Latin C & G: Are they always hard? | Latin Pronunciation 

🇮🇹 Subscribe to the @Metatron and watch his newest video where he speaks in exquisite Classical Latin pronunciation! ⚔️ and teaches us about the Lōrīca Segmentāta armour entirely in Latin. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-lJq_l6Ihs2c.html 🇪🇸 And another of new my favorite channels is @Linguriosa who talks all about language and changes from Latin to Spanish, among other really cool topics: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-WZ_X_yTWN0E.html 🗡 Latin V pronuncation history: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-hovf-UK-toQ.html 📖 My Latin meter and poetry recitation lessons: ru-vid.com/group/PLQQL5IeNgck0-tQ4AZgKFMlQCJud_VY_H 🏺 The Lucian Pronuncation of Ancient Greek: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Dt9z5Gvp3MM.html 🏛 The Immortal Language: How Pronunciation Made Meaning Everlasting: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-XeqTuPZv9as.html ⛪️ In Defense of the Ecclesiastical Pronunciation of Latin | Ecclesiastical vs Classical Pronunciation: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-zq3FJNibKHk.html 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 Dialect VS Language | Italian Dialects, Scots Language, Romance Languages, Greek Dialects: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-zUlNhs8rJ_g.html And if you like, do consider joining this channel: ru-vid.com/show-UCLbiwlm3poGNh5XSVlXBkGAjoin 🦂 Support my work on Patreon: www.patreon.com/LukeRanieri ☕️ Support my work with PayPal: paypal.me/lukeranieri 📚 Luke Ranieri Audiobooks: luke-ranieri.myshopify.com 🏛 Ancient Greek in Action · Free Greek Lessons: ru-vid.com/group/PLU1WuLg45SixsonRdfNNv-CPNq8xUwgam 👨‍🏫 My Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata playlist · Free Latin Lessons: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-j7hd799IznU.html 🦂 ScorpioMartianus (my channel *entirely* in Latin & Ancient Greek) ru-vid.com 🌍 polýMATHY website: lukeranieri.com/polymathy/ 😊 polýMATHY on Facebook: facebook.com/lukepolymath 🐦 polýMATHY on Twitter: twitter.com/LukePolymath/ 🎮 Join the Discord community: discord.gg/u4PN2u2 🌅 polýMATHY on Instagram: instagram.com/lukeranieri/ 🦁 Legio XIII Latin Language Podcast: ru-vid.com 🎙 Hundreds of hours of Latin & Greek audio: lukeranieri.com/audio 👕 Merch: teespring.com/stores/scorpiomartianus 🦂 www.ScorpioMartianus.com 🦅 www.LukeRanieri.com ☕️ Supported in part by LanguageMugs.com : languagemugs.com/shop/?wpam_id=11 📖 My book Ranieri Reverse Recall on Amazon: amzn.to/2nVUfqd

As an italian, i feel personally attacked by the accurate imitation at the very beginning of this video. So i'm going to express my disappointment by subscribing to this interesting channel

And even more clearly Quintilian tells us here: "c littera, *quae ad omnis vocalis vim suam perferat.* " "the letter c *which maintains its strength when followed with all the vowels.* " (In this context he's talking about why K is a useless letter, because C always makes the same sound regardless of what vowel follows)

I'd like to see a video about why CE; CI; GE and GI sound the way they do in Portuguese, French and Spanish.

-"We need to travel to the emerald isle of..." -*excited Irish noises* -"...Sardinia" -*sad Irish noises*

"It is natural for [ke] and [ge] to change into [ce] and [ʝe]." Meanwhile, in the German language, people changing to pronunciation of "Chemie" [çeˈmiː] into [keˈmiː] because they find the [ç]-sound in front of i/e too difficult.

I’ve heard stories about C and G, but I had never thought I would see it here. Truly a blessing.

Ok the impression of an Italian speaking in English has killed me!! As an Italian myself I can only say: bravo!

I would have never thought that I'd see my language (Albanian) be mentioned in your videos. I'm teary!

Have a look on German *Kaiser* for Caesar, which is somewhat pronounced like the classical Latin one.

A linguistic and historical lesson. It’s amazing when you stop and think about it. All the languages that have been spoken over time and how annunciation and pronunciation are so very important.

"Ecce littera!" I spit out my vino in laughter!

Yey, Luke mentions us! We are a linguistic fossil! Kisses and hugs from Sardinia! ❤️ Candu beni inoghe?

It would be great if you talk about the " CE; CI; GE and GI pronunciation in Spanish, French and Portuguese :) Saludos!!!

Another excellent video!

