^ Although I admit, that appears to be a bit of an anomaly. (And this wasn’t in high school Latin class or anything like that. Perhaps our history teacher–or whatever class he came up in–was a Latin scholar.)
“Prinkipia” has a claim to correctness, in that that’s how it would be pronounced in the original language. “Princhipia” also has a claim to correctness, in that that’s how it would be pronounced by the original author. “Prinsipia” has neither.
On the contrary, while the other two pronunciations are correct from historical viewpoints, prinsipia has the honor of being the correct pronunciation given modern english phonetic standards. Since we speak modern english, that’s all the authority required.
I’ve always been annoyed that the Celtics who dominated Western Europe before Rome and the Boston basketball team were pronounced differently; I thought one should change its name.
However, I just learned that the K-sound in English ‘Celtic’ is a recent affectation. Or perhaps an embarrassed response to the 19th-century complaints of Celtic speakers who wrote in The Celt of 1857:
Maybe we can move on to Seltic vs Keltic now. 
I though it was pronounced “prinbipia”.
This one is easy—the ethnonym was not borne by most of the people now identified as such. The Keltoi / Celti were definitely /k/ to Caesar, so it follows that the same rules apply as for Newton’s work: historical K, CH as the Italians pronounce it, or S as the French pronounce it.
Academics tend toward K, but none of the pronunciations are wrong and none of them would have meant a thing to the ancient Irish or Welsh, so take your pick.
But don’t call them “Celtics”—that makes it looks as if you can’t distinguish an adjective (Celtic) from a noun (Celt).
I am of the opinion that pronouncing the people as “sell-tic” or “selt” is the mark of someone who doesn’t know what they’re talking about. But it’s not just a case of Bostonians several generations removed from the Celtic homeland mangling it. The real Scottish and Irish ancestry folks in Glasgow have their association football team called “sell-tic FC.” Which ultimately, both teams want to sell lots of tickets (groan).
But it’s not an English word. If you wouldn’t pronounce the title of À la Recherche du Temps Perdu as though it were made up of English words, why would you pronounce the title of *Principia Mathematica[.i] as though it were made up of English words?
“Prinkipia” and “princhipia” were both standard pronunciations used by Latin speakers at different times. As far as I’m concerned, you can take your pick, though “princhipia” was the standard pronunciation at the time this particular work was composed. “Prinsipia” is an anglicisation, and I think you’ll struggle a bit to justify anglicised the title of this book but not of others.
Anything can be an English word. By what authority do you claim it isn’t?
The “correct” pronunciation of a word is one that 1) people use and 2) does not hinder communication. I can’t imagine anyone not know what I was talking about if I said: Newton’s Prinsipia Mathematica.
That’s a big if. I, personally, have no problems with a la rechurch due temps purdue. If that gives francophones a heart attack, not really my problem. Or I might say, Remembrance of Things Past since that title is as or more obvious to an english speaking audience as the french version and my default is to assume my audience speaks english.
You are more than free to prefer one pronunciation over another but when it comes to english pronunciations, all three are as acceptable as the others.
It’s the title of a book. The book was written in Latin, and the full title is Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica. That’s Latin, not English, just like À la recherche du temps perdu is French, not English.
I take your point. But there’s a bit more to “does not hinder communication” than simply being capable of comprehension. I have a friend who pronounces the word “sabotage” as “saBOATadge”. It’s comprehensible, but everyone who hears him does a double-take and says “what?” to themselves before, a second later, they realise what he’s saying. And I’d regard that internal double-take as a distraction, and hindrance to communication, even if it doesn’t ultimately prevent comprehension.
Right. I’m not saying that I’d have the same reaction to “Prinsipia” as I would to “saboatadge”, but I would do a small double-take. I can tell at a glance that this is not an English word, and anyone using it as an abbreviated form of “Principia Mathematica” presumably knows that it isn’t. It isn’t conventional, in my variety of English, to assign English orthographic values to words in other languages; hence I would find it distracting.
