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?
I always pronounced it with a soft “c,” similar to the pronunciation of the English word “principle.” However, I was recently corrected, and told that the Latin pronunciation has a hard “c.”
While we’re at it, what is the proper pronunciation for “Caesar” and “Cicero?”
As a historian of science who actually hears people say the words Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica fairly often, I have never heard it pronounced other than with the hard “c”. Caesar and Cicero, however, get the soft “c”.
One way we probably know this is through misspellings in writings from Latin times.
Since Caesar has 2 syllables the stress accent is on the first. Since Cicero has 3 syllables the stress accent is on the second from the last.
Although the way you’ve pronounced them is not truely wrong. A lot of nicknames have taken over for the original Latin names. Like we have a lot of stuff by these guys Pliny the Elder and Pliny the Younger. But there names weren’t Pliny, they were named Plinius. But we call them Pliny now.
That sounds like a harsher language than I thought… I mean, French has many fewer hard syllables as English, and German has far more. I’d always thought Latin sounded more flowing like French. Was I wrong?
Yes classical Latin has a hard C. And when people addressed Caesar and Cicero to their faces by these names they would say each C as a hard C.
But these are fairly famous names that have never been forgotten. So they names have changed along with Latin. Moving out the classical era into what stuyguy mentioned, Church Latin which has a soft C.
I mentioned the same thing happen to Scylla. And poor Pliny, whose real name is Plinius.
So while a hard c is always correct you pronounce them in the bastardized form or nobody will understand you.
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.
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.
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:
Classical Latin – k
Church (Italianate) Latin – ch
French, English Latin – s
German and Central European Latin – ts
Spanish Latin – s or th
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’…
stuyguy is absolutely correct. There was a time when my brother and I would get into arguments because he had been taught church Latin, and I had been taught classical Latin.
Same school (basically), but different teachers. The language had no pronunciation exams (unlike Japanese and French) so it really did not matter, but the differences are there.
Imagine how dumb I felt knowing that all along I had been reading Asterix and Obelix incorrectly.
As everyone above has stated, Church Latin is different from “Classical” Latin. This was confusing for me – I was the last generation of altar boys that had to learn the Mass in Latin – Church Latin. Then when I went to study Latin in school, they insisted on Classical Latin pronunciation. “Prin-KIP-ee-yah” doesn’t sound right. “Pin-CHIP-ee-yuh” does. I’d be willing to bet that Newton pronounced it that way, even though it’s not “Classical”.
On the other hand, with “Classical” latin you can see how “Caesar” pronounced “KI-sar” gave rise to both “Kaiser” and “Czar”.
As 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.
But 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.
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. This is not by any means the same thing as saying that that’s how Newton himself would have pronounced the word, though…
British scholars still interacted with their continental counterparts.
Until Henry VIII the British scholars were as Catholic as Continentals.
People are very conservative in their language – I’ll bet that they continued using the same pronunciation in the British Isles as they did in (the rest of) Europe, regardless of religious affiliation. I just don’t know if the preferred form was “Classical” or “Church” (of whatever form). I’m votin’ for Church.
First, 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’.
Note also that the English are a race capable of pronouncing Don Quixote as Don Quicksote :O)
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?
If you’re looking for sources, though, there’s actually quite a lot of material available on national pronunciations of Latin – this material tends to be either (1) unbelievably dry and scholarly, or (2) tailored to musicians, choral directors and so on (NB: this does not rule out (1))-- people involved in “authentic” period performances, especially of early music, tend to get VERY obsessive about this kind of stuff… I remember wading through one book called, I think, “Singing in Latin”, by Harold Shipman, which goes into the whole matter in exhaustive (and I do mean exhaustive) detail.
But, as a final word on the whole issue, I think that in practice when you’re using a dead language, the only thing that really matters about the way you pronounce it is that the people you’re pronouncing it to can understand what you’re talking about, and from that point of view, any one of prinSipia, prinKipia, prinTSipia and prinCHipia will do just fine.
This is quite true, but if they were using Latin, they did so in writing – French would have been the international spoken language of choice in the relevant period.
This is quite true, but it absolutely doesn’t mean they pronounced Latin the same way as people on the Continent, any more than people across Europe all pronounced Latin the same way as each other.
Just as there were (and are) many different languages throughout Europe, there were (and are) many different ways of pronouncing Latin too.
It’s very important to bear in mind that the Church Latin we know is quite a recent phenomenon outside Italy – its great spread dates to the 19th century, which is certainly when it took hold in Ireland (where there was huge Church reform after Catholic Emancipation and the establishment of an official seminary at Maynooth) and the USA, but IIRC Spain and France, for example (where there was less change in the way the Church was run – it had for several hundred years been more or less ‘national’ in both cases, and that just continued), kept on their national pronunciations of Latin right up until Vatican II, and certainly in Germany and Central Europe, they still pronounce those cs as TSs – just listen to any German recording of Bach’s B Minor Mass, or any liturgical work (and you can’t tell me that’s not Church Latin).
Latin in the US is usually sung with the Italian pronunciation (at least for church music). In England, Germany, and France, it is generally sung with approximately the pronunciation it would have if it were words of the native language. When singing latin church music by German composers, such as Mozart’s Requiem or Bach’s B Minor Mass, some US choirs use the German pronunciation. At a party last year honoring the conductor of the Dayton Bach Society, one of the speakers joked that we had learned in school the classical pronunciation “weni, widi, wiki”, then learned the church latin “veni, vidi, vichi”, and now the conductor was trying to get us to learn the German pronunciation “feni, fidi, fitsi”. So depending on which system you use, the “c” in “Principia” could be pronounced as “s”, “k”, “ts”, or “ch”. I have commonly heard it with the “s” sound.
I have never heard it pronounced other than with the hard “c”. Caesar and Cicero, however, get the soft “c”.