Nessuno ama l'umanità più dei linguisti e con questo intendo l'umanità tutta, passata e presente. E anche nel momento in cui una lingua sia lontana dal gusto personale, la trattate sempre con estremo rispetto. Il linguaggio è qualcosa di vivo, proprio come noi, nelle sue molteplici forme si evolve influenzando e influenzandosi continuamente. Non esiste esclusione, non esiste emarginazione, e se qualcuno mai avanzasse, anche ingenuamente, queste tesi nello studio delle lingue... semplicemente non sarebbe un linguista. So, for you Luke only love and respect.

Luke, your channel is a “whole vibe,” as the kids say these days 😌🤣

Great video. The pronounciation tips were amazing and explaining the distinction between front/back vowels was very enlightening. Thanks

I wake up late in the morning, just to find a new video waiting for me. Thank you, Luke, you made my day! *Η καλημέρα από το πρωί φαίνεται* ☀️

Fascinating as always! I love these phonological videos!

Please make more videos like these, they're awesome! Bravo!

Excelente teaching Sr

Interesting stuff! Very clear and well-researched presentation

Great content! I love these videos. ¡Y me encanta Linguriosa también! Divertida e informativa, ya estoy suscrito desde hace un tiempo 👍.

Quality content, as usual!

Although Basque is not a romance language it has many words of latin and romance origin. Depending on when a word was borrowed it may retain the classical pronunciation of Latin. Some examples: bake (

I didn't realize that you were a comedian as well as a linguist! You had me laughing here in between the stimulating content. Great and interesting work as always, Luce!

Great work Thank you Luke !

Very interresting! thanks a lot!

Love these videos, Luke!

Really interesting!! Gratias tibi :)

Ecce litera 🤣🤣🤣 just love everything about this video! Your vivid explanations, your further videos for almost every topic, the look inside Pantheon and your armchair alter ego. Brill🤓iant 👏👏👏😘

You’ve inspired me to learn Classical Latin, thanks for such a quality channel

Thank you!

As a slavist to me this rings many bells; the centum, satem references and the velar palatalisations that occurred over time through the slavic world. I only managed 1 year of Latin at school - really must revisit. Thanks.

Il video che tutti i latinisti italiani e italòfoni attendevano! Aahahah! Grazie mille, sempre interessantissimi come al solito i tuoi contenuti!

Hey Luke, I just want to say respect and thanks a lot for what you are doing. I am neither learning latin nor ancient greek, but had them at school, hated them there (as a subject) and never learned anything because they were taught terribly (at least for me and 99% of the class). Now I've seen you a couple of times appearing on different channels I regularly watch (ecolinguist or podcast italiano for example) and I am so amazed seeing how you are able to talk in latin, it's very cool (it was never like that at school, never seen a teacher "freely" talking to us in latin, just translating and grammar exercises) and every time I think what a fantastic teacher you are and that I would have learned so much more with you as a teacher haha. Now I find myself watching your videos every now and then (while in school I would have never expected to one day watch videos about latin pronunciation in my free time haha) Anyways, I think it's fantastic what you are doing, I am sure you are helping a lot of people out there studying these languages or getting interested, great channels and cool videos!

Another excellent video! Of course you should do a video about the sound of these letters in french, spanish, portuguese!

Professional content as usual, Sir. I really apprechiate watching your videos with my monocle from my armchair, scratching my 19century mustache at the philosopher pose xD Seriously, love your videos Luke!!

Me encanta tus diferentes personajes que simpático Haha tú fanatica favorita por aquí😉

Great video!

Eccellente, amico!

yes luke do a video on why c and g sound the way they do in portuguese, spanish and french! that would be awesome!!

Thank you

Interesting video! Learned some details that are not in my syllabus, but I more or less knew what you said (thanks to all the diachronic linguistics I have this semester). Also, I welcome any and all topics you deem interesting enough to talk about.

