# How to pronounce Principia? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [November 9, 2013, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-pronounce-principia/673513 "2013-11-09T16:21:44Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![UDS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecae2f/32.png) [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2013, 1:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-pronounce-principia/673513/21 "2013-11-11T01:44:29Z")
In classical Latin, as has been pointed out, ‘c’ always had a ‘k’ sound. Later on, though, that sound softened to a “ch” sound when ‘c’ came before an ‘i’ or an ‘e’, and this was standard by the time Latin was adopted by the western church. It’s also the pronunciation which was inherited by Italian, and is still retained. The sound softened still further to “s”, and this is reflected in the modern French of \principe\. English, of course, absorbed a good deal of French orthographical values through the Norman influence, hence the English pronunciation of “principle” with an s-sound. However, English speakers who learned Latin learned it through the church, and hence used church Latin pronunciation, with a “ch” sound in words like \principia\. This survived until the nineteenth century, when those rationalising Victorial reformers decided that classical Latin pronunciation was to be preferred. Using an s-sound would essentially be importing (French-influenced) English orthographic conventions into a Latin word. My guess is that this pronunciation would be more commonly found in the US, where there is a well established tradition of dealing with pronouncing foreign names by applying English orthographical conventions - the long ‘a’ in names like Mulcahy and (before the name, ahem, fell out of fashion, Adolph), the stress on the second syllable in Costello, etc. And this, in turn, I suspect, is the result of the great influx of foreign names, etc, as a result of immigration; they were absorbed into American speech, and the beares of them were absorbed into American culture, by Anglicising the pronounciation in this way. So, oversimplifying, “PrinSIPia” might be a natural pronunciation for speakers of US English, while speakers of other varieties of English are more likely to acknowledge the Latin-ness of the word by pronouncing it “PrinKIPia” or (now considered old-fashioned) “PrinCHIPia”. But possibly a Latino speaker of US English might favour the “PrinCHIPia” pronunciation, applying Latino rather than Anglo conventions to the pronunciation of the word. ---
**Author:** ![bibliophage](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bibliophage/32/7615_2.png) [@bibliophage](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bibliophage)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2013, 3:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-pronounce-principia/673513/22 "2013-11-11T03:48:12Z")
We now know that classical Latin always pronounced _c_ like a “k”, but there was a period when grammarians of Latin writing in English recommended that _c_ be pronounced like “s” before _e_, _i_ and certain other vowels and diphthongs but like “k” before _a_, _o_, or _u_. Pronunciation of Latin terms in English is mostly stuck in this mode. Hence _Caesar_ and _circus_ are pronounced with an “s” sound in English but _Cato_ and _coda_ with a “k”. See [this book](http://books.google.com/books?id=hUYBAAAAMAAJ&dq=pronunciation%20latin&pg=PA2#v=onepage&q=%22c%20before%22&f=false) from 1829. ---
**Author:** ![cmyk](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cmyk/32/3353_2.png) [@cmyk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cmyk)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2013, 4:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-pronounce-principia/673513/23 "2013-11-11T04:41:20Z")
I can’t not hear Sean Connery when pronouncing it “prin-CHIP-ea.” ---
**Author:** ![thelurkinghorror](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7c8e57/32.png) [@thelurkinghorror](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thelurkinghorror)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2013, 5:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-pronounce-principia/673513/24 "2013-11-11T05:04:13Z")
> [@bob\_2](#): > > An Italian would generally pronounce ‘c’ as ‘ch’, as in ciao. C is ‘ch’ if followed by i or e, pronounced as ‘k’ before other vowels, no? (and if a consonant it also can depend on what the following few letters are). I _think_ Ecclesiastical Latin would always be ‘ch’? I think Classical Latin might be a hypercorrection, it depends on what was used at the time. Remember, we all know how to say “Veni, vidi, vici” in church Latin, but it was originally something like “wenny, weedee, wiki.” > [@cmyk](#): > > I can’t not hear Sean Connery when pronouncing it “prin-CHIP-ea.” I only hear that if prin-SHHHIP-ea. With a breathy ‘sh.’ ---
**Author:** ![UDS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecae2f/32.png) [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2013, 5:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-pronounce-principia/673513/25 "2013-11-11T05:22:55Z")
> [@thelurkinghorror](#): > > C is ‘ch’ if followed by i or e, pronounced as ‘k’ before other vowels, no? (and if a consonant it also can depend on what the following few letters are). I _think_ Ecclesiastical Latin would always be ‘ch’?’ Nope. “Ch” before i or e, “k” before a, o, u or I think pretty well any consonant. If that were not so it would be practically impossible to pronounce “ecclesia”. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2013, 6:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-pronounce-principia/673513/26 "2013-11-11T06:09:25Z")
