg stephens
Date: 24 Oct 02 - 09:46 AM

The Greeks called their northern neighbours Keltoi with a K.What the Keltoi called themselves is not recorded.

Subject: RE: Celtic vs Celtic: Which is Correct?
From: fretless
Date: 24 Oct 02 - 09:52 AM

Keltic vs. Seltic: always a hard call. Our usage of the word "Celtic" comes to us from the ancient Greek "Keltos/oi" and as a direct borrowing from the Greek would warrant the hard c = k. The Roman/Latin c was also hard (in other words, they used c when transliterating the Greek kappa, and s when transliterating the Greek sigma). However, we have brought the term into English, in which the c followed by the vowel e softens into c = s. People who study Celts for a living split on the issue. One of my profs -- herself of Celtic descent -- used to insist that she would violate English usage and pronounce Celtic as Keltic only if we would also agree to refer to Keltic kivilization rather than Celtic civilization. Others -- including most scholars of Celtic studies in the US today -- preferred the consistency with the ancient Greek usage and were happier with inconsistencies in English. That's the crowd that would insist that they were from Boston, of Celtic/Keltic descent, and since they were from Boston, always rooted for the Celtics/Seltics in basketball.

Is the use of the term in gaelic with the soft c, to which your duo refers, a usage based on direct lineage from antiquity, or is it a borrowing in Europe/the Brit Isles of the Greek/Latin term? I don't know of any evidence to suggest that ancient Celtic Europeans thought of themselves in anything except tribal terms (as Boii, Tolistoagii, Trocmi, Aedui, ec.), much in the same way American Indians didn't really identify themselves as Indians until the Europeans provided them with that collective identity.

Subject: RE: Celtic vs Celtic: Which is Correct?
From: CraigS
Date: 24 Oct 02 - 09:53 AM

A Celt is a member of the Celtic race, who occupied most of Britain and parts of northern France a little over 2000 years ago. Due to invasions by other races the Celts in Britain were pushed out to the extreme parts of the island, ie Cornwall, Wales and the north and south-west (Wigtown and Kirkudbright)of Scotland. The invaders in Scotland were the Scots, who came from Ireland, and were the original sassenachs!

A Kelt is a salmon which has mated. A well-mended kelt is a salmon which has mated once, and is coming back for another try.

The truth is that the race name Celt was documented by the Romans, and it depends on the interpretation of the pronunciation of Latin - which is speculative, since the language is dead and foreign. Modern Scots generally like the C to be soft.

Subject: RE: Celtic vs Celtic: Which is Correct?
From: Jim McLean
Date: 24 Oct 02 - 10:13 AM

'Sassenach' (sic) is a Saxon NOT a Scot from Ireland!
Jim McLean
PS sorry I have not e3en around lately but I have been hospitalised with a variant of Guillian Barre Syndron.

Subject: RE: Celtic vs Celtic: Which is Correct?
From: GUEST,Old Brown's Daughter
Date: 24 Oct 02 - 10:15 AM

When I was in college and took some Irish Gaelic, our professor instructed us that the Irish Gaelic does not have a soft 'c'. As such, I was taught to pronounce the word keltic. That said, however, I'm also not certain if I ever heard him use the word, and if its origins are in fact Greek, who knows how to pronounce it in Irish? I've always been inclined to pronounce words we get from other languages the way they are pronounced in those languages, so if it was pronounced with a hard 'c' in Greek, I'd be inclined to pronounce it with a hard 'c' in English. English borrows so many words from other languages, though...

I do also remember that our professor repeatedly reminded us that pronunciation in different parts of Ireland could be very different. He reminded us of this particularly when referring to the spelling practice of lenition, which does things to how one pronounces lots of consonants. I don't remember right now if a 'c' ever got lenited (I don't think so), but if it didn't, then its pronunciation would always be hard. At least in the dialect of Irish he was teaching us, which was what he had learned--but I can't remember where he said he learned it (his parents sent him from Co. Waterford to somewhere else to learn Irish, but I don't remember where).

