how to pronounce these words ?

[Rambuchan]

Can move onto some Aztec names now?

Gods:

Huitzilopochtli (Sun God)
Tezcatlipoca (God of the night sky)
Quetzalcoatl (God of Morning)
Huitzilopochtli (Sun & War God)

Cities:
(don't think I've ever said these names out loud)

Tenochtitlan
Yautepec
Tlahuica
Oaxaca
Tlaxcala

 

[MCdread]

All what I meant is, that there is in each language a "good" way to pronounce and "bad" way. Slang spoken on the streets has to be seen seperated from the language rules. So a man living in the Bronx is speaking differently than the language rules. A man in the parliament, or better perhaps university, will speak much more within that. So the rules of the pronounciation should be kept, like it was intended- and slang neglected. BTW there is no living Latin slang any more. So speaking a text of Cicero in a slang of the street is IMO a barbary. It should be kept within the pronounciation rules of the Classical Latin.

In that case we might as well all switch to speaking proto-indo european, because all that followed (heck, proto IE itself) just evolved from "street slang", including classical latin or greek, gothic or modern english and french. We might agree that before latin and greek there were no formal and systematic language rules, but then still all the modern romance languages are "street slang" of latin...

 

[Heretic_Cata]

Can move onto some Aztec names now?

Gods:

Huitzilopochtli (Sun God)
Tezcatlipoca (God of the night sky)
Quetzalcoatl (God of Morning)
Huitzilopochtli (Sun & War God)

Cities:
(don't think I've ever said these names out loud)

Tenochtitlan
Yautepec
Tlahuica
Oaxaca
Tlaxcala

I did hear them being pronounced in AoE 2: Conquerors but they had a very english sound to them. I don't think it was right.
For example Quetzalcoatl was pronounced as if it was Quetzocoatl.

For me (latin language) i don't think they are that hard to pronounce, just ... slow to pronounce.

I never "wrote" the pronounciation of anything so here's my first try:
Tenochtitlan:
Teno - just like Tenno
ch - from chtonic
ti - from tiki
tlan - from Tlaloc except with a "n" at the end.

My 2cents anyway.
It's better to pronounce slow and correct than fast and wrong i always say.


I would like to know from someone who knows more how exactly did they pronounce "x" "q" "tz".

 

[thetrooper]

Tenochtitlan
Yautepec
Tlahuica
Oaxaca
Tlaxcala

I always pronounce those cities with a k.

Tenoktitlan, Yau-tepek, Tla-huika, Oa-xaka, Tlax-kala.

By intuition - I have no idea if that's the correct way to do it however.

 

[MCdread]

I did hear them being pronounced in AoE 2: Conquerors but they had a very english sound to them. I don't think it was right.
For example Quetzalcoatl was pronounced as if it was Quetzocoatl.

For me (latin language) i don't think they are that hard to pronounce, just ... slow to pronounce.

I never "wrote" the pronounciation of anything so here's my first try:
Tenochtitlan:
Teno - just like Tenno
ch - from chtonic
ti - from tiki
tlan - from Tlaloc except with a "n" at the end.

My 2cents anyway.
It's better to pronounce slow and correct than fast and wrong i always say.


I would like to know from someone who knows more how exactly did they pronounce "x" "q" "tz".

Well, I guess it's prety likely that the latinization of the aztec words were done initially by spaniards, and that they represented the sounds with the letters they used to represent the closest resembling sounds in castillian.

So, I'd say that the "x" is pronounced as "sh", because although nowadays it is pronounced much differently, at the XVI century it was pronounced that way.

"q" should be pronounced normally as k, but probably the syllable "Que" is pronounced as "ke" and not as "kwe". In modern spanish at least (and portuguese and french too), is almost always pronounced that way, because the letter "k" either doesn't exist or isn't much used, and "ce" (and "ci") has a much different value.

"tz" I don't know...hmm..."tz"? I guess it is in the "middle" between "th" as in thin and "X" as in "Xen"...

 

[thetrooper]

So, I'd say that the "x" is pronounced as "sh", because although nowadays it is pronounced much differently, at the XVI century it was pronounced that way.

How about x - ks?

 

[Mirc]

It's weird that we dont know how the C was pronounced in Latin. Surely there are some surviving texts that talk about the Latin language?

Really? We don't know? I thought that just like in Italian or Romanian in Latin C is pronounced ch if followed by e or i and k if followed by any other letter. And now that I think better, I'm almost sure that it was this way. I might be wrong though.

