Pet peeve... Latin mispronunciation

[Langkard]

In the hope that in our real future people won't still be butchering Latin words:

A Latin v is pronounced like a w, not a hard v sound. The dipthong ae is pronounced as a long i more like the y in sky. And i in Latin is pronounced like a long e as in we. Or for the usual adolescent incels still hanging around complaining the game after all these months, wee wee because it gives them uncontrollable giggles.

So Vae Victis is not vay victis, but more like why weektees.

Also, just as an extra bit of knowledge. All c's in Latin and ancient Greek are hard c's. There is no soft c in Latin or Greek. In fact, there isn't even a letter c in the Greek alphabet. It's not Seltic. It's Keltic from the Greek word Keltoi. Caesar is not Seezer, it's Kysar. As in the German word kaiser.

This ends your Latin lesson for the day with a little extra Greek in it too.

Let the ritual stoning begin.

Corrected thanks to Ellorien.

[GoldInfinit7]

Honestly, I highly doubt anybody alive today is able to speak Latin exactly like the ancient Romans did. It's all fake Latin to various extents. All based on various more modern theories of how various people believed that it was spoken.

[utahcowboy]

I'm not going to stone you, but I do think it might be short sighted to try to use a thread that few people will read (compared to the whole of the SF fan base), to teach pronunciations to a group that doesn't speak Latin or Greek and has no interest in doing so, just because you find mispronunciations annoying or bothersome. I just think you're wasting your time. I read your thread, and I still don't plan to change. I'm playing a video game, not attending college or high school.

I do think it's cool that you know this stuff, and good for you, seriously. And this knowledge you have gives you an appreciation for some of the names in SF that others would not get or understand.

But, don't you think this is kind of a petty thing to get bothered about? Let alone creating a soap box for it? Most people just don't care and will probably read your post, roll their eyes and move on to read something else.

And if your goal with this is to start another flame war on this forum, why? I'm making that judgement based on your last sentence of "Let the ritual stoning begin". Which might not be your goal, but it's certainly something you are aware might happen.

Is it really worth your time and energy to be controversial for controversy sake? I just don't understand that line of thinking, if that is your line of thinking?

[wyodinosaur]

Nice Latin lesson. We could use an English lesson also. Americans especially, butcher the language.

[Don_Salvatore]

The terrible latin pronunciation isn't the worst part of it.
That some general has a latin name at all is much more egregious. Why? What cultural connection to ancient Rome do these people have? They barely have any to our earth except for a few 1980's mementos.

But sure... This "amazing" general has a latin nickname as the only one in the universe and this guy of course named his children Hadrian and Trajan.

His own name is François Sanon.

Sure sure Bethesda... They are so terrible at world building it hurts the brain.

[Langkard]

İlk olarak wyodinosaur tarafından gönderildi:

Nice Latin lesson. We could use an English lesson also. Americans especially, butcher the language.

It can get worse. I live in Texas. We can butcher any language, but we excel at butchering English.

İlk olarak GoldInfinit7 tarafından gönderildi:

Honestly, I highly doubt anybody alive today is able to speak Latin exactly like the ancient Romans did. It's all fake Latin to various extents. All based on various more modern theories of how various people believed that it was spoken.

There are a couple of good Youtube channels for it. One guy went to Rome and tried speaking ancient Latin to the many Catholic priests there. A few responded in kind. A few more responded well when he used Church Latin instead.

[Langkard]

İlk olarak utahcowboy tarafından gönderildi:

I'm not going to stone you, but I do think it might be short sighted to try to use a thread that few people will read (compared to the whole of the SF fan base), to teach pronunciations to a group that doesn't speak Latin or Greek and has no interest in doing so, just because you find mispronunciations annoying or bothersome. I just think you're wasting your time. I read your thread, and I still don't plan to change. I'm playing a video game, not attending college or high school.

I do think it's cool that you know this stuff, and good for you, seriously. And this knowledge you have gives you an appreciation for some of the names in SF that others would not get or understand.

But, don't you think this is kind of a petty thing to get bothered about? Let alone creating a soap box for it? Most people just don't care and will probably read your post, roll their eyes and move on to read something else.

And if your goal with this is to start another flame war on this forum, why? I'm making that judgement based on your last sentence of "Let the ritual stoning begin". Which might not be your goal, but it's certainly something you are aware might happen.

Is it really worth your time and energy to be controversial for controversy sake? I just don't understand that line of thinking, if that is your line of thinking?

Since I'm being just slightly sarcastically pedantic anyway and the sarcasm went right over your head entirely, I should point out that short-sighted is hyphenated in English. Have a nice day, pardner. Yee haw.

[utahcowboy]

İlk olarak Langkard tarafından gönderildi:

İlk olarak utahcowboy tarafından gönderildi:

I'm not going to stone you, but I do think it might be short sighted to try to use a thread that few people will read (compared to the whole of the SF fan base), to teach pronunciations to a group that doesn't speak Latin or Greek and has no interest in doing so, just because you find mispronunciations annoying or bothersome. I just think you're wasting your time. I read your thread, and I still don't plan to change. I'm playing a video game, not attending college or high school.

I do think it's cool that you know this stuff, and good for you, seriously. And this knowledge you have gives you an appreciation for some of the names in SF that others would not get or understand.

But, don't you think this is kind of a petty thing to get bothered about? Let alone creating a soap box for it? Most people just don't care and will probably read your post, roll their eyes and move on to read something else.