So I'm not much help either, except to say I've always used a hard 'c'.
:)
Monica

Subject: RE: Celtic vs Celtic: Which is Correct?
From: GUEST,Martin Ryan
Date: 24 Oct 02 - 10:22 AM

In Ireland, the only occasions I can think of when I have heard the soft 'c' are:
1. Glasgow Celtic
2. Certain provincial newspapers e.g. the Anglo-Celt.

Regards

p.s. and the second case does not always apply!

Subject: RE: Celtic vs Celtic: Which is Correct?
From: GUEST
Date: 24 Oct 02 - 10:26 AM

When I first discovered this controversy in the 60's, the concensus was that Kelt was European and Celt was western. No proof, either way.Personally, I go with CraigS, except about the Sassenach.

Subject: RE: Celtic vs Celtic: Which is Correct?
From:
Date: 24 Oct 02 - 10:34 AM

It's the family-size, ten-gallon pail of worms you've opened up.

Language changes over geography, across social strata, and through time. Pronouncing on "correct" forms has to be accompanied by cautions about the combination of these considerations. Language is also pure convention -- what's "right" is not what's historical, but rather, the people who are in a position to impose their will get to rewrite history (ex: the stigmatized usage "I axed him a question" is historically correct, but the population who initiated the error [all language change begins as error] trumped the conservative speakers).

K vs S seems an unlikely alternation, but it's the basic dividing line among the Indo-European languages. In very general terms, the eastern IE languages rendered the IE *kmtom (100) something like the Sanskrit "satem," the western languages producing "centum." (an unvoiced velar stop, or a "hard c"; in the Germanic languages, of which English is one, the stop drops further back in the throat and turns into a fricative -- "H" for "hundred"). So Germanic words beginning with "H" are ultimately "K" sounds (and correspond to, say, Russian words beginning with "S": heart/sirtse).

Another alternation involves voicing of the K to G (buzzing of the vocal folds). So we get the related terms "Kelt" and "Gael." For reasons nobody has explained satisfactorily, there's a translinguistic tendency for "G" to morph into "W," so that Gaels are ultimately connected with Wales (and Galicia, Galatia, Wallachia, Gaul -- those folks were ALL over).

All of this seems less bizarre if we try to put our heads back into the pre-literate days when nobody had any notion of correct spelling. It startles many to realize that there's no "t" sound in "battle," or that the vowels of present day English phonology (not spelling -- a different matter) include M,N, L, and R.

So "Kelt" and "Selt" have historical warrant (so does "chelt"). But people get all proprietary about these things, and invest them with political meaning. Down my way, you can start a bar-brawl just by insisting on "Missouree" or "Missourah".

Adam

Subject: RE: Celtic vs Celtic: Which is Correct?
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 24 Oct 02 - 10:38 AM

We've been through all this before. "Fretless" has it. I'll just add that best evidence is that the Celts were a cultural, not racial grouping; and that there was no single "Celtic Race", in the same way that there is no single "European Race", though there were several distinct racial groups described by the Romans as Celts. Modern usage has tended rather to ignore all that and develop a romanticised ideal which isn't really borne out by the historical record.

I had better go into hiding now, before somebody brains me with their celtic didgeridoo.

Subject: RE: Celtic vs Celtic: Which is Correct?
From: GUEST,Martin Ryan
Date: 24 Oct 02 - 10:42 AM

"correct" (pronounced "sorrect"?)is, of course, meaningless. Usage is what matters.

Regards

Subject: RE: Celtic vs Celtic: Which is Correct?
From: Naemanson
Date: 24 Oct 02 - 10:51 AM

Very good. I figured there would be a number of differing explanations. I wish I'd had more time to talk to them about their usage of the word but I was also busy stealing a song and praising their performance. Actually it wasn't so much that I was stealing the song. They pushed it in my direction after I performed some sea songs as an advertisement for Roll & Go's upcoming concert in Houlton, Maine.

The song, The Axemen, was written by a Douglas Carter in New Brunswick, Canada, and is a doozy. They say he has more. Douglas, are you out there? What else have you written that you have carefully tucked away in a notebook?

