Newsgroup: it.cultura.linguistica.inglese
Titolo: Celts, Selts, Kelts...

Chi puņ aiutarmi?
Vorrei sapere l'esatta pronuncia delle parole celt e celtic: si usa la K
o la S?
Grazie

 ha scritto nel messaggio
news:3B628DBB...@tin.it...
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C'č una differenza tra pronuncia americane e inglese ma non ricordo mai
which which .
Si puņ dire in effetti in tutti e due modi.
Yours
Sal

English English is Keltic, except for the football team Glasgow Seltic....

 English English is Keltic, except for the football team Glasgow Seltic....
The same is true in the US. Celtic is pronounced with a "K" sound. Oddly enough,
the Boston Celtics basketball team is pronounced with an "S" sound. Quite an
interesting parallel phenomenon, isn't it?
Ciao,
Ron
USA

 English English is Keltic, except for the football team Glasgow Seltic....
American English is Keltic, except for the basketball team Boston Seltics...
-- 
Dale Erwin
http://home.earthlink.net/~erwintech

-- 
The number of needless annoyances of english pronounciation will
never stop amazing me.

La mia prof di inglese le accettava entrambe...se tu può confortare! =)

 never stop amazing me.
That's only the beginning, the spelling will amaze as well.  There may be
spelling rules, but there are sufficient enough exceptions to keep you
guessing.  It's probably easier to spell than French, but that's not saying
much.
Rick

 never stop amazing me.
Blame it on its hybrid origins. Each language left some rules, but
not all rules.
Me,  I can't understand having 49 versions of each verb...
Loki
 

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Celtic is pronounced with the K sound, because it was inherited from Welsh
Gaelic (gallese).  Many Americans (don't know about Brits) mistakenly
pronounce it with the S sound because they are ignorant of its origin.
I have an idea the the Seltics pronunciation, as applied to the name of the 
basketball team, stems from this same ignorance when the team was first
formed.
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On second thought, maybe it was Scottish Gaelic.  See what I mean about
ignorant Americans?
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 much.
    I don't think so. The French spelling is a mess, I agree, but the
English one is even more chaotic. I mean, when you hear an unknown French
word you may wonder whether there is a silent final consonant or whether /E/
is supposed to be "è", "ai", "er", etc., but when you see a new word you're
very often able to pronounce it correctly. True, part of this is due to the
fixed final stress.
    Bye,
           Nicola
--
Multa non quia difficilia sunt non audemus, sed quia non audemus sunt
difficilia (Seneca).

 fixed final stress.
I would have said the same about English, that upon seeing a new word I can
most of the time pronounce it correctly, but maybe it's because the ones that
give people headaches are the short ones and it's likely I know those already.
I have a very limited exposure to French, but in comparing what I was hearing
on tape with what was printed in my booklet, I thought it was worse than
English.
Also, I thought the rule was, in French, the syllables are all pronounced with
the same stress.  What are you saying;  the final syllable is always stressed
or that IF there is a stress, it will be on the final syllable?
Rick

 or that IF there is a stress, it will be on the final syllable?
    In French, the stress is always on the last syllable of a word if you
pronounce that word in isolation, otherwise each "chunk" (depending on
intonation, emphasis and logical units) has one stress on its last syllable.
Of course, when the stress is fixed, it may seem absent to a non-expert, but
if you ever studied a language which really has no stress, like Chinese or
Japanese, you would catch the difference.
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So we agree, it's mainly the little words that would give anyone learning
English a fit?    I'm sure we could go on for hours with similar examples.
Thanks for the French info.
Rick

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Rich, with everything you say here, I agree.  I thought rule for stress in
French was that all syllables receive equal stress.  I also believe that
I can correctly pronounce new words in English more often than not.  In
Italian the only problem I have is with the stress.  Even though the rule
says the penultimate, it is very often the one before the penultimate,
occasionally, the one before that, and sometimes even the one before that. 
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Rick, with everything you say here, I agree.  I thought the rule for stress 
in French was that all syllables receive equal stress.  I also believe that
I can correctly pronounce new words in English as often as Italians can in
Italian.  In Italian the only problem I have is with the stress.  Even though 
the rule says the penultimate, it is very often the one before the penultimate,
occasionally, the one before that, and sometimes even the one before that. 
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 occasionally, the one before that, and sometimes even the one before that.
    There is no "rule". Simply a relative majority. Some verbal forms
(usually third person plurals) are stressed on the "quartultima" syllable;
the "quintultima" is stressed only if one of these forms combines with an
unstressed particle, e.g. "esąminamelo". It is very unusual, though. (I
conveniently used the Italian "quartultima" and "quintultima" because the
English equivalents seemed more unwieldy to me).
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