School Latin (was Bella???)

[eloiseherisson at aol.com]

Apologies for not combining.
punkieshazam wrote:
> 
> > It drives me nuts to hear that  the 
> > *proper* pronounciation of Draco's name is Drayco. It should  be 
> > Drahco.
Hee hee!
Quite! As I said in my last message it's an example of Latin being taken  
into English and acquiring a legitimate English pronunciation. I'd call the  
constellation Drahco and the person Drayco. And in fact it used to drive me mad  
that at a yard where I used to keep a horse, they had two horses referred to as 
 Drahco and Haygrid.

> 
> 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?
Well, I would think that Latin dracaena and Greek drakaina were pronounced  
approximately the same, the latin 'ae' being pronounced as long  'i'.  However 
as a houseplant, I'd pronounce it just as you do. Just as I wouldn't  
pronounce *you* as Dikentra.
> 
> --Dicentra, who had two semesters of romance philology
That sounds interesting, not to say intriguing!
I know this is an old HPfGU chestnut, but along similar lines, we have  spell 
pronunciation to deal with.
I was recently talking with several HPfGUers when the subject of the  
upcoming UK conference was raised. Now just how do you pronounce that?
As ever, I work on the premise that these words have been anglicised in  
pronunciation and so pronounce it 'Ack-sio' on the principal that in English,  
that is the usual (though far from invariable) pronunciation of double 'c'  
preceding 'e' or 'i'. However at least one other person there pronounced  it 
'Ack-shio'. And in Latin, it would be 'Ack-io' ('i's in all cases  pronounced 'e'). 
I can't remember how Stephen Fry pronounces it.
Any more variations?
~Eloise


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