2022-01-12
ศัพท์ น่าสับสน - Set – C – celtic
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Dictionary.com:
ออกเสียง celtic = “KEL-tik” or “SEL-tik”
Common Errors in English Usage Dictionary:
Celtic
Because the Boston Celtics basketball team
pronounces its name as if it began with an S,
Americans are prone to use this pronunciation of the word
as it applies to the Bretons, Cornish, Welsh, Irish and Scots;
but the dominant pronunciation
among sophisticatedUS speakers
is “keltik.”
Just remember: “Celts in kilts.”
Interestingly,
the Scots themselves often use the “S” pronunciation,
notably in referring to the soccer team, “Glasgow Celtic.”
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language:
Celts or their languages.
Usage Note:
Although many people pronounce this word
with an initial (s) sound,
an initial (k) sound
is standard in historical, linguistic, and sociological contexts.
Interestingly,
the introduction of the (k) sound
is a linguistic change started by scholars,
contravening the historical development of the word.
The c was probably pronounced (s), as is usual before e,
when the word entered English from French and Latin in the 1600s.
The later pronunciation with (k) imitates that of the original
Latin word Celtae, a name for the Gauls,
the ancient Celtic tribes of France.
The (s) pronunciation has no doubt been reinforced by the success
and popularity of Boston's professional basketball team, the Celtics,
a name that is sometimes shortened to the Celts.
Both are always pronounced with the (s) sound.
Merriam-Webster Dictionary:
Word History
Why Is'Celtic' Pronounced Two Ways?
\SELT\ has been heard for many centuries; \KELT\, just a few.
What to Know
Celtic refers to Irish culture and heritage,
along with the historical people who migrated from the British Isles
throughout much of Europe.
While the early pronunciation was with an /s/ sound,
reflecting its nearest origin in French,
the modern standard is a hard "c" sound like /k/.
This is because language historians desired the word to better reflect
its Greek and Classical Latin origins.
The soft "c" sound is usually reserved for sports teams now,
like the Boston Celtics.
Be it in the pub or in the halls of academia,
whenever the topic of Irish culture, language, music, literature
—basically, anything Irish
—is brought up, the words CELT AND CELTIC are bound to be heard.
In modern-day English, those words are commonly used
in reference to the Irish people and their widely-accepted traditions
(of course everybody is Irish on St.Patric’s Da;
The Celtic cross or knot is a popular tattoo;
The Claddagh ring makes a nice gift).
The etymology of the noun Celt
—from which the adjective Celtic is derived
—is straightforward.
It's a 16th-century borrowing of the French word Celte,
which itself is fromLatin Celta, the singular of Celtae,
which is the name for a member of an early Indo-European people
from antiquity who spread over much of Europe from the British Isles and Spain to Asia Minor.
The Latin name is derived from Greek Keltoi,
and both the Latin and Greek words referred to the Gauls,
the Celtic people who occupied the region that is now France and Belgium. See? Straightforward.
With that history laid out,
we're wondering how you pronounced
all the capital 'c' and 'k' words, especially if you're unfamiliar with French, Latin, Greek, and even English Celt and Celtic, for that matter.
The question: is the 'c' sounded \s\ or \k\?
How to Pronounce "Celtic"
Following its French and Latin predecessors,
early pronunciation of Celt was actually \SELT\.
(In French and Latin, the 'c' is pronounced \s\,
as in the last name of the French painter Paul Cezanne
and in Latin century.)
The pronunciation \KELT\started being heard as early as the 18th century, which, in time, ushered in the variant spelling Kelt.
The variants were introduced by language and history academics
who believed that the pronunciation of Celt should reflect
the initial \k\ sound in the ancient Greek Keltoi
and the Classical Latin Celtae.
(It wasn't until the Middle Ages that the letter 'c' in Latin
began being pronounced before vowels
as the combination \ts\—prior, it was pronounced \k\;
English speakers subsequently reduced the Latin 'c' to a simple \s\.)
Outside of academia,
the variant Kelt never caught on, and it is rarely if ever used today;
however, the \k\ pronunciation for Celt
and Celtic has since flourished.
S- vs K- Sound
Another influence on pronouncing Celt and Celtic
with a soft ‘c’ is English's phonetic rule for 'c'
when followed by 'e' (or 'i,' as in circus orCicero),
which says that, in such cases, the 'c' is usually pronounced as \s\.
Think cell, cereal, ceiling, and dance.
Nevertheless, English speakers,
especially those who wanted to sound knowledgeable
about things Celtic, grew to prefer the hard 'c' pronunciation,
which harkened back to the words' ancient roots.
From the 18th century onward, more and more people
began sounding the words with an initial \k\.
By the mid-20th century, \k\ became the norm,
which is fitting since the pronunciation is
in line with that of the Celtic family of languages
that include Irish, Scotish, Gaelic, Welsh, Breton,
and the now-extinct (or, depending on who you talk to, nearly extinct) languages Manx and Cornish.
Apparently, people appreciated the ethnic pronunciation.
This shift in the pronunciation of Celt
is fully evinced when comparing H. W. Fowler's 1926
Dictionary of Modern English with Robert Burchfield's 1996
revised edition.
Here's what Fowler had to say about Celt(ic):
"The spelling C-, & the pronunciation s-,
are the established ones, & no useful purpose
seems to be served by the substitution of k-.
" Decades later, Burchfieldobserves a different trend: "
Except for the football club Celtic (in Glasgow),
which is pronounced[SEL-tik],
both Celt and Celtic are pronounced with initial \k\ in standard English."
Burchfield is referring to the Scottish Celtic Football Club,
founded in 1887.
In America, there is basketball's Boston Celtics, founded in 1946,
whose name is also pronounced with an initial \s\.
The European away support that Celtic enjoys is phenomenal.
Few clubs have a fanbase that travels in such numbers
or makes as much noise,
all the more remarkable when you consider
the poor record that the club has away from home in recent times.
— Liam Kelly, The Celtic Star, 20 Feb. 2020
Aside from this use of the initial soft 'c' in sports teams' names,
Celtic with a hard 'c' is the standard;
however, you might still sometimes hear the 'c' softly sounded
by those who are uninitiated in the history and etymology of Celt and Celtic
as well as those who are unfamiliar with the words
and resort to the phonetic rules of English.
(And, as happens so often in English, those phonetic rules let them down.)