So if I’m following correctly, the word would have been pronounced prinkipia in classical Latin, princhipea in Italianized Latin (which is probably what Newton would have spoken), and prinsipia in English. So I’m going to assume any of these pronunciations are fair game. ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2013, 6:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-pronounce-principia/673513/27 "2013-11-11T06:15:26Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > So if I’m following correctly, the word would have been pronounced prinkipia in classical Latin, princhipea in Italianized Latin (which is probably what Newton would have spoken), and prinsipia in English. So I’m going to assume any of these pronunciations are fair game. Well it isn’t a word at all in English, and the book was written in Latin. I have spent much of my life hanging around historians of science, and some of them say Prinkipia and some Princhipia (probably more commonly the latter), but I have never heard anyone, certainly not anyone whom I would expect to know, say Prinsipia. ---
**Author:** ![obfusciatrist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/4af34b/32.png) [@obfusciatrist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/obfusciatrist)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2013, 7:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-pronounce-principia/673513/28 "2013-11-11T07:16:30Z")
In all of my undergraduate science history and science philosophy classes (University of Washington, early '90s) I don’t think I ever heard one professor pronounce it any other way than “prinkipia.” Therefore I’ll never be able to say it any other way (and until this thread I didn’t realize there were other ways in common use). ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2013, 7:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-pronounce-principia/673513/29 "2013-11-11T07:42:07Z")
> [@njtt](#): > > Well it isn’t a word at all in English, and the book was written in Latin. > > I have spent much of my life hanging around historians of science, and some of them say Prinkipia and some Princhipia (probably more commonly the latter), but I have never heard anyone, certainly not anyone whom I would expect to know, say Prinsipia. There is such a thing as patterns. Every other word in the English language that starts with the letters princ - prince, princess, principle, principal - is pronounced prins. Similar words like process, proceed, precinct, precision, and precious follow the same rule. If English speakers of the 17th century can adopt Italian rules for pronouncing Latin words, English speakers of the 21st century can adopt English rules. ---
**Author:** ![etv78](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/d78d45/32.png) [@etv78](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/etv78)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2013, 8:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-pronounce-principia/673513/30 "2013-11-11T08:00:57Z")
related anecdote: I pronounced Jefferson’s home as monti-sell-o as a kid. I was a young adult before I heard the correct pronunciation. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2013, 10:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-pronounce-principia/673513/31 "2013-11-11T10:42:47Z")
> [@etv78](#): > > related anecdote: I pronounced Jefferson’s home as monti-sell-o as a kid. I was a young adult before I heard the correct pronunciation. I’ll admit I did the same. ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2013, 12:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-pronounce-principia/673513/32 "2013-11-11T12:09:59Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > There is such a thing as patterns. Every other word in the English language that starts with the letters princ - prince, princess, principle, principal - is pronounced prins. Similar words like process, proceed, precinct, precision, and precious follow the same rule. If English speakers of the 17th century can adopt Italian rules for pronouncing Latin words, English speakers of the 21st century can adopt English rules. I suppose they could, but as I said, I have never met anyone, certainly no-one who is professionally well informed about the work in question and commonly speaks of it (and I have met many such people), who does. It is not the current convention amongst (relevantly) educated English speakers. It is an error (and not a common one) of over-regularization, of forcing a Latin word (not a Latin loan-word in English, but an actual Latin word) to conform to an English template. It seems to me to be about as clear an example as one could find of incorrect pronunciation. Anyway, I thought we were looking for some degree of historical correctness here, not an justification for one’s idiosyncratic preferences. In any case, although I do not know it for sure, I am inclined to think that it is not really correct to say that _Princhipia_ pronunciation that Newton himself probably used was borrowed from Italian. Much more likely, to my mind, is that it was the pronunciation that had evolved in the international scholarly Latin that (like Italian) had, by Newton’s time, evolved, in numerous ways, away from classical Latin in the many centuries that had passed since classical times.\* Newton wrote the book in scholarly Latin because he was still following the centuries-old scholarly tradition of doing so. _Princhipia_, for him, was not a matter of aping contemporary Italian speech patterns, it was how the word was pronounced in the language in which he was writing (and in which he probably sometimes conversed with university colleagues). The Italian language, of course, had also evolved away from Classical Latin over those same centuries, by that time had departed from the common original language much more, but the two evolutions were fairly independent of one another, and the fact that this particular consonant was (apparently) the same in 17th-century Italian and 17th-century scholarly Latin is probably more of a coincidence than anything else. Thus, to my mind, _Princhipia_ should be the preferred pronunciation (and I think it actually is preferred by most present-day scholars of the history of science), _Prinkipia_ is acceptable (a case can be made for it, and is sometimes used by scholars), but _Prinsipia_ (if anyone should actually use it) is an error born of ignorance and uneducated guesswork. ¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬ \*Not just through the middle ages, but also the Roman centuries following Cicero, since Cieronic Latin is traditionally taken to be the classical standard. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2013, 1:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-pronounce-principia/673513/33 "2013-11-11T13:00:15Z")
