Pronunciations

[Honoria Granger <honoriagranger@yahoo.com>]

No: HPFGUIDX 52706

Delurking briefly 'cause this discussion so fascinates me...


Tom Wall, in an excellent post (Snuffles too!):
>>Well, in the interests of throwing my own $.02 in, and considering 
>>that I e-mailed a webmaster about the pronunciations and she, 
>>irritated, told me that they came from the Scholastic site, I 
>>figured I'd throw in my lot. ;-)

>>Animagus = 'An-i-MAHG-us'
>>Animagi = 'An-i-MAJ-aye'

>>My reasoning on this one was simply because of the Latin - to my 
>>knowledge, there was no soft 'g' in the Roman phoenetic scheme, but 
>>then again, 'An-i-MAH-gee' sounds dumb, IMHO, although that's what 
>>it would be if we were technical with the Latin sounds. Oh, that, 
>>and to my knowledge, 'mage' is an English conversion that followed 
>>the Latin, which would have been 'MAH-gus.'


Quite right, and I love the idea of a webmaster "irritated" over 
pronunciation issues...;)

Personally, I can live with either MAH-gus or MAY-gus. We say Seh-JAY-
nus for the name of Caligula's evil general Sejanus, not Seh-JAH-nus 
or Seh-JANN-us, and that's a 'j' anyway, not a 'g'.
But the soft 'j' sound for a 'g' before a vowel is quite wrong.

That said, I myself say An-ih-MAY-jye. Go figure.


Tom Wall again:
>>Crucio = 'CRU-see-oh,' 'cause I thought a single 'c' followed by a 
>>vowel in Latin is definitely a soft sound, i.e. Cicero = 'SIS-er-
>>oh,' and not 'Kick-er-oh.' The 'KAI-zar' in Caesar had something to 
>>do with the double vowels, as far as I can remember.


Actually, KICK-er-oh and KAI-zar are indeed correct, IF you are 
speaking Classical Latin, which I believe is how most British Latin 
students are taught.

When I learned Latin in college, back in the day, it being a Catholic 
university, I was taught what was known as Church Latin, or 
Ecclesiastical Latin.
In which a soft 'c' before a vowel was correct; hence, SISS-er-oh and 
SAY-zar.

The diphthong (double vowel) is 'ai' = 'eye', in Classical Latin, 
and 'ay' (as in hay) in Church Latin, which explains the KAI-zar/SAY-
zar thing.


Tom Wall again:
>>Accio = 'ACK-ee-oh,' Again, I was thinking of the Latin here - to 
>>my knowledge, the double-c in Roman phoenetics was a 'k' sound.

It's ACK-see-oh for me, don't know why, it just feels right...I would 
gladly be corrected, with proper documentation, of course..;)

Though I switch off, happily, between CROO-see-oh and CROO-chee-oh, 
Croo-see-AH-tus and Croo-chee-AH-tus...which is more a fight between 
Church Latin and Italian, actually...ack-shoo-ally ;).


Tom Wall again:
>>Draco = 'DRAY-coh,' but I can see how someone would use the 
>>longer 'DRAH-coh' there.
>>Boggart = 'BAWG-art,' with a short 'o,' not like Humphrey. ;-)
>>Patronus = 'pat-RONE-us,' 'cause the short 'o' there just sounds 
>>odd to me. 

Draco, either way, though I prefer DRAY-koh, DRAH-koh is the more 
usual among Latinists (and astronomers).
Yes, yes, the 'og' in 'boggart' should be like 'og' in 'smog'...:)
Pa-TRONE-us, yes, good...

I seem to recall that the rule was you pronounce Latinate vowels as 
long vowels when they occur before a consonant followed by a short 
vowel?? 
That would explain Pa-TRONE-us and DRAY-koh (and Seh-JAY-nus too)...

Must go dig out my textbooks...


Honoria Granger
Hermione's older, smarter cousin