🚀 go-pugleaf

In <01GSF2YTY5Q8I7IMKE@kiera.ericsson.se> LMEBGO@kiera.ericsson.se (Bengt G{llmo, L M Ericsson, Stockholm, Sweden) writes:

>My wife and I have an annual disagreement on the pronounciation 
>of a Latin word.  She sings in a choir.  At this time of the  
>year, they sing Christmas carols, mostly English.  Several of 
>them include the Latin phrase "Gloria in excelsis Deo".  Our 
>disagreement concerns the "c".  The choir pronounces it as an 
>Englishman pronounces "ch" in "china".  I have told them that 
>they sing Latin in Italian; that is how an Italian would
>pronounce "excelsis".  It is also awkward to sing.  In Latin, 
>I claim, the "c" should simply be pronounced "s".  A counter-
>claim from somebody in the choir is that the "ch" pronounciation 
>is correct if you are singing Latin from a certain century (the 
>17th?), to which I reply that the phrase must have been used in 
>church at least a thousand years before that.   

>Comments, anyone?

Comments, yes. Solutions - no.

Anyway. I sing in a choir myself and since we quite frequently sing music
with latin words (this is a church choir), the problem regularly comes up.
We tend to distinguish between two pronounciations: the 'German' one 
and the 'Italian' one (these are just labels, no more).
They differ mostly in the pronounciation of 'c' before 'slender' vowels
(i.e. 'i', 'e', 'ae', 'oe'): 
German: c = 'ts' (German 'z')
Italian: c = 'ch'
Other differences occur in words such as 'magnam' - is it mag-nam with a
hard 'g' or is it 'manyam'? Also there are slight differences in 'e' and
'o' - closed or open pron. and some other details.
From time to time someone also proposes what they call 'Latin' pronounciation -
pronouncing every c as 'k', regardless of position, things like that.

We normally decide these matters without too much discussion - sometimes
on 'historical' or 'personal' reasons: we tend to pronounce something
by one of the Bachs the German way whereas Rossini would get the Italian
treatment. In my opinion, the main thing is that everyone pronounces
the words in the same way.

Merry Christmas and keep on singing!

Martin