And if your goal with this is to start another flame war on this forum, why? I'm making that judgement based on your last sentence of "Let the ritual stoning begin". Which might not be your goal, but it's certainly something you are aware might happen.

Is it really worth your time and energy to be controversial for controversy sake? I just don't understand that line of thinking, if that is your line of thinking?

Since I'm being just slightly sarcastically pedantic anyway and the sarcasm went right over your head entirely, I should point out that short-sighted is hyphenated in English. Have a nice day, pardner. Yee haw.

You are right, it did. My bad. Just ignore my post :)

[Cheetahbird]

Vae Victus is pronounced correctly in English. Consider Aegis, Aesop, Aeon, Aeolian, Aegyptus, aesthetic, anaesthesia, Graeco-Roman, Judaeo-Christian. As for the letter C, in English we say Ceaser with the letter S, even though the Roman used a hard sound K for his name. But it doesnt matter, because we have been calling Ceaser like that for over a millennia now. The same is true for Cicero. Ancient pronunciations mean nothing.

[rufus_mcgayhee]

whats the closest word in latin to the word "bruh"

[Ellorien]

İlk olarak Don_Salvatore tarafından gönderildi:

The terrible latin pronunciation isn't the worst part of it.
That some general has a latin name at all is much more egregious. Why? What cultural connection to ancient Rome do these people have? They barely have any to our earth except for a few 1980's mementos.

But sure... This "amazing" general has a latin nickname as the only one in the universe and this guy of course named his children Hadrian and Trajan.

His own name is François Sanon.

Sure sure Bethesda... They are so terrible at world building it hurts the brain.

I wonder if you criticize Obsidian and their Caesar’s Legion (they use the correct pronunciation, in case it has slipped your mind) for the same reason and with the same passion. What cultural connection to Ancient Rome do the uneducated post-apocalyptic savages have?

[Langkard]

İlk olarak birdstwin tarafından gönderildi:

Vae Victus is pronounced correctly in English. Consider Aegis, Aesop, Aeon, Aeolian, Aegyptus, aesthetic, anaesthesia. As for the letter C, in English we say Ceaser with the letter S, even though the Roman used a hard sound K for his name. But it doesnt matter, because we have been calling Ceaser like that for over a millennia now. The same is true for Cicero. Ancient pronunciations mean nothing.

Not it's not. It's not English. So it is only pronounced properly "in English" if it's pronounced properly with respect to the language it is. Saying it is correct to mispronounce a foreign word in English is like saying it is a correct pronunciation if a non-English speaker pronounces a thoroughly English word like cow as coh as in show.

I was talking about a thoroughly Latin phrase, vae victus, just as cow is a thoroughly English word which evolved directly from Anglo-Saxon. Loan words and borrowed words are an entirely different matter. Vae victus is not loaned into English, but words in English have their origins in both Latin words, such as victory from victus and woe from vae. But you might have noticed that even then, woe still maintains the "w" sound after the transition and the long o is the result of the Great Vowel Shift, which I'll get to momentarily. Medical words are almost entirely invented words from Latin or Greek base words, and relatively modern. And anaesthesia is from the Greek an + aisthesis, and the i in Greek and Latin is pronounced like a long e. The short e sound is also a later change, to all of your examples.

Perhaps you meant accepted instead of correctly. What is accepted it not necessarily correct. Those are similar words but do not mean the same thing.

And English hasn't been around for a "millenium" or so. A thousand years ago English didn't exist. The language spoken in England was Anglo-Saxon, i.e. "Old" English. Take the opening to Beowulf, for example. "Hwæt, we gardena in geardagum" is Old English. English as we know it today evolved from first the invasion of William I, who would have been known as Willelm since he spoke Norman-French (not Guillaume, which would have been his name in Middle French). The melding of Anglo-Saxon and Norman-French evolved into Middle English, for which a good example is Chaucer's Canterbury Tales with lines like "Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote, the droghte of March hath perced to the roote." Then there was what is known as the Great Vowel Shift which took place from the late 13th to the 16th centuries. Then comes Elisabethan English, in which the words err and her rhymed. (it's because back then both were pronounced closer to air and hair). All of this long before Modern English.

So, how would "English" speakers have pronounced caesar a millenium ago in England? Well, since we know it became kaiser in German, and Anglo-Saxon is a Germanic language, they probably would have pronounced it similarly with a hard C. But, since they would only likely have encountered the word as a monk or Church-trained person in the original Latin, even in the later Medieval Church Latin formed from the Vulgar Latin, it would still have been caesar with a hard C. The same goes for any other Latin word or name you care to choose. The soft-c in caesar or Cicero or Tacitus is from Elizabethan English at the earliest, less than half a millenium ago.

Anyway, Gaa-eye-oos Eye-oo-lee-oos Kai-sar is probably turning over in his grave right about now. Gaius Julius Caesar is actually closer to Gaa-yoos Yoo-lee-oos Kai-sar, but that's because those are partially dipthongs and blend together in Latin.

[Ellorien]

@Langkard

Your argument would have been more compelling if you actually used the correct phrase —Vae Victis — instead of Vae Victus. [Victis is plural of Victus].

/pedantry

[ULTRA]

"VAYYYY VICTUS" - Kain, Legacy of Kain: Blood Omen

[ULTRA]

İlk olarak rufus_mcgayhee tarafından gönderildi:

whats the closest word in latin to the word "bruh"

Probably "frater" or just "fra'" like fraternity

[ƬᗩԲԲվ]

Ad victoriam!