3 ms·

It reminds me of a pet peeve of mine: the way most modern english speakers pronounce "celtic" with a hard 'k' sound. I'm not a native english speaker so I alway

by simias 9y ago

It reminds me of a pet peeve of mine: the way most modern english speakers pronounce "celtic" with a hard 'k' sound. I'm not a native english speaker so I always assumed the 'c' would be soft here, because even though as we all know english pronunciation can be a bit... random at times, pronouncing "ce" as "ke" seems very out of place. When I first heard it pronounced that way it surprised me. After looking more into it, it seems that it's a relatively recent shift in the language, quoting wikipedia: > The ⟨c⟩ in the words Celt and Celtic was traditionally soft but since the late 19th century the hard pronunciation has also been recognized in conscious imitation of the classical Latin pronunciation of Celtae[...] So it's just some late 19th century hipsters wanting to sound posh by randomly borrowing a foreign pronunciation rule. There's also the fact that in Gaelic the C is hard, but that's kind of adding insult to injury because "Celtic" is not a Celt word. It falls in the same category as people insisting that the plural of "virus" is "virii" or that you have two "octopi" (both plurals being technically wrong IIRC). Given that about 50% of english vocabulary comes from french I guess these people should start using french grammar everywhere to be consistent. Or should I say "Given that about 50% of vocabulaire anglais come from français I imagine that these folks should to start grammaire french everywhere for to be consistant"? Am I fancy enough yet?

dhimes 9y ago
You'll be happy to know that it's trending back to a soft-C. I lay responsibility for this at the feet of the US professional basketball team. I've been using hard-C since I visited the Keltic Lodge in Nova Scotia in the 1990s.
- JetSetWilly 9y ago
  I would not go that far? In Scotland, say, Celtic Football Club hold considerable mindshare, and that is pronounced with a soft-c - presumably because the club was founded before the shift to hard-c of other uses. But there's no noticable use of a soft-c when people refer to the people/ethnicity. Events like "Celtic Connections" are still with a hard-c. I have not noticed the use of soft-c at all, outside of sporting clubs of various sorts. I don't think that's a trend, it is just yet more of the inconsistency and irregularity that human languages are plagued with.
  - dhimes 9y ago
    In Scotland, say, Celtic Football Club hold considerable mindshare, and that is pronounced with a soft-c It's interesting- I didn't know that soft-c was a popular pronunciation "over there"
Rumudiez 9y ago
> since the late 19th century I think 200 years is a reasonably long enough time for modern languages that I wouldn't say "recent". Modern English only just originated ~500 years ago, between 1450-1550 around Shakespeare's time. Likewise, the "romanticists" OP refers to who changed the spelling of a different word (a news "lede", not the metal "lead") is entirely reasonable and I don't understand the author's point. Why does it matter if your perception was wrong if the word is now more uniquely identifiable and has a clearer, more concise definition? I'm always in favor of linguistic evolution. Just because you can observe it at times shouldn't be cause for alarm.
klodolph 9y ago
> So it's just some late 19th century hipsters… That's a pretty caustic way of putting it. English pronunciation is known to be a mess, and applying "inapplicable" phonetic or morphological rules to words is just the way it works everywhere. Think about it this way: we have a limited budget for language complexity. It's too much to learn and remember that certain words conjugate according to certain rules of the word's original language, so instead we say "singular -us becomes plural -i". And then people judge each other poorly for getting it wrong. > Given that about 50% of english vocabulary comes from french I guess these people should start using french grammar everywhere to be consistent. Honestly I don't follow this argument. English already has irregular nouns, learning a few new ones or switching around the plural forms is not unusual.
- simias 9y ago
  I completely agree with your point but in this case it's not a simplification, it's yet an other exception. I can understand exceptions or odd pronunciations disappearing but that's the other way around. Normally words in english which have "ce" in them are not pronounced "ke". Similarly words whose singular ends with "~us" do not usually become "~i" in the plural. You don't say "one bus, two bi", "one fetus, two feti". Cherry-picking a few words that for some reason should follow latin grammar is more motivated by sounding "smart" than linguistic necessity IMO.
  - klodolph 9y ago
    I can't help but feel that the "bus-bi" example is disingenuous. Surely you don't think I'm that stupid? Memorizing which words take Latin plurals and which ones don't is work that not everyone has done. So we guess that "virus" is a second-declension Latin noun, which is correct, but now we have to also remember that it's a mass noun and therefore doesn't take a plural in Latin, but since it's not a mass noun in English it has to take a plural anyway, and therefore we get "viruses". And when people get this wrong you can judge them poorly and accuse them of trying to sound smart.
staticautomatic 9y ago
If the Celts themselves pronounced it with a hard C and so did Romans, then why should we not?