Subject: RE: Celtic vs Celtic: Which is Correct?
From: GUEST,Guest, Big Tim
Date: 24 Oct 02 - 11:07 AM

Jim: get well soon. A friend of mine had GBS, was laid low for months, unable to move, but made a full recovery. He is a runner and came back to run the Ben Nevis race in 2 hours 25 minutes!

Most people in Scotland say Keltic, except for the football team. I always say Celtic, simply cause it easier to say!

Subject: RE: Celtic vs Celtic: Which is Correct?
From: Mooh
Date: 24 Oct 02 - 11:30 AM

erratum-de-dumb...Had great fun once when an actual argument broke out about this very subject at a pub. I thought the contenders were going to come to blows. Those bemused bystanders came to refer to the combatants as Scelts...or was it Skelts?

Peace, Mooh.

Subject: RE: Celtic vs Celtic: Which is Correct?
From:
Date: 24 Oct 02 - 11:42 AM

I didn't mean any disregard for Fretless' account, which is focussed on the movements of groups of people. And Malcolm is right to deride notions of "race," which are mostly bankrupt from a scientific point of view, and have had no positive effects from a social or philosophical standpoint. But there's nonetheless the matter of cultural affinity, and specific usages do migrate along with individuals and the social units to which they belong. The linguistic evidence is pretty clear that a variety of groups denominated themselves, as distinct from others, by a term which consisted of an initial consonant, a vowel ("accidents happen to vowels" is a historical linguist's proverb)and "L." The discussion was about the "correct" pronunciation of the initial consonant, and the evidence is, the pattern of development was complex but regular. The earlier question was a good one -- about whether the pronunciation was derived from the people's self-designation or Graeco-Roman ethnography. If I were asked to assert my own opinion, I'd say that in the Anglophone world, the "S" version of the initial consonant is a spelling pronunciation which has gained authority from being taught (along with spelling) in school, like putting a "t" in "often" or "L" in "palm," "calm" and "psalm." Now it's for others to decide which authority they recognize: schoolbooks, linguistic history, the prestige of those who have or claim the right to speak for the people in question, newspaper and TV editors (increasingly decisive), the social status of those favoring a given usage, or sheer weight of numbers. All these things contribute to the not-at-all-obvious issue of "usage."

My recommendation is to do what feels right and let others do the same. Language is a chameleon behavior, and we all eventually adopt usages we regard as wrong if enough people around us do them with sufficient frequency.

Best,

Adam

Subject: RE: Celtic vs Celtic: Which is Correct?
From: Kim C
Date: 24 Oct 02 - 11:45 AM

Tamayta, tamatta........

Subject: RE: Celtic vs Celtic: Which is Correct?
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 24 Oct 02 - 12:17 PM

Actually, I was typing my post while Adam was sending his, so I didn't see it until afterwards. It seems only to have been since the "Celtic Revival" began to get off the ground during the 19th century that people started to refer to themselves as "Celts" (often, at that time, spelled "Kelts"); the word as used nowadays in Gaelic to mean "Celt" rarely appears in older Gaelic dictionaries with that meaning, and explanations to the effect that it "means" something in Gaelic seem to be based on coincidence of orthography rather than any actual etymological relationship; it does appear to be a recent loan-word in the context of its modern usage. If that is indeed the case, conventions of Gaelic pronounciation would be irrelevant to the discussion.

Subject: RE: Celtic vs Celtic: Which is Correct?
From: Scabby Douglas
Date: 24 Oct 02 - 12:27 PM

Either, or... either....


Cheers



Steven

Subject: RE: Celtic vs Celtic: Which is Correct?
From: KateG
Date: 24 Oct 02 - 12:40 PM

When I was a post-graduate student in London 20+ years ago, the preferred pronunciation in Early Medieval Archaelogy & Literature circles was Kelt (with a hard C) when referring to people and languages, and Selt (with a soft C) when referring to stone axes and American sports teams (a very rare occurrance). But as has been pointed out, "correct" pronunciation often depends on time, place and company. A street in New York and a city in Texas share the same name, Houston, but the pronunciation is wildly different and visitors are expected to conform to the local norm or face ridicule.

