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Re: Principia

My father taught both French and Italian in LA (He vacationed nearly every
Summer in France and Italy "to keep up." He told me that ch was pronounced
like k (English) in Italian. The ch (English and Spanish) is ci (and ce) in
Italian; e.g. Cecilia (Bartoli) is Chichelia (English short i, long e). So
the last sentence below confuses me.

bc



"Spagna Jr., George" wrote:

-----Original Message-----
From: William J. Larson [mailto:bill_larson@CSI.COM]
Sent: Wednesday, January 17, 2001 1:28 PM

Bill asks:

Is principia pronounced "prinKipia" or" prinSipia"?

My daughter, the high school Latin teacher, tells me that the hard c (c = k)
sound is correct for Latin as spoken in the Roman Empire (based on
contemporary transliterations into Greek). However, Newton was not an
ancient Roman, so he probably used ecclesiastical Latin which, at least
today, usually follows Italian pronunciation (c = ch).

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