A few remarks about Albanian (from an Albanian language specialist): It is positively surprising that you mention Albanian here! I have been casually watching your old videos in the past few weeks and they are, as always, incredibly informative and amusing. However, some of the examples taken for Albanian are not entirely adequate. The ancestors of modern Albanian speakers have indeed been in contact with Latin starting from about the 2nd century BC -- however, this contact stretched out for many centuries hence, which means that Latin itself changed and local proto-Romance idioms started forming in the Balkans adjacent to and among the areas were Albanian was spoken (e.g. Proto-Romanian, Proto-Dalmatian, etc.) This naturally makes it quite pain-staking to know which idiom is the source of a given word in Albanian, but we have a general idea of what words are significantly older than others. For one, gjeni 'genius' is definitely a modern borrowing from Romance and cannot be grouped with the rest of the words mentioned. On the other hand, qind /cind/ 'hundred' < lat. centum and gjind /ɟind/ < lat. gentem are completely right and most likely belong to the older set of borrowed lexical units. Other words that are certainly older belong to church terminology (as Christianity was brought to the Albanian-speakers through the Roman Empire) and some of them also show this change: kryq /kɾyc/ 'cross' from lat. crux (acc. crucem), engjëll /ˈɛnɟəɫ/ 'angel', ungjill /unˈɟiɫ/ 'gospel' < ēvangelium; some personal names also belong to this group, e.g. Gjergj /ɟɛɾɟ/ < lat. Geōrgius. However, the palatalisation of velar plosives preceding front vowels likely happened within Albanian (and wasn't directly borrowed from Latin) as Albanian most likely did not have a /ɟ/ and /c/ sound at the time the oldest Latin borrowings, so they couldn't have been rendered as such. This is obvious if we look at verbal borrowings such as dërgon /dəɾˈgɔn/ 'he/she sends/ < lat. dīrigere (most likely borrowed from the infinitive or the third person singular dīrigit, both of which have a g + front vowel) whereby the stem dīrig- /ˈdiːriɡ/ (and not /ˈdiːriɟ/!) was fitted within the -on type of the first conjugation in Albanian, and as such remains unpalatalized today (compare Italian dirigere /diˈrid͡ʒere/). On the other hand, verbs like (më) pëlqen /pəlˈcɛn/ 'he/she likes' < lat. placēre, whereby the stem /plak-/ was fitted within the -en type of the first conjugation and, being now in front of /e/, it was ultimately palatalized within Albanian during the next few centuries. Albanian is a wonderful language to study, especially if we want to understand more about how significant the influence of Latin was all over the Roman Empire. If you'd be interested to do something in this direction, let me know! Best, Plator

The Metatron gave you a shout out on his channel. Your video is great.

Excellent video as always, reminds me very much of the video from Metatron on the same topic. I still find the sound shift of C and G fascinating because it happens in so many languages as you mention. Sardinian's conservativism in this regard is fascinating.

His commitment to the ecclesiastical latin disclaimer. Respect.

Linguriosa is very good, I'm glad you're following her. :-)

You need more subs and views man

Thanks Luke👍

I am a portuguese native speaker. Now I am learning italian and romanian simutaneously and your videos help me to cope with that suicidal strategy i've made for myself. You're a great linguist and I admire the ability you have. Hope some day I have a small percentage of it. Cheers from Brazil!

Brawissimo!

What is weird for us Spanish speakers is how we isolated ourselves so much with c, j, g and x when it used to be very similar if not the same as any other Romance language

Hey Luke, interestingly these sound changes from k to ch and s can also be found in Dravidian languages. Linguists also consider the velar "k" sounds were pronounced in ancient Dravidian languages. Many modern Dravidian languages like Telugu, Tamizh, Malayalam pronounce it as "ch", where Kannada also a Dravidian language pronounced as "k" and "g". And also interestingly many c and s changes have occurred due to front vowels in between them. For example the Dravidian word for hand in all languages is "kai" or "kay", but the Dravidian word for "do" differs with Kannada and other Dravidian languages. In Tamizh it is "cheyi" and in Telugu it is "chēsi". But in Kannada it is "gēydu" with velar g. We can find enormous example like these. In Tamil, the word for red is "sevempu" but in Kannada it is "kempu". In Tamil the word for small or tiny is "Chiru", but in Kannada it is "Kiru". So here Kannada retains the original Dravidian "k" sounds as like sardinian in romance languages.

In italian and I personally pronounce as [kʷ] and in even contrast [kʷɔ] "e.g. quota" from [kwɔ] "e.ɡ. cuoco"

Old Latin had an interesting rule where the velar stop was written differently depending on the letter after it. Before O and U it was Q, before E and I it was C, and before everything else it was K. For example, Kalends is written with a K.