Subject: RE: Celtic vs Celtic: Which is Correct?
From: GUEST
Date: 24 Oct 02 - 12:48 PM

The "most correct" pronounciation in terms of contemporary usage is the hard C, with the exception of two professional sports teams, the Boston Celtics (soft c) and the Glasgow Celtics. Contrary to Martin Ryan, I've never encountered anyone in Ireland using the soft C. The words Celt and Celtic are always pronounced with the hard C. The pronounciation of those words is never an issue in Ireland really, unless it is to point out the cases of the sports teams mentioned above comes up. Then, it is usually agreed by everyone involved that it is the sports teams use an improper/wrong pronounciation. I don't think it is any different in Scotland.

Historic usage, as someone has pointed out, is fraught with complexities one is better off ignoring completely, if all you want to know is how to pronouce the words "Celt" and "Celtic" without sounding ignorant.

Subject: RE: Celtic vs Celtic: Which is Correct?
From: Joe Offer
Date: 24 Oct 02 - 01:16 PM

I heard a news report on National Public Radio a few years ago, announcing that the Celtics basketball team in Boston had changed the pronunciation of its name to "keltic." The team also issued an apology to those who had been offended or felt discrimination by decades of mispronunciation of the name as "seltic."

I believe the date of the broadcast was April 1.

-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: Celtic vs Celtic: Which is Correct?
From: GUEST
Date: 24 Oct 02 - 03:40 PM

What a lot of nonsense! Both are accepted by major dictionaries, both are in common use, so "go with the flow;" use whichever the people around you prefer. Kim C and Scabby Doug have the right attitude.
Ceramic, i. e., made from clay, is "seramic" to most, but others say "keramic" becuse the root is the Greek word, transliterated into English, "keramos." One who insists on one or the other is just a silly bugger, regardless of his credentials.
Many words have regional pronunciations, it "makes no never mind."

Subject: RE: Celtic vs Celtic: Which is Correct?
From: GUEST
Date: 24 Oct 02 - 03:58 PM

And where does Guest 3:40 pm live, where both pronounciations would be considered correct?

Subject: RE: Celtic vs Celtic: Which is Correct?
From: GUEST,silly bugger
Date: 24 Oct 02 - 04:07 PM

This is strange. Guest seems to be troubled at one and the same time by people who ask questions and by people who use some method in answering. Says we should do what we want. What a concept! MY GOD WE HAVE MET THE ENLIGHTENED BUDDHA RIGHT HERE ON MUDCAT THE MAN WITH THE ANSWER TO ALL QUESTIONS BEFORE WE EVEN ASK.

thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou......

Subject: RE: Celtic vs Celtic: Which is Correct?
From: GUEST
Date: 24 Oct 02 - 04:11 PM

Silly bugger- Ever used a dictionary?

Subject: RE: Celtic vs Celtic: Which is Correct?
From: GUEST,silly bugger
Date: 24 Oct 02 - 04:20 PM

I serve on the editorial boards of several. Don't really want this to go flam-ish, but the point is, dictionaries are built on the kind of things Fretless, Adam and Malcolm are talking about. You've got to go back behind the conclusions sometimes and look at the reasoning that leads to them. For two reasons: 1) they might be wrong 2) things change. Both reasons lead to new editions. Besides, you learn all kinds of things just in the arguing. I never yet learned a thing from doing what I felt like doing in the first place.

Subject: RE: Celtic vs Celtic: Which is Correct?
From: GUEST
Date: 24 Oct 02 - 05:01 PM

KateG:
How is the New York "Houston" pronounced??

Subject: RE: Celtic vs Celtic: Which is Correct?
From: greg stephens
Date: 24 Oct 02 - 05:55 PM

Not that this has got anything to do with anything, but Claughton north of Lancaster(where I used to live) is pronounced Claffton,Claughton south of Lancaster is pronounced Clyton, and Claughton by Liverpool is pronounced Clauton.
And incidentally, why is Scotland referred to as Celtic, whereas England and Denmark(say) arent? Historically it's difficult to spot the difference.

Subject: RE: Celtic vs Celtic: Which is Correct?
From: GUEST
Date: 24 Oct 02 - 07:03 PM

NY- "house-ton." The city in Texas- "hews-ton." Other Southern US usages, such as "bew-fort" for Beaufort (South Carolina), but 'bow-fort" (Texas) cause trouble to outsiders.

