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Hey dude, I am 18 years old, and I'm interested to learn Latin, cause I think it'll help me learn a lot of biological, scientific, philosophical terms very easily, plus it will help me with my English language acquisition, plus cause I love history. I am thinking of learning classical Latin. I am also learning French concurrently. I hope to learn ancient Greek, and other romance languages in the future (like Italian, Spanish, Portuguese). But when it comes to Latin I know little to almost nothing, plus I have no textbooks, or books on Latin grammar or literature. I am curious and would like to approach the language with an open mind and humility. What would u suggest me?
My mom and dad, native Korean speakers, always have this kind of discussion whenever they use English words. My mom is like, "It's pronounced north" and my dad is like, "We say nos in Korean, you sound stupid pronouncing it like that" lol
@@jangtheconqueror in portuguese, when speaking to another Portuguese speaker in casual conversations, whe don't strive that hard to pronounce foreign words correctly. Otherwise, you may sound a bit arrogant
@@ErickeTR There's also a few "English-Portuguese" words like "pendrive" instead of "flashdrive". However, when some people learn English, they can get pretty annoying if you don't pronounce phonemes like "th" or the English "r" sound correctly. I had a lot of boring friends and now, because of that, I spell every English word properly to avoid being corrected, even if we're speaking Portuguese.
@@ErickeTR Yep, that's happens also in Spanish and in Italian for what I've seen. Like if i say Washington in Spanish i MUST pronounce it like you would in Spanish "Guachinton". Otherwise it would sound overly pretentions and even worst, people might not know what I'm talking about!
Now that example just doesn't make sense. I heard that once and that sounded absolutely the same, even though I was Trilingual. Now that I'm learning Japanese and Pitch-accent/intonation is a thing, that