So I was quite sure that Cicero is Chichero.

 

[shortguy]

Really? We don't know? I thought that just like in Italian or Romanian in Latin C is pronounced ch if followed by e or i and k if followed by any other letter. And now that I think better, I'm almost sure that it was this way. I might be wrong though.

So I was quite sure that Cicero is Chichero.

I don't think so; I think all C's are hard. At least, that's what my intro Latin textbook said.

 

[Adler17]

A language developes by speaking. So for a living language, where people have them as mother language, we do know the rules of pronounciation exactly. We also know about slang and dialects.
For a dead language it is much more difficulty. There are never all problems to be solved, I mean not all rules are ever so clear.
Additionally there is the evolution of a language, so that the language will have differencies when time is going on. An old high German text written about 750 AD is now hardly to understand. While a middle high German text is much better to understand. But unless we want to read the text in the original we take "translations" of the modern language. So mostly the Nibelungenlied is texted in Modern High German instead of Middle High German.
But what to do with a dead language. Here we have to make a definition, a starting point. In Latin it is the time of Cicero and Caesar, and then the language of the educated people. It is the Classical time.
That means any slang or dialect is to be avoided. And true, Italian at least could be seen as a kind of Slang Latin. But it growed to an own language- like every (natural) language is basing on an existing language. But this does not mean we have to pronounce Latin in an Italian way.

Adler

 

[Mirc]

I don't think so; I think all C's are hard. At least, that's what my intro Latin textbook said.

Well, I took this from my Latin book from the 8th grade, when we learned Latin.

But this does not mean we have to pronounce Latin in an Italian way.

I think pronouncing C like that is not Italian, I would think that it's Latin and then used by Italian. Latin did not use K at all, and I am sure they didn't pronounce Sisero for example.

 

[Adler17]

Mirc, there are different pronounciations. I myself learnt Latin in partly another way. Indeed under the Nazis they let the pronounciation teach more German like, to have much more a pronounciation like in the middle ages. In the times after the war this changed to a more classical one. This is still in process. I had myself an older teacher, so some diphtongs were pronounces German instead of Latin. To my knowledge this happened similar in other states. So we said käsar instead of kaisar (caesar) and pöna instead of peuna (poena). However this is still changing to a more classical pronounciation. Back to the roots.

Adler

 

[mrtn]

I, for one, talk about Aristoteles (not Aristotle) and Origenes with a hard G. It's no big deal however.

Me too. I've found that English is one of the worst languages at bastardising names. In Swedish we don't talk about Mark, Luke and John, but rather Marcus, Lucas and Johannes, and I suppose it's the same in Norwegian?

Traditionally we bastardise kings, however, so we'd say king Jakob of England instead of James.

One of my favourites when it comes to pronounciation is the Russian version of Hitler. As Russian doesn't have a h sound they have to use either cha or g.
That Adolf Gitler is a real git.

 

[Heretic_Cata]

Yea, it took me a while to figure out:
Paul is called Pavel
Basil is Vasile
Charles is Carol
Louis is Ludovic
and others probably.

 

[Plotinus]

In Swedish we don't talk about Mark, Luke and John, but rather Marcus, Lucas and Johannes

But those aren't the original forms of the names either - all languages change ancient names to suit themselves.

 

[Mirc]

Yea, it took me a while to figure out:
Paul is called Pavel
Basil is Vasile
Charles is Carol
Louis is Ludovic
and others probably.

Yes, those are surprising ones. But except Basil (Vasile) I thought of them myself.

Have you ever thought of the origin of the name "Amadeus"? There are many people these days called Amadeus. Mozart's middle name was Gottlieb in fact. This comes from Gott and lieb (god and love). When he travelled in Italy, people were calling him Amadeo instead of Gottlieb, which was hard to pronounce for them. (deo = god, amare = to love. from here ama = loved) He used the name Amadeus only once, when he wrote his name "Wolfgangus Amadeus Mozartus". Now everyone knows him as Amadeus, and a lot of people just want to honor the composer and name their children "Amadeus", which, in fact, doesn't mean anything and is the translation of a german name, the language it is translated in being a combination between Italian and Latin.

 

[Plotinus]

It's also the same name as Theophilus, of course. As far as I know, it's the only name which is fairly well known in three different languages, with each form being a literal translation (rather than mere transliteration) of the others.