The heading of this thread is- "Which is correct? The answer, of course, is both. Personal preference depends on local usage, and personal training. Good, comprehensive dictionaries, especially the OED, provide origins, historical usage, regional preferences and all other factors that determine both current and past usage. They do not "demand" one single correct practice where others exist. For Celtic-Keltic, the OED gives both spellings and both pronunciations. Celtic-seltic is listed first because it is used by the majority but the other is also acceptable.
I admit that I little patience with people who insist that their preference is "correct" when others are valid.
I, too, have served on the editorial boards of publications. Often rules are set down by the publisher that demand hewing to one or another usage. Some English language newspapers here in Canada demand North American spelling (honor) while most demand British (honour). Most use Oxford spelling for recognize, but letters to the editor are accepted with recognise (Oxford is out of step with most Britons on the "zed" but persists- a departure from their general policy and, I believe, wrongly insisting on an upper class (in Britain) educational practice).

I have worked (thankfully no more) with scientific publications; some are strict, others will accept variance. I tended to accept variance as long as grammar and meaning were clear and usage was consistent throughout the paper. Sometimes one peer would scrawl his preferences over a Ms. copy while another would do the same with his copy; this would have to be reconciled apart from the merit of the article. Thankfully, reviewers of this ilk are few and and tend to receive only short articles or those that the editor plans on rejecting in any case.

Subject: RE: Celtic vs Celtic: Which is Correct?
From: Giac
Date: 24 Oct 02 - 07:58 PM

LOL, Mooh --

Love the bystander compromise! I can never think of the word again as other than skeltic (oh, okay, maybe sceltic).

~;o) Mary

Subject: RE: Celtic vs Celtic: Which is Correct?
From: GUEST,colwyn dane
Date: 24 Oct 02 - 08:27 PM

"The reason the Boston Celtics and Glasgow Celtic and all those other sports teams founded around 1900 (give or take a couple decades)
pronounce their names \SELL-tick[s]\ is not because they were founded by ignorant folk who didn't know any better, but because
they spoke English and *did* know the proper pronunciation of the English word "Celtic".
"

So writes Sharon L. Krossa.


Go here to find further evidence about this great pronunciation-murder mystery.




CD.

Subject: RE: Celtic vs Celtic: Which is Correct?
From: alison
Date: 24 Oct 02 - 11:05 PM

I prefer it hard myself............. *grin*

my band Celtic Dreamtime... confuses the Ozzies...... and gets some interesting introductions....

sometimes we are Seltic, sometimes Keltic...... I have heard Ozzies refer to Celtic Crosses as "Seltic Crosses" which strikes me as definately wrong... maybe its just me......

slainte

alison

Subject: RE: Celtic vs Celtic: Which is Correct?
From:
Date: 25 Oct 02 - 12:02 AM

Q: Why beat a dead horse?
A: It's good exercise, and the horse doesn't mind.

The thread establishes pretty clearly that there are two competing pronunciations. Both have respectable pedigrees and a substantial number of supporters. That happens quite a lot in the history of the language. Typically, one of two things will happen. One of the forms drops out ("fore-head" displaces "forrid" at least in most of the U.S.) or there is fission. The fission may be social -- by economic or educational stratum ("tray-zhoor" vs. "treasure" in my area), by register ("I" when talking to socially distant people; "Ah" with intimates in the American Midwest) -- or they develop different meanings: bride/bird; skirt/shirt.

Someone observed that "Celt" as an ethnic term is a late borrowing from a period of cultural consciousness raising, and that's an entirely new kind of division. It involves competition for expertise, for cultural bona fides. And whereas earlier cultural masquerades had people aping upper class usage, now British politicians hide posh accents under an adopted working-class idiom (which happens already in the public schools, I'm told), just as speakers of standard American English take on a generalized, artificial folksiness when running for office or -- this is gonna hurt -- aspiring folksingers sometimes adopt a generalized "country" or "southern" dialect that's cobbled together from fragments a dialectician would recognize as coming from all over hell and back, and have nothing in common except they're not in use in the upper Ohio River valley, which is the basis for American Broadcast Standard. West Virginia forms mix with Tidewater and Bayou in a way that's not found in the ordinary language of any speaker anywhere. Olivia Newton-John had a pretty voice, but the dialect was harder on the ears than the tunes and arrangements.

