How do you pronounce maleficarum, as in Malleus Maleficarum? Is it malefi’carum or maleficar’um (is stress on the third or the fourth syllable)?
My uneducated first year intro Latin guess would be the third… mal-ee-fic-ah-room, except i can’t think of a better way to spell out the last because it isn’t said like “room” nor like “rum” but somewhere in between…
Thinking back to BKW and his excellent Latin classes, I am thinking
Ma-LAY-us Ma-le-fic-AH-rum.
Well, I’d agree with Istara, but I don’t think anyone really knows - those romans weren’t considerate enough to make any recordings, the b"£$%^&ds…
I concur with istara, except the accent should be on the first syllable of “malleus.”
BTW, in this case it’s the late medieval Germans who weren’t considerate enough to make any recordings (not that it really matters, since I can’t think of any medieval pronunciation shifts that would be relevant here).
I’ll weigh in and agree with the others, based off of my five years of latin in school…not that that’s correct pronunciation, but oh well…i don’t even know whether the romans would’ve said kikero or sisero.
i’ll agree with fretful in saying that i think it would be:
MA-lee-us Ma-le-fic-AH-rum
That might make a difference in the pronounciation of the “c”. In classical Latin, so far as we know, the c was always pronounced hard: The famous orator’s name was pronounced “kikero”. Somewhere along the line, though, that shifted, such that Church Latin usually pronounces the letter c like English “ch”, and in scientific use of the language, it’s pronounced according to English rules.
I don’t know when this shift started, though, so I’m not sure how it would be pronounced in late medieval German.
“In words of three or more syllables, the accent falls on the penult if it is long, and on the antepenult if the penult is short.” Since both penults are long (malAYus and maleficARum), I’ll agree with Istara.
Thanks everyone for all your helpful pointers. 