Celtic or Keltic?

why uncommon pronunciation is actually linguistically correct

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Celt
• Celtic
• pronunciation
• Indo-European
• tribe
• Barry
• Fell

[kscottm]

BTW, the spelling is center, not centre. You colourful and easily insulted Brits. Get over yourselves.

[cinnireseisri]

I can forgive this because I doubt you speak a Celtic language. But, I and other speakers of the language refer to ourselves in the form that you'd pronounce it in the hard fashion. All of this really comes off as extraordinarily ethnocentric. You probably don't mean it that way, but that's how it comes off. Just say this, pronouncing it like a "s" or a "k" depends on your dialect of English, whether it was more Latin influenced (s) or Celtic influenced (k). They're both right.

[kscottm]

I won't defend my pronunciation to the death, but I've extensively laid out my reasons for choosing Seltic over Keltic for purposes of an American documentary about American discoveries of non-indigenous archaeoastronomy with Celtic overtones. If I come off as ethnocentric, deal with it. People are far too sensitive citing political incorrectness these days. The devil's in the details. I can agree to disagree. Documentarians catch hell for all sorts of things. Comes with the territory. Slán

[gregdancingmachine]

The word 'Celt' derives from 'Keltoi', which was the Greek word for Celts. I'm not a linguist, but I'm straining to think of any time that a hard K transforms into an S. Celts don't call themselves 'Selts', and probably never have, except for the Boston Celts, because Bostonians are born with a brain disease that makes them talk with a goofy accent and mispronounce half the words in the English language.

[kscottm]

Kall me a Kontrarian, then. But Konsider the words "cell," "cellular," "cement." "cent," "center," "circle," along with "Celt." I'm Sticking with Barry Fell on this one. The classic English pronunciation of the word does NOT derive from the Greek, but rather from the French which soften the C.  --- author kscottm

[HonestBollocks]

well the boston basketball and glasgow soccer teams go with Celtic and are pronounced Seltic indeed, but Celtic in Irish is Ceilteach and is pronounced Keeltalk, Celt is what we are and also Kelt is too we pronounce it with a K because of our heritage, the sport teams pronounce it with a S because it does not mean they are Celtic, also Seltic is used for a team and Keltic is for heritage so your argument is pointless

[SandThruFingers]

Celts themselves do not use this pronunciation, how can you possibly think it is the correct one based on LATIN?!?! Old English and French are more Germanic and Latin-based than any Celtic influences.. so, this is incorrect.

[vdwfan47]

Why did you have to be outside to say this?

[CommissarRed]

@kscottm If I called a Vietnamese and Indo-Chinamen and he corrected me should I continue to use that term anywhere even after its been made clear that the designation has no meaning for the people it refers too? according to you I should ignore the wishes and wisdom of the people themselves and carry on with my obscure and outdated pronunciation because hey what do they know?

[CommissarRed]

@kscottm "The classic English pronunciation of the word does NOT derive from the Greek, " So what? maybe you haven't realised it but Celts are not English and there Languages (can you speak any of them?) do not follow the same rules as English. Your stubbornness is ridiculous. The letter C is pronounced like K or Kuh sound in many Celtic dialects like Irish, the Greeks called them Keltoi and the two peoples interacted on many levels. and today we modern"Kelts" use the K. Use is the final say.

[CommissarRed]

@kscottm Pretty hypocritical of you, you got the language spelling and pronunciation, from Britain so any changes from that must be a deviation. You cannot seriously expect anyone to agree with your academic purist pronunciations and then just ignore your countries own deviations. Its funny as well since the re form of spelling comes from French just like the Celtic with an S.

[spopescuful]

and the comment about how you doubt americans will ever pronounce it leisure kentre rather than centre, was also a obvious slander of the british, insulted sir, very insulted!

[spopescuful]

this sounds both arrogant and potential, language is FULL of inconsistencies, who are you to change the norm of how a word is pronounced and if that is the 'norm' then you should respect the way its pronounced.

[sirdaniel1975]

The letter "C" in Gaelic has a "Kuh" sound. "Period"

[muyany]

Well, this was very interesting, seeing as everyone kept correcting me when I pronunecd it with a K, until a teacher told me it could be pronunced both way. To me it sounded better because the Dutch word is 'Kelten' If I remember correctly one of my teachers this year did say something about how the latin C was eventually pronunced as a S in English, but unfortunetly I don't remember the details.