Not that I'm pure here -- I'm so self-conscious about pronunciation and audiences I gave up worrying about sincerity or my "real" voice years ago.

But notice how worked up we get about the usage of "Celt," and there was no followup to the sensible counterexample offered: "keramikos" -- nobody has much stake in that, do they? My status as "insider" and "authentic" isn't affected either way. The whole conversation -- which is wonderful -- has me thinking about all the issues and arguments in my own field of verbal folklore, where it would be safer to accuse somebody of being a drunk or an adulterer than of being an academic.

Maybe it's the doctrine of the Fall: after self-consciousness, zen being is impossible. After you become aware of "folk" as a category, you can never really be entirely sure you're inside of that dividing line you've learned to draw. But the desire to draw it remains very strong, and I can't help believing there's something right about so strong an impulse, even if it's demonstrably futile and absurd.

I'm blathering. Thanks for your patience.

Adam

Subject: RE: Celtic vs Celtic: Which is Correct?
From: Mooh
Date: 25 Oct 02 - 12:10 AM

Mary...Thanks, I've always tried to fit it into Helter Skelter, by that most famous of sceltic bands, the Beatles. Mooh.

Subject: RE: Celtic vs Celtic: Which is Correct?
From: GUEST,Boab
Date: 25 Oct 02 - 04:33 AM

"Seltic" where I came from, was a football team!

Subject: RE: Celtic vs Celtic: Which is Correct?
From: AKS
Date: 25 Oct 02 - 04:35 AM

"what, spell 'cat' with a 'k'?" - and 'cellar' with an 's'... Why not??

:)AKS

Subject: RE: Celtic vs Celtic: Which is Correct?
From: GUEST,GerMan
Date: 25 Oct 02 - 05:09 AM

Followers of Celtic FC don't pronounce thier team Seltic or Keltic, they tend to refer to "the 'tic", "sellick" or "sellickfootballclub".

The reasons for this phenomena are largely unknown although one theory points to the notion of the majority of them being poorly educated, ignorant, plastic Irish bigots! Of course, this is purely conjecture.

Subject: RE: Celtic vs Celtic: Which is Correct?
From: Fiolar
Date: 25 Oct 02 - 05:40 AM

The story which I heard many years ago regarding Glasgow Celtic is that one of the original founders of the team gave a press conference. He called the team "Glasgow Keltic" but apparently the assembled reporters insisted on using the word "Seltic" and the name stuck. Reminds me of the tale about a certain actor (no longer with us) who was approached by a woman who asked him if "he were a Selt." "No", he replied, "No more than you are a sunt." Apocryphal perhaps?

Subject: RE: Celtic vs Celtic: Which is Correct?
From: Wilfried Schaum
Date: 25 Oct 02 - 06:12 AM

Some contributors have seen it right: The name Keltoi was imposed by the greeks.
The Latin alphabet has no sign for the sound k, initially not even for g. You see this by the abbreviation for one the personal names: Gaius is abbreviated C.
The Emperor Claudius invented the "hooked C" for the sound g which survived to our times as G. His efforts to introduce the sign K failed; it only survived in the word Kalendae (first day of the month).
The pronounciation of the letter C is manifold:
- That it must have been pronounced k in the times of Augustus and his successors is seen by the fact that Latin Caesar is written in Greek Kaisar. Hence the German "Kaiser".
- On the contrary the same word was incorporated in Russian as Tsar. In these times the Latin pronounciation must have changed; Greek loanwoards reaching German via Latin are pronounced like Zylinder = Greek kylindros = Latin cylinder with ts .
- The French and their noncontinental allies changed the pronounciation to s.
- The Bishop of Rome reading mass in Latin today pronounces C in the modern Italian way: ch as in cheese.
- The Spaniards pronounce it th (unvoiced).
So don't despair, ye friends: however you pronounce it, whether Seltic Glasgow, Keltic Glasgow, Tseltic Glasgow, Cheltic Glasgow, or Theltic Glasgow - anybody interested in soccer will recognize the team immediately.