You do realize that the Princhipia pronunciation was derived using the same process as the Prinsipia pronunciation? The only difference is that it’s an Italian mispronunciation of a Latin word rather than an English mispronunciation of a Latin word. If you’re not going to use the original Latin pronunciation, I don’t see how one mispronunciation can be ruled more correct than another just because it’s more hallowed by tradition. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2013, 1:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-pronounce-principia/673513/34 "2013-11-11T13:32:05Z")
What about the 16th century? 'Cause I remember reading in Frances Yates’s book _Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition_ that when Bruno lectured at Oxford, a contemporary English writer mentioned Bruno pronouncing c-words funny because he was Italian, specifically “telling us much of _chentrum_ & \*chirculus \*& \*circumferenchia \*(after the pronunciation of his Country language).” Obviously that stood out as odd to the English. ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2013, 1:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-pronounce-principia/673513/35 "2013-11-11T13:37:28Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > You do realize that the Princhipia pronunciation was derived using the same process as the Prinsipia pronunciation? The only difference is that it’s an Italian mispronunciation of a Latin word rather than an English mispronunciation of a Latin word. If you’re not going to use the original Latin pronunciation, I don’t see how one mispronunciation can be ruled more correct than another just because it’s more hallowed by tradition. Did you read anything I said in my post, most of which was devoted to explaining that this is not the case? ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2013, 2:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-pronounce-principia/673513/36 "2013-11-11T14:15:11Z")
> [@njtt](#): > > Did you read anything I said in my post, most of which was devoted to explaining that this is not the case? Yes, I did. But I’m not completely sold on the idea that the evolution of Latin was as unrelated to the evolution of Italian as you say. What exactly was the process that cause the pronunciation of Latin to change by the 17th century? It obviously wasn’t the way native Latin speakers were talking. So you’re suggesting that the people who spoke Latin as a second language happened to adopt the exact same pronunciation as native Italian speakers were adopting at the same time - but it was just a coincidence. ---
**Author:** ![Apollon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e47774/32.png) [@Apollon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apollon)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2013, 2:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-pronounce-principia/673513/37 "2013-11-11T14:28:07Z")
It makes no sense to insist on the correct pronunciation of the letter C, while at the same time ignoring the letter R. The R has to be rolled. Anyone who says “Prinkeepia” without rolling their tongue is a half-arsed hypocrite. 😃 You can’t speak correct Latin with a lazy tongue. 😛 ---
**Author:** ![aldiboronti](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9fc348/32.png) [@aldiboronti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aldiboronti)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2013, 2:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-pronounce-principia/673513/38 "2013-11-11T14:36:45Z")
I don’t know where some people are getting the notion that the pronunciation prin-sip-ia is wrong. Would they insist on pronouncing the Roman author Cicero as Kikero or Chichero? They’d get very odd reactions if they did. There’s the old Roman way of pronunciation, the Church way (Italian) and the English-speaking way. Nothing wrong with any of them, they just differ. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2013, 2:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-pronounce-principia/673513/39 "2013-11-11T14:59:45Z")
> [@bob\_2](#): > > An Italian would generally pronounce ‘c’ as ‘ch’, as in ciao. What’s pronounced “ch-like-CHocolate” in Italian is not the letter “c” but the digraph “ci”. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2013, 3:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-pronounce-principia/673513/40 "2013-11-11T15:06:08Z")
> [@aldiboronti](#): > > I don’t know where some people are getting the notion that the pronunciation prin-sip-ia is wrong. Would they insist on pronouncing the Roman author Cicero as Kikero or Chichero? They’d get very odd reactions if they did. > > There’s the old Roman way of pronunciation, the Church way (Italian) and the English-speaking way. Nothing wrong with any of them, they just differ. Actually, in high school we did pronounce it “Kikero.” The street we pronounced Sisseroh, though. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-pronounce-principia/673513.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-pronounce-principia/673513.md?page=3)