# Hard Latin C's **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 26, 2003, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hard-latin-cs/164329 "2003-03-26T17:28:37Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![MonkeyMensch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/82dd89/32.png) [@MonkeyMensch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MonkeyMensch)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2003, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hard-latin-cs/164329/1 "2003-03-26T17:28:37Z")
As former altar boys my brother and I were talking about classical and liturgical pronunciation of latin. Now I can see where the _V_ is just a _U_ in disguise, after all there is just one letter there to represent them. My problem is more with _C_’s. How did classicists ever decide that ancients pronounced all of them babies like a _K_? KEE-kuh-roh? I guess the source of the question is from modern day Romance languages having hard _C_’s in front of some vowels and soft _C_’s in front of others. Anybody got the dope? ---
**Author:** ![Firx](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/c2a13f/32.png) [@Firx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Firx)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2003, 5:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hard-latin-cs/164329/2 "2003-03-26T17:42:16Z")
Latin C’s are easy. It’s the Latin A’s that are hard. ---
**Author:** ![bordelond](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bordelond/32/150_2.png) [@bordelond](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bordelond)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2003, 5:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hard-latin-cs/164329/3 "2003-03-26T17:58:24Z")
[Here’s a detailed synopsis from LinguistList.org:](http://www.linguistlist.org/~ask-ling/archive-1997.10/msg01781.html) > [@](#): > > \*I have been studying Latin in college and one thing that strikes me is, > the pronunciation of the letter “C,” as a K, and the V as a W, How is it > that scholars know what is the correct pronunciation of classical latin? > \* > \*\*There are a great many ways that scholars can deduce the pronunciation of > Classical Latin. One way has to do with how the Romans adopted the Greek > alphabet to write their own language. If they had adopted it directly from > Greek they could have used the Greek letter “gamma” for the Latin G sound. > But they didn’t. They adopted their alpabet from the Etruscans, who got it > from the Greeks. The Etruscans didn’t need a G letter, so they didn’t use > “gamma”, but they did need a K sound, which they wrote as C (simplifying > the K letter by eliminating the initial vertical stroke and rounding the > other two strokes that meet in the middle). The Romans needed to reinvent > a G letter. They realized that the sounds K and G are pronounced the same > in the mouth, and only differ in the throat (they differ in that G is a K > with vibration of the vocal cords of the glottis. Since C was used as K in > Etruscan, the Romans made a mark on the C to invent the letter G and use it > for the G pronunciation. Working backwards, we can see that C was > pronounced as K in Latin, just as it was in Etruscan and in Greek > (understanding that Latin/Etruscan C is an altered drawing of the Greek K > letter). > > Words borrowed at the time from other languages whose pronunciation is > known also confirm the pattern. Words borrowed INTO Latin from Greek with > a “chi” were spelled C+H, as they still are, cf. psyCHe (= soul), > CHemistry, etc. This sound at the time in Greek was literally K+H, so the > Latin C represents the K sound of Greek chi (X in the Greek alphabet). > > Words borrowed FROM Latin into other languages also show the pronunciation > at the time, for example, the W sound of “Wine” in English from Latin > “Vinus”, and the pronunciation Kaiser in German from Latin Caesar (note the > current English pronunciation of “caesar” comes to us through French), also > Scots “kirk” for English “church”, from Greek kurike. Note that Greek uses > a K letter (called “kappa”) to represent the sound, but in Old English > there is no K, the C was used according to Latin convention at that time to > represent the K sound, OE cyrce from “church”, originally pronounced like > Scots “kirk” and only later pronounced in English “church” with the “ch” > sound represented according to a later French spelling convention rather > than the old Latin spelling convention of “ch” to represent the old Greek > sound of X (“chi”). (So, in English “ch” has a K sound in words of Greek > origin, according to the Latin way of spelling them, and “ch” has the > “CHeese” pronunciation in words of French origin which indeed had that > sound at the time. Later, “ch” changed in French to a “sh” pronunciation, > “CHief” and “CHef” are actually the same French word borrowed at different > times, once before the change of “ch” \> “sh” and once after. The original > Latin word was “caput”, meaning “head”. English and other languages keep > the K pronunciation in words based directly on this Latin word, e.g., > “Capital” and “Captain”.) > > You probably want to ask how we know how any of the other languages were > pronounced at the time, in order to make the comparisons. The whole thing > is a large puzzle in which only the right solution works and then > everything falls into place. A basic principle for the K sounds has to do > with the commonness of the historical change from a K to a CH (as in > church), to SH (as in maCHine, the modern French outcome of an original K, > related to Greek “meCHanical”), or S sound “caesar”, “circle” etc etc), but > never the reverse, that is, “ch”, “sh” and “s” sound don’t change into “k”. > There are no major problems or controversies among linguists about these > issues. They are among the things that we understand extremely well, and > have for well over a century. > > P.S. the change from W to V is also very well known, for example, in most > of the continental languages, e.g., German (also the descendants of Latin). > However, the change from V to W is also possible through a series of > stages. Nevertheless, we know from deep historical comparisons that > direction of change in Latin etc was from W to V, for example, that English > has remained faithful to an old W sound for over six thousand years, while > it changed to V in Late Latin almost two thousand years ago (but had not > yet changed in Classical Latin).\*\* [Linguist Geoffrey Sampson also chimes in](http://www.linguistlist.org/~ask-ling/archive-1997.10/msg01789.html): > [@](#): > > \*\*There are many ways, each of which reinforces the others. One way is that > many different modern languages have developed out of Latin, so the original > pronunciation of a given letter or letter-combination is likely to be > something that could plausibly have developed into the various sounds that > occur in the same words in the different descendant languages. That is > perhaps the most obvious source of evidence but probably not, really, the > most significant. Another, with a language of civilization such as Latin, > is that there were writers who _described_ the sounds of their own language. > Then one can infer quite a lot from the way that words were written when > borrowed between languages – Latin borrowed many words from Greek, so > when we see that the Greek kappa, looking like K and pronounced as k to this > day in Greek, was regularly written C in Latin, this tells us something > about the value of Latin C. In some cases the internal logic of the > writing system has messages of its own: the Romans had one letter V for > what in modern times was differentiated as V versus U (schoolboys now > are taught to write “VIR” for ‘man’ and “UNUS” for ‘one’, but the Romans > wrote VNVS and had no separate letter U) – this would be hard to explain > if the consonant V had not originally been pronounced like “w”, which is > essentially the same sound as the vowel “u”. Then, Latin descends from > a common ancestor language from which other European languages also > descend, and although that common ancestor was never written down we can > see the relationships, for instance with the sounds of words in Celtic > languages, and these sometimes help suggest the values of Latin letters. > > Some of these types of evidence would not prove much on their own, but added > together, when they point in the same direction one can be pretty sure. > If you would be interested in pursuing this further, I recommend a book > by W.S. Allen, _Vox Latina_, I think published by Cambridge University > Press about 1960. (Don’t worry, despite the title the book is actually > written in English!)\*\* ---
**Author:** ![brianmelendez](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/65b543/32.png) [@brianmelendez](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brianmelendez)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2003, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hard-latin-cs/164329/4 "2003-03-26T18:26:22Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by MonkeyMensch \* > **KEE-kuh-roh?** KIH-kuh-roh. The vowel _i_ in the first syllable is short. (So are the other two.)