Wilfried

Subject: RE: Celtic vs Celtic: Which is Correct?
From: Bagpuss
Date: 25 Oct 02 - 06:18 AM

I found the following here


A Rose by Any Other Name ...

The part that the Celts played in shaping European civilization has slowly evolved during the past few decades, from a time when the Celtic people were not even mentioned in school textbooks on European history. That role provokes increasing wonder but little controversy. Such is not the case on one feature of the Celts, however. There has arisen an increasingly fractious dispute over how to pronounce the name of the people: is it "selt-Celt" or "kelt-Celt"? It is important to understand that no one is around who heard the word pronounced by the people who called themselves Celts, some two thousand or so years ago. In the virtual absence of a written record left by the Celts themselves, etymologists have to rely on clues left in languages for which we have some knowledge of how words and letters were pronounced. Present-day authorities are divided; for example, Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary prefers "selt-Celt," while the American Heritage Dictionary prefers "kelt-Celt".

For the word "Celt", there are two solid clues, mutually contradictory. The Greeks transliterated the word into "keltoi" (here I use Roman letters instead of Greek, for clarity). That might lead us to the conclusion that the Celts called themselves "Kelts." But the Greeks used the letter "k" to transliterate both the sibilant "s" sound and the plosive "k" sound, so the word "keltoi" is not conclusive.

In Latin, the word is written "celtoi" or "celtai." If that word was derived directly from the Celtic people's pronunciation, it would indicate that the correct pronunciation is "selt-Celt". But there is some indication that it was derived from the Greek word "keltoi," leaving us with little to go on, as it was common to convert Greek "k" sounds (plosive) into Latin "c" sounds (sibilant). Hence, the Greek "kentrum" became Latin "centrum," from which we get the English word "center". This is a common development; the Latin "caesar" was converted in German into "kaiser" (plosive), but into "czar" in Russian, retaining the Latin sibilant sound.

Unfortunately, primitive Celtic language differentiated into several branches many centuries ago, and the word "Celt" in today's Gaelic (for example) is a late back-transformation from a different language, probably English. No other European language gives much help. So we are left with the contradictory clues, the Greek "keltoi" and the Latin "celtai." Which is correct - "selt-Celt" or "kelt-Celt"? There are two questions here - first, what did the people call themselves in, say, 500 BC? Second, how should the word be pronounced in modem English?

To the first question, there is no solid answer, and probably never will be. Evidence slightly favors "selt-Celt," but it is by no means conclusive. To the second question, we refer to the rules of pronunciation for our language, one of which is, "c" before "e" is always sibilant, except for a very few foreign words used in English (such as the Italian word "cello", with the sound "ch"). That is true regardless of the earliest origin of the root word - such as the Greek "kentrum" evolving into Latin "centrum" and thence into English "center." The plosive "kelt" heard with increasing frequency today may be a good guess on the original people's pronunciation, but it is bad English.

The evolution of the "kelt-Celt" pronunciation is recent. For both English and American authorities, the word was pronounced "selt-Celt" universally during the late 1800s and early 1900s; see English lexicographers John Craig (1849) and Benjamin Humphrey Smart (1836); American Noah Webster (1828). Webster's, American College, and Funk & Wagnalls dictionaries up through the 1950s universally used "selt-Celt" as the preferred or only pronunciation. The dominant American grammar authority John Opdycke in 1939 wrote " 'Celtic' may also be spelt 'Keltic', and the two forms are accordingly pronounced 'sell-tik' and 'keU-tik'..." The Oxford English Dictionary in 1928 sanctioned only "selt-Celt" and "seltic-Celtic". The giant among English usage authorities, H. W. Fowler, wrote in 1926 "The spelling C- & the pronunciation s-, are the established ones, & no useful purpose seems to be served by the substitution ofk-." In 1999 Charles Elster, the dominant American authority in orthoepy (proper pronunciation of words) held firmly with "selt-Celt," describing "kelt-Celt" as a "beastly mispronunciation."

