soft or hard C in Celtic?

[doone09]

i've been told by native scots this has been a "class" issue. the educated elite using the hard c and looking down on the common folk who did use the soft c. any ideas?
i've also heard that the soft c is used only when speaking of a sports team, otherwise only the hard c is used for the cultural context. ??
what do native scots feel on this? is it same/different in ireland?

[Polwarth]

Soft C.
Except for the Irish origins of Seltik, the football club.

[Icecube]

You really should quote sources Doone 09. I have never heard such nonsense in my life about the pronunciation of a letter.

Its a hard see fur mee, as in Keltik.

[tig]

culture = hard c.....Ketlik

soccer = soft c....seltik


just 2 different ways of saying the same word depending on what ur talking about....no "class" involved

[Icecube]

Maybe the soft c pronunciation is from the Irish gaelic, it would figure.

[Calum Mac Neill]

Doone09, I have also heard Scottish people talking about the pronunciation of this word in terms of class but there are also issues of ethnicity involved.

A few hundred years ago, scholars identified Scottish, Irish, Manx, Welsh, Cornish and Breton as all being related to the remains of languages spoken by the ancient Brits, Gauls, etc. The continental speakers of such languages were first referred to as an overall group by the Greeks as Κέλται and Κελτοί.

However, the form of that name which entered the English language was based on the Latin form, 'Celtus'. Latin was once pronounced in Britain with a hard C before A O U and a soft C before I E, so 'canus' was pronounced like 'kanus' and 'Cicero' was pronounced like 'Sisero'. Scholars up until the twentieth century generally pronounced the English form of the word, 'Celt', with the soft C. This was still the case therefore when Glasgow Celtic football club was founded by Catholics in Scotland, apparently in acknowledgement of the joint Irish-Scottish nature of the club. As a result, the name of the club was and still is pronounced 'Seltik'.

In the twentieth century, scholars theorised that the C in Latin was not anciently pronounced like an S and, as a result, the pronunciation of ancient Latin was updated in classrooms and lecture-halls so that words like 'Cicero' were to be pronounced 'Kikero' rather than 'Sisero', and 'Keltikus' rather than 'Seltikus'. However, new pronunciations can be difficult to adopt and even scholars will still use the previous pronunciation of 'Cicero' with the soft C rather than the theoretically correct one with the hard C.

This has happened with the word 'Celtic' to a degree. In French and Spanish, the word is usually pronounced according to their respective spelling rules, which produce a soft C, as per the English rules. In the Breton, Cornish, Welsh, Manx, Irish & Scottish languages however, the equivalent terms are pronounced with an initial K sound. The speakers of such languages usually use the S pronunciation when using the French or Spanish form but the K pronunciation when using the English form, although Bretons are prone to import the French form into their English conversation.

You can see that this is not in origin a class issue, but a case of scholars coming along and amending the centuries-old English pronunciation of the word, a change which a proportion of native English speakers might regard as artificial, even amongst a putative 'educated elite'.

English-speaking scholars who are not speakers of a Celtic language tend to pronounce 'Celtic' with the K but some continue with the older practice. In Ireland, one generally speaks of a Keltik tiger rather than a Seltik one, likewise in Britain. Ordinary English-speaking people however may use either 'Seltik' or 'Keltik' when describe the linguistic group. There has been no study of the prevalence of either usage amongst the English-speaking populations of the world. The spelling rules of English mean that an English speaker unfamiliar with the word is likely to interpret the first C as being soft.

Those English-speakers trying to be truer to the pronunciation used by those who speak the languages concerned, which is also more historically correct with respect to the ancient Celts, can say 'Keltik'. Those content with later historical pronunciation of Latin can say 'Seltik'.

In Scotland, certain people still don't use the hard C pronunciation for personal use as they regard it as trying to be fancy. They prefer to use the pronunciation best known previously from the name Glasgow Celtic football club even when discussing the linguistic groups.

However, people can use pronunciation difference to distinguish between sporting and linguistic purposes, to make clear which is being referred to. This has led to the shinty team, Oban Celtic, aquiring the pronunciation 'Seltik' but Gaelic being described as a 'Keltik' language. A Protestant from the Isle of Lewis can therefore say meaningfully that being a 'Kelt' doesn't make him a 'Selt', meaning that he doesn't inevitably support Glasgow Celtic football club just because he is a Gaelic-speaker. (Support of Glasgow Celtic football club used to be more widespread in Lewis until Protestant Lewis people travelled more frequently to the Lowlands and decided to change their footballing allegiance from Glasgow Celtic to Glasgow Rangers.)

As we all know, when the less-moneyed (and sometimes less-educated) notice a person speaking differently to them (and reproducing the speech of the moneyed and sometimes more-educated), they sometimes respond negatively and draw the speaker's attention to the way he is speaking. Working class people in Scotland who move away from the 'Seltik' pronunciation to the 'Keltik' pronunciation can potentially draw criticism from other working class people for 'talking posh' because the change in pronunciation is recognised as being initiated by the well-educated.

Such behaviour may essentially be anti-snob in nature but both pronunciations have an academic origin, one pronunciation having entered common parlance before traditional Anglophone pronunciation of Latin was (partly) rejected in education in favour of reconstructed ancient Latin pronunciation.

Traditional English pronunciation of Latin developed naturally through time alongside French and Spanish pronunciation and therefore has a mass of authentic tradition behind it. The reconstruction of Latin pronunciation can only ever be theoretical as it is impossible to know that even a modern Italian using reconstructed ancient Latin pronunciation would produce precisely the same accent as that of, for example, Cicero because we have no sound recordings which would verify such reconstructions. Besides, most native English speakers attempting to use reconstructed ancient Latin pronunciation are not going to sound very Italian anyway.

Although I prefer the use of the hard C for the word 'Celtic' in relation to the linguistic group, this is purely a Gaelic preference, and I wouldn't consider this more valid or more called for in English than the soft C. For example, the word 'Iberian' is normally pronounced in English to rhyme with 'Siberian', and you won't hear of any English-speaking academic calling for the usual pronunciation to be replaced with 'eeberryan', which would be closer to the original pronunciation.

[J.McNeill]

Culture = Keltik pronunciation
Soccer (if your North American)/Football = Seltik

Good luck all