pronouncing names (ae endings)

[Panza, Robin]

>>>From: Nico Cellinese [mailto:ncellinese at FMNH.ORG]
This is what I learnt from going to school in Italy, where we are still
forced to learn Latin from middle school throughout high school.  We were
thought Latin using the soft c's, although rarely teachers might insist in
having the soft c's converted to hard c's, so Cicero (Chi-che-ro) becomes
Kikero; however, from my personal experience most of us learnt Latin using
the soft c's only.<<<<

When I took Latin (US, many many years ago), we were told to pronounce it
according to the rules of Classical Latin.  Among other things, "ae" rhymed
with "eye" and "c" was pronounced as a "k", so Julius Caesar was " yool-yuss
kai-sar".  This was the language of Roman nobility.  We were also told about
the rules of Vulgate Latin (the language of average Roman people), which
included "c" pronounced as "s" and JC was "yoo-lee-us say-sar".  The teacher
briefly mentioned Ecclesiastical Latin, which had little relevance to our
class.  Since then, I've learned Biological Latin.  The rules I try to
follow for that were the ones taught in my entomology text (Borror, DeLong,
and Triplehorn, An Introduction to the Study of Insects, 4th edition. pp.
88-90).

Robin K Panza
Section of Birds, Carnegie Museum of Natural History
4400 Forbes Ave.
Pittsburgh  PA  15213  USA
phone:  412-622-3255
fax:  412-622-8837
panzar at carnegiemuseums.org