But my take on this is no more normative than yours. From the evidence of this thread many people would have no such reaction at all. All I’m suggesting is that anglicising the pronunciation of non-English words and names (especially names) is more of a US English thing, and my hunch is that US English speakers will be disproportionately represented among those who use, or accept without hesitation, the “prinsipia” pronunciation. I don’t think you can explain this on the basis that Principia is an English word; I’m pretty sure that most people who speak of this book know perfectly well that Principia is not an English word. But you can certainly explain it it on the basis that you’re a speaker of US English, and that anglicising the pronunciation of foreign names is a convention of US English.
Right, which is why the British name for Greece is Hellas.
My reasoning for preferring “prinsipia” is simple. I’d never heard it pronounced before until I’d happened upon the title from my own self-education (having no greater than a HS degree).
To my US English reading eyes, it looks as if it’s pronounced “prinsipia”. Out of my own ignorance I suppose you could say that I’m pronouncing it incorrectly, but I’ll be damned if you could really blame me or anyone coming from a similar standpoint. That pronunciation is entirely consistent with English phonetics.
Hell, even I, myself, pronounce my own last name incorrectly according to the native toung (containing a double-z, like in pizza. However, most my Americanized family pronounces it like the “zee” sound in “easy”, simply because the vowel construction makes it look like that’s how it should be pronounced).
Words get anglicized all the time to sound and read in likewise consistent ways. Why not “principia”?
You make my point very neatly for me, Inner Stickler. “Greece” is an English word; it’s the name the English give to the country that lies just across the Aegean see from Turkey. It’s a perfectly respectable English word, pronounced according to English conventions. It’s not, so far as I know, found in any other language.
“Hellas” is not an English word. It’s a Greek word, transliterated into Latin characters. When speaking English, we don’t normally use the word “Hellas”, because the perfectly good English word “Greece” already exists.
Principium is a Latin word, meaning principle, in the sense of fundamental truth. We tend not to use it when speaking English because the perfectly good English word “principle” exists. If we do have occasion to use it when speaking English then, inevitably, we are rather pointedly not using the English word “principle”, and there is a reason for this - in this particular instance, because it’s part of the title of a Latin work, written and titled in Latin.
It’s fine to pronounce it according to English orthographical conventions if, in your particular variety of English, that’s a standard way of treating non-English words. What’s not fine is asserting that it is to be pronounced this way because it is an English word. That’s factually incorrect; it’s not an English word. And it also implies that pronouncing “Principia” according to classical Latin conventions, or vulgar Latin conventions, would be wrong, because why would you pronounce an English word as though it were Latin?
If you really want to use English to refer to Newton’s work, you could just say “Mathematical Principles”. That way you don’t have to worry about any other language’s pronunciation rules.
I can accept this argument when people use it to say the word should be pronounced prinkipia. It’s the princhipia argument I find weak. To paraphrase your own question, why would you pronounce a Latin word as though it was Italian?
This would be presuming one could translate the Latin. I realize the entire book is written in Latin, but it’s such a seminal work, many come across the title alone and would understandably assume it’s pronounced “prinsipia”.
I’ve had other similar problems when coming across other foreign words or names on my own, whether in titles or in general (e.g. Schrödinger: “shro-ding-er” or “shro-dinjer”)
Excuse you, I don’t give a shit if you want to say prinkipia, princhipia, prinsipia or throatwarbler mangrove. What I care about is people arbitrarily assigning value judgments to equivalent pronunciations of something. And what I was attempting to point out, although apparently not as well as I thought, was that anglicization is very much not limited to SAE and if you think so, that’s really telling.
You’re assigning a normative value to classical Latin pronunciation, which is a bit like assigning a normative value to Chaucerian English pronunciation. Long before Italian emerged as a distinct language, Latin had developed the -ch- value for ‘c’ before ‘i’ or ‘e’. It’s a feature of Italian, of ecclesiastical Latin and of the academic lingua franca Latin employed by Newton because it was a feature of the Late Latin from which they all emerged. It’s an authentic Latin pronunciation, developed by native Latin speakers at a time when Latin was a living language. It’s not the pronunciation that was employed in classical Rome, but given that the work concerned does not emanate from the classical period, there is no reason why we have to pronounce its name as though it did.
In short, to use “princhipia” is not to pronounce the word as though it were Italian. It’s to pronounce the word as though it were Latin, albeit not classical Latin.