School Latin (was Bella???)

[Dicentra spectabilis]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "punkieshazam"
<punkieshazam at y...> wrote:

> It drives me nuts to hear that the 
> *proper* pronounciation of Draco's name is Drayco. It should be 
> Drahco.

Here's a related pronunciation query:

A genus of houseplants is called "dracaena".  I hear people pronounce
it druh-SEE-nuh, and the dictionary supports this.  (I realize that
the dictionary records usage rather than dictates it.)

If I'm not mistaken, the Latin "C" is always hard, and if you put the
"ae" dipthong after it, that would counteract the later rule that
converts "C" to "S" ahead of "e" and "i" in the Romance language
evolutions.  Further, the etymology is the Greek "drakaina", which is
obviously "K".

So would purists say druh-KEE-nuh? What about druh-KAY-nuh?

--Dicentra, who had two semesters of romance philology