LOL those impressions were amazing. Also really fascinating video as always. Though, one can not help but ask, is that third episode of Barbarians' Latin still in the works, or has it been cancelled? I think you told me on Patreon that it was likely to come out by the end of March :D

These sounds also exist in some modern Greek dialects such as my native Cypriot, Cretan and South Italian

The impressions are absolutely killing me 😂😂😂

Brazilian Portuguese native here, that learned some Latin with Nonna classes: It’s cool when you mention the differences between ecclesiastic Latin and Classical Latin. Growing up in Brazil, my grandma (daughter of an Italian immigrant), had Latin, French and English classes in school back in the 30s (she was born in 1929, and passed away last year, 2021). Ok, she couldn’t speak any of these languages fluently, but she could communicate a little in French, she wouldn’t starve in an English speaking place, and Latin, back then, was taught more for religious reasons (Catholic Church masses were in Latin until the 60s, if my memory doesn’t fail). And that’s how I learned a little of Latin when I was a kid, with her, and it mostly Catholic Latin. There was one single church in my hometown (Curitiba, Brazil) that had some masses in latin. I don’t know if they still doing that, I live in San Francisco, USA, but I no longer even consider myself a Catholic probably since I was 15, so it’s been almost 15 years since I last been to that church. I remember going to these masses, and I could keep up with the priest and understand most of what he was saying. Of course, I had my grandma teaching me a lot the basis, and she had a book in Latin with all the masses throughout the year. I’d get this book and read a lot of what the priest was saying, and that helped a lot to understand, since Portuguese-Latin similarities become even more obvious when the language is written. By the way, grandma could not speak fluent Latin, but she could teach me a lot, she would always lend me her books in Latin and let me explore. Still, I remember how she taught me to pronounce “C” in Latin, which was C is pronounced in “Ciao” in Italian. I remember, classic example, at “Our Father”, she would say the beginning “Pater Noster qui es in Caelis” pronounced like “Pater Noster kee (instead “kwee”, trying to write vocalically in English haha) es in “Chelis” (Ch being pronounced like in “cheese” in English, and the “e” pronounced like “é” in Portuguese, and I can’t find that sound in English). Basically, her pronunciation was very ecclesiastic.

Vale! You could do a video about roman legion weapons and their names like for example the gladius sword the pugio etc. With your knowledge in latin this can be pretty cool for many ancient rome enthusiasts. You can even include the names of their armor and such. Anyways great video bro!

Lol it was in watching Metatron that iwas introduced to your channel 😄

Really good for my OCD/ASMR when the intro rang with the first note of Die Zauberflute and then he starts talking about "C". Marvelous.

We need more British Luke. Like tons more. Gotta say, your editing is getting super cool!

You are a wind of knowledge 🌬️🌀🤯 I love the eGo-driven invention of the letter g

In an inscription from the claustrum of the Basilica di San Paolo fuori le Mura at Rome: "MARQE (...) REQESQ[E] IN PACE" (note C in "pace")

maybe you can consider making a video regarding the similarities between german and latin: there are a lot of latin stuff in german... some words are the same as latin and some letters has the same sound (like q very similar to k, y said almost like an u, the letter g as 'ge'...etc)

Great video as always. I'd been wondering for some time why Latin used Q at all, being so similar to C. I was aware of the slight difference in pronunciation in Spanish and Italian, but didn't think it translated to to Latin in a similar way. And yes, you should make a video about CE and CI pronunciations in Romance languages.

When you aspirate the “w” in words like “what” and “why”, I find it simultaneously aggravating and fascinating. Can you make a video about that?

Oh!!! So that's why even in english, after 'Q' is always followed by 'U' and never any other vowels. Like QUeen, QUeue, QUick etc.

after more than 10 years finally i know the answer to this. thanks for the very in depth explanation.

I love this channel, I'm an Albanian myself and i am fascinated by Languages and lately by Latin too. Lately i noticed how much Latin words i subconsciously used in my language without really thinking of it. The Albanian language itself is very very old and rich, but many words are forgotten and replaced by Latin ones. Out of 10 words of today's Albanian, 5 or 6 are solid Latin, for example: Ështe from Est= It is Dërgoj from Dirigo= Send Herë from Hora= Time (one more time) Pëllumb from Palumbus= Bird Popull from Populus=People Rrugë from Ruga= Road or path Shigjetar from Sagittarius= Bowman Qiell from Caelum= Sky Shpatull from Spatula= Shoulder Shtrat from Stratum= Bed Paqe from Pax= Peace Peshk from Piscis= Fish E Martë from Dies Martis= Tuesday E Mërkurë from Dies Mercurii= Thursday Etc

Well, as you said... please make a video about the sound of C in the romance languages you mentioned! And if it could also include the intriguing story of the ch in french (as in château - castle - castelo or chat - cat - gato or Charles - Carlos - Carollus)

Finally! I was really looking forward to see a video on this topic! Also Sardinian is such an interesting language, I’m glad you talked about it, also Albanian borrowed word, I remember having come across the word peshk/pishk, fish, and thought about how it retained the k, and doing research found there was a ton of Albanian words from Latin with the "hard c" and "hard g" sounds retained. One other thing that came to mind are cognates in Greek or Latin words borrowed from Greek (and some words in Greek borrowed from Latin at the time) like how we have ωκεανός or κέντρον with both the "hard c" sound in Greek (why would they have become k sounds in Latin), or how some evolutions retained the old k sound, like in French vaincre (to defeat) or Dalmatian kenur (to dine), lukierna (lamp), pask (fish), radaika (root), kanaisa (ash), gheluat (cold), fakir (to do) and others. Also in Celtic languages and in Basque there are many loan words that retained the k and g sound where it became the "soft c" sounds in Romance languages.

