Ed Cryer wrote on 06 mei 2008 in alt.language.latin:
> There's a vast difference between Keeh-keh-roh and Seeh-ser-oh. It's a
> bit like the gap between Caesar (CǸsar etc.) in the Romance
> languages; and Kaiser in the Germanic ones.
> OK, so I guess the soldiers abroad didn't spread the best Latin, but
> was there really such a vast gap between patrician and plebeian spoken
> Latin in Rome? And if there was, why this particular one with Kee and
> See?
>
I think that in Caesar's time,
he himself pronounced something like "Kaisar",
because that is not only the Germanic,
but also the Greek transliteration.
I cannot see any other reason of having the word for "Emperor"
transliterated with a K if it was not pronounced that way for the Caesar
family.
So the C was pronounced K, and the AE not jet the same as E.
Then before 70 ce, a boy [or girl] in Pompei wrote on the wall:
"Sesar", meaning old murdered Julius.
Perhaps the change originated outside the walls of Rome, in the Neapolis
region, to me it seems more logical it originated or at least got
momentum in the slang of the large m***** of the Roman pleps.
I have no proof of all that, ofcourse.
Such things do not change in a day, so stipulating that the pleps slang
preceded the universal change seems not that strange, Ed.
I expected some comment from the regulars ;-)
The "ai" pronounciation of the "ae" is just as interesting, and one says
it makes sense in poetic verses, but I am not that "versed" in verses.
All that would have made Roman Latin a much "heavier" language than the
later "singsong" midieval Latin and more so Italian and the French with
it's "distinguished" c-cédille.
No wonder they had such a high opinion of Greek, having a Greek
gubernator in the best of patrician homes, even Pontius Pilatus speaking
better or more cassic Greek than the lingua franca Koine of eastern
mediterranian.
--
Evertjan.
The Netherlands.
(Please change the x'es to dots in my emailaddress)
|