The "kelt-Celt" heresy arose in England after the 1950s and spread throughout the rest of Britain and in the last couple of decades into the United States as well. In 1989 the Oxford English Dictionary finally recognized the "kelt-Celt" pronunciation, although still listing "selt-Celt" as preferred. It is now fashionable to hear "kelt-Celt" at Scottish Games in the United States; indeed, I am sometimes viewed as illiterate when I adhere to the orthoepically and historically correct "selt-Celt." Interestingly, the Glasgow Celtic football team (which means rugby, not American football) is still called the "selticks."

There are those who will point to the Greek origin and claim that accuracy requires us to violate the rule of English pronunciation and recast the word as "kelt-Celt". There is the attendant requirement, for consistency, to do so with all English words that derive ultimately from Greek. Thus, those who insist on "kelt-Celt" should be prepared to go to the local building supply "kenter" to buy some "kedar" lumber - as both "center" and "cedar" derive from Greek words - or change the spelling to "Kelt" to conform to English rules. Elster proposes a test: "Try going to a Boston Celtics basketball game and yelling, 'Go, Kel-tiks!' If you can get out of there without being slam-dunked, you can say it however you want." None of which can detract from the growing appreciation of a people who had an enormous influence on European history, and whose traits of fierce independence, unparalleled military prowess and courage, and love of education, science, and the arts continue to wield a powerful influence on present-day world civilization.

Subject: RE: Celtic vs Celtic: Which is Correct?
From: GUEST
Date: 25 Oct 02 - 06:27 AM

Apart from the Glasgow head-bangers it was always pronounced Keltic in Ireland.

Subject: RE: Celtic vs Celtic: Which is Correct?
From: manitas_at_work
Date: 25 Oct 02 - 08:29 AM

Bagpuss,

I'll take that article with a pinch of salt. The man can't tell the difference between rugby and soccer.

Subject: RE: Celtic vs Celtic: Which is Correct?
From: Brían
Date: 25 Oct 02 - 08:46 AM

I would change the name of the band before another fight breaks out :-)

Brían

Subject: RE: Celtic vs Celtic: Which is Correct?
From: Declan
Date: 25 Oct 02 - 10:16 AM

I doubt if the C(S/K)elts ever referred to themselves as anything. Names of tribes or groups of peoples tend to be ascribed from outside, from inside people tend to use words like ourselves. In any event we know that there were many groups of people who were collectively desribed as Celtic - among them are the people known as the Gaels (or the Malesians (I think)) who invaded Ireland at some stage much to the disgust of my tribe the Fir Bolg (this is a joke that only people who have seen me and who speak Gaelic are likely to understand).

However if as it appears that some people are basing the Seltic pronounciation on the fact that this is how it is pronounced in Gaelic then this is a complete red herring. To the best of my knowledge there is no soft C sound in Gaelic. Stands back and waits for people to come in with examples which disprove this.

Subject: RE: Celtic vs Celtic: Which is Correct?
From: GUEST
Date: 25 Oct 02 - 10:51 AM

Declan--make that people who don't even speak everyday Gaelic, who likely live in England or the US, to come in with examples to disprove the rule. ;-)

I agree--neither English or Gaeilge speakers use the soft C in the pronounciation of the words Celt and Celtic in Ireland, which I said quite some time ago.

Funny innit, how someone asks a seemingly innocent question about how to pronouce something so that when they go to the pub, they don't feel like an idiot for mispronouncing something, and they get linguistic tomes and controversy as a response?

Subject: RE: Celtic vs Celtic: Which is Correct?
From: 53
Date: 25 Oct 02 - 11:01 AM

this one is over my head.

Subject: RE: Celtic vs Celtic: Which is Correct?
From: GUEST,bbc at work
Date: 25 Oct 02 - 12:00 PM

Perhaps this is a related story--

In college, I had a British Lit professor who pronounced Don Juan & Don Quixote as Don Jew-un & Don Quick-sit, respectively. I was horribly embarrassed for him that he didn't know the correct way to say the names until he mentioned that he was using the British pronunciation, not the Spanish. Turned out that he was fine & *I* learned something! What do you think?

bbc