I would love to see a video by you about the origin of Latin and Romans, where did they come from and so on.

Grazie, ora finalmente capisco tutto il meccanismo dietro a tutta questa confusione di C, G, Q e K che dopo i miei studi liceali mi era comunque rimasta! Se fossi un professore di latino mostrerei in classe tutti i tuoi video😁

Really enjoy your amazing discussions! Much of what you describe goes over my head. You probably covered this in the video but how did the Romans pronounce circus and Cicero? Thanks!

In Breton, Latin loans with "c" in the initial keep the "k" sound: cena --> koen / koan (diner) cera --> koer / koar (wax) (The long "e" of Latin was first diphthonged into /we/, which later became /wa/, except in the southwestern third which has retained the diphthong /we/ to this day.) civitate --> keoded cella --> kell circulus --> kelc'h cerasum --> kerez (cherry)

C or G or K? German, Russian, Vietnamese, Greek and some other languages: "Ok, we think we should recommend "kh" or /x/." The rest: " What?"

In Croatian we have changes called sibilarization and palatalization where k, g, h change to c (as in tzatziki), z (as in zero), s (as in sun) or č (as in change), ž (as in genre), š (as in sheep) before e and i

Salve!

In Russia we are taught to pronounce latin "ce/cae" and "ci" as [tse] and [tsi], i.e. caesar is articulated as [tsezar] (in the modern Russian this historic title is pronounced the same way), dicere as [ditsere], etc.

Please we need a lesson on how to decipher Latin inscriptions 🙏🏻💖

I was going to do an imitation like you did in a video about the same subject! lol.

7:34 It would be fantastic a video about this.

Doesn't absence of U contributed a lot to preservation of Q? Because before introduction of U, when V used both for U and V, difference between Q and C helps people to read (compare CVIVS/QVIVS).

Wow I thought of this on my known 7 months ago. U in g γ, T to δ, and in B Also q makes hard e. g. Equus, Ηίqvoς, Ηίππος Quinque πέμπε, aeolian πέντε. Great video

I'm almost sure the palatalization of Ce and Ci in portuguese (probably occured in the same way to spanish) - from latin /ke/ to modern /se/ - went through a middle stage /tse/, similar to italian /tʃe/, what makes me think that this change happened in vulgar latin... so, same for ge and gi, that would be /dʒe/ and /dʒi/. Not sure, though, but it would explain a lot how soft C happened in western romance languages...

Good stuff as always Luke! When I was a kid learning Latin I was always struck by the odd way that the spelling of 'qui' changes as it declines, going from 'qui' to 'cuius' and 'cui' in the genitive and dative respectively across all genders. Does that signify a different pronunciation? Did 'cui' sound different to 'qui'? Or did speakers just rely on context to know what case they were using?

At 2:55 and on, did you mean to use [ɟ] for the voiced palatal plosive/occlusive rather than [ʝ], which as far as I know is the transcription for the voiced palatal fricative?

Suuuuper interessante....

Also central Friulian retained the transitional sounds /c/ and /ɟ/, written as "cj" and "gj". See cjan (dog), cjase (house), gjat (cat), gjonde (joy).

Gratia

In sorani kurdish, this same palatalization occurs. Some dialects pronouns ce or ge as che (or a palatal c) and je. I pronounce it as the original form as it is normal in our dialect

I love your videos and i really appreciate them. I have to say that i know c was hard before i and e in latin. The romans told us that. But the argument that sardinian has a hard c and the othe romance languages don't so it's all the others that changed, is an odd argument that i have heard. If i were to make that case about any other language family, i would be told that i am wrong and that the odd one out was the one that changed.

L'imitazione di un Italiano all'inizio mi ha steso😂😂

In albanian qytet < lat. cīvitātem, qiqër < lat. cicer. These words must have entered early in proto-albanian considering the phonology.

Ciao Luke! Could you explain how the world Morbidus became “soft” in Italian? I heard some explanation of Chris from Kangoroo English, but I’d like to know how it happened. Muito obrigado!