by simias 9y ago

dhimes 9y ago

You'll be happy to know that it's trending back to a soft-C. I lay responsibility for this at the feet of the US professional basketball team. I've been using hard-C since I visited the Keltic Lodge in Nova Scotia in the 1990s.

JetSetWilly 9y ago
I would not go that far? In Scotland, say, Celtic Football Club hold considerable mindshare, and that is pronounced with a soft-c - presumably because the club was founded before the shift to hard-c of other uses. But there's no noticable use of a soft-c when people refer to the people/ethnicity. Events like "Celtic Connections" are still with a hard-c. I have not noticed the use of soft-c at all, outside of sporting clubs of various sorts. I don't think that's a trend, it is just yet more of the inconsistency and irregularity that human languages are plagued with.
- dhimes 9y ago
  In Scotland, say, Celtic Football Club hold considerable mindshare, and that is pronounced with a soft-c It's interesting- I didn't know that soft-c was a popular pronunciation "over there"

Rumudiez 9y ago

> since the late 19th century I think 200 years is a reasonably long enough time for modern languages that I wouldn't say "recent". Modern English only just originated ~500 years ago, between 1450-1550 around Shakespeare's time. Likewise, the "romanticists" OP refers to who changed the spelling of a different word (a news "lede", not the metal "lead") is entirely reasonable and I don't understand the author's point. Why does it matter if your perception was wrong if the word is now more uniquely identifiable and has a clearer, more concise definition? I'm always in favor of linguistic evolution. Just because you can observe it at times shouldn't be cause for alarm.

klodolph 9y ago

> So it's just some late 19th century hipsters… That's a pretty caustic way of putting it. English pronunciation is known to be a mess, and applying "inapplicable" phonetic or morphological rules to words is just the way it works everywhere. Think about it this way: we have a limited budget for language complexity. It's too much to learn and remember that certain words conjugate according to certain rules of the word's original language, so instead we say "singular -us becomes plural -i". And then people judge each other poorly for getting it wrong. > Given that about 50% of english vocabulary comes from french I guess these people should start using french grammar everywhere to be consistent. Honestly I don't follow this argument. English already has irregular nouns, learning a few new ones or switching around the plural forms is not unusual.

simias 9y ago
I completely agree with your point but in this case it's not a simplification, it's yet an other exception. I can understand exceptions or odd pronunciations disappearing but that's the other way around. Normally words in english which have "ce" in them are not pronounced "ke". Similarly words whose singular ends with "~us" do not usually become "~i" in the plural. You don't say "one bus, two bi", "one fetus, two feti". Cherry-picking a few words that for some reason should follow latin grammar is more motivated by sounding "smart" than linguistic necessity IMO.
- klodolph 9y ago
  I can't help but feel that the "bus-bi" example is disingenuous. Surely you don't think I'm that stupid? Memorizing which words take Latin plurals and which ones don't is work that not everyone has done. So we guess that "virus" is a second-declension Latin noun, which is correct, but now we have to also remember that it's a mass noun and therefore doesn't take a plural in Latin, but since it's not a mass noun in English it has to take a plural anyway, and therefore we get "viruses". And when people get this wrong you can judge them poorly and accuse them of trying to sound smart.

staticautomatic 9y ago

If the Celts themselves pronounced it with a hard C and so did Romans, then why should we not?