Pronunciation of "Horcrux"

[Geoff Bannister]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "justcarol67" 
<justcarol67 at y...> wrote:

Carol:
> > > Well, the letter "h" and therefore presumably the "h" sound
> existed in Latin, so I think the audio books pronunciation is 
correct.
 
jlnbtr:
> > The english H sound (as in Horace?) I don't think it existed in
> Latin, I know it doesn't exist in french (the H does, not the 
sound),
> and neither in Spanish (the H sound is more like a J), and neither 
in
>  Italian. I think it's just an english sound.

Carol:
> I'm not absolutely sure of myself here, but I don't think that 
French
> pronunciation, which developed *from* Latin rather than vice versa, 
is
> any indication of the existence of the H sound in Latin. The H sound
> could have dropped out of the Vulgar Latin spoken in Gaul while the
> letter itself remained. (The sound did exist in early Semitic
> alphabets; it was not invented by the Saxons or by the later 
English.)
> 
> In any case, "horcrux," despite its Latin roots, would be an English
> word with the same first syllable as "horticulture" or "Horace." Or
> that's how I read it.
> 
> Geoff (or anyone who's taught or taken Latin recently), can you help
> us out here?

Geoff

Having tried to answer this post three times and the messages have 
disappeared into a wormhole, I finally discovered today that Yahoo 
hadn't altered my email address to my new one on the OT-Chatter group 
and was bouncing them without telling me. 

<sigh>

OK, take 4.

There are two schools of thought on Latin pronunciation. The first is 
what I would term "church Latin". It's noticeable features include:
(a) The use of a soft "c". "Excelsis" is pronounced "ex-chell-
siss", "cruces" – the genitive of "crux" – is said as "croo-siss" and 
Caesar is pronounced as in modern English, with the "ae" diphthong is 
pronounced as "ee".
(b ) "J" and "v" are hard sounds, as in modern English.

The second version is the way I was taught, with the following to be 
observed:
(a ) The use of a hard "c", "excelsis" being said as "ex-kell-
siss", "cruces" as "croo-kiss" and  Caesar as Kaiser. (I think there 
is a linguistic link in that the Germans appropriated the word for 
their own use and adapted the spelling).
The "ae" diphthong is pronounced as the "i" in "time".
(b ) "J" and "v" are soft, "Julius" being pronounced as "Yoo –lious" 
and "veni" as "wane-ee".

"h" is always sounded. A good modern example was when, after the 
serious fire at Windsor Castle, the Queen referred in a speech to 
her "annus horribilis" and clearly sounded the "h".

The Pocket Oxford Latin Dictionary (which needs a darned big 
pocket!!!) uses the same pronunciation as I have outlined in my 
second version.

I have a feeling that Yahoo did the same to a message which I wrote 
about the word "horcrux" itself. "Hor-" as a prefix does not seem to 
be used, however, several Latin words beginning with the 
letters "horr-" are related to horror, dread, roughness etc. Examples 
are horrendus, horribilis, horrifer, horror and so on. "Crux" can, in 
addition to cross, have connotations of torture, trouble and 
destruction. So those are possible ways in which JKR's thoughts may 
have moved in producing another item of LAtin or pseudo-Latin.

Right, I shall commit this to cyberspace in the hope that the 
machinations of Yahoo will not spit it out in the midst of a group 
committed to considering Polynesian cookery.
:-)