Pronuntiatio restituta 4th August 2009
How we should pronounce Latin today? From day to day when Latin is used or referred to, we hear many varieties of pronunciation in the broadcast media. The restored pronunciation, which most professional classicists use, has not settled the matter, nor has it solved the problem. I am put in mind of this because of a TV programme about Roman food. The BBC has made a series called The Supersizers Eat in which two presenters eat the food of a particular era for a week to see how they get on.
Unsurprisingly one episode was set in Rome, where the two supersizers ate Roman food cooked according to Apicius and others with a fairly convincing recreation of the whole pig roasted at Trimalchio’s dinner party in Petronius. More perhaps about the food later, but first language. I shan’t repeat the gossip I heard from a former pupil of mine who was acting as researcher on this programme, but I should like to take issue with the pronunciation of Latin by Giles Coren. There was a brief passage of Latin conversation between him and the other presenter Sue Perkins (with subtitles) which as far as I could tell was not too bad, apart from the use of a soft ‘c’ throughout. The Roman dinner cena was referred to thereafter as “saynah”. My former pupil apparently did her best to persuade Giles that it should be cena “kayna” but without success. This was what he had been taught and he (as many do) insisted that this was correct. I come across this regularly, usually from parents, who are convinced that the pronunciation we use in class is eccentric if not plain wrong, but who of course cannot agree on what should be a suitable way of speaking Latin. What can we as professionals do about this? I suppose we must go on doing what we already do and try to be as consistent as possible, even between ourselves in our different countries and traditions and perhaps in a century or two there may be some sort of consensus. For the moment, however, it seems that the old pronunciation of Latin in English, which was supposedly reformed out of the classroom at the beginning of the twentieth century, is still hanging around in the dusty corners of some English private schools. We shall never be able to change Julius Caesar (“Jeewlius Seizer”) nor would it be right to, and a Caesar salad will keep its soft ‘c’. (As this dish, invented in Las Vegas at Caesars Palace (no apostrophe) is usually spelt Ceasar salad, I suggest we should keep this spelling for the salad to indicate its pronunciation and origins.) However, it would be best for Latin in an ancient context to be spoken in an authentic way. So please, television presenters everywhere, repeat after me one hundred times: cena with a ‘k’ sound.
How we should pronounce Latin today? From day to day when Latin is used or referred to, we hear many varieties of pronunciation in the broadcast media. The restored pronunciation, which most professional classicists use, has not settled the matter, nor has it solved the problem. I am put in mind of this because of a TV programme about Roman food. The BBC has made a series called The Supersizers Eat in which two presenters eat the food of a particular era for a week to see how they get on.
Unsurprisingly one episode was set in Rome, where the two supersizers ate Roman food cooked according to Apicius and others with a fairly convincing recreation of the whole pig roasted at Trimalchio’s dinner party in Petronius. More perhaps about the food later, but first language. I shan’t repeat the gossip I heard from a former pupil of mine who was acting as researcher on this programme, but I should like to take issue with the pronunciation of Latin by Giles Coren. There was a brief passage of Latin conversation between him and the other presenter Sue Perkins (with subtitles) which as far as I could tell was not too bad, apart from the use of a soft ‘c’ throughout. The Roman dinner cena was referred to thereafter as “saynah”. My former pupil apparently did her best to persuade Giles that it should be cena “kayna” but without success. This was what he had been taught and he (as many do) insisted that this was correct. I come across this regularly, usually from parents, who are convinced that the pronunciation we use in class is eccentric if not plain wrong, but who of course cannot agree on what should be a suitable way of speaking Latin. What can we as professionals do about this? I suppose we must go on doing what we already do and try to be as consistent as possible, even between ourselves in our different countries and traditions and perhaps in a century or two there may be some sort of consensus. For the moment, however, it seems that the old pronunciation of Latin in English, which was supposedly reformed out of the classroom at the beginning of the twentieth century, is still hanging around in the dusty corners of some English private schools. We shall never be able to change Julius Caesar (“Jeewlius Seizer”) nor would it be right to, and a Caesar salad will keep its soft ‘c’. (As this dish, invented in Las Vegas at Caesars Palace (no apostrophe) is usually spelt Ceasar salad, I suggest we should keep this spelling for the salad to indicate its pronunciation and origins.) However, it would be best for Latin in an ancient context to be spoken in an authentic way. So please, television presenters everywhere, repeat after me one hundred times: cena with a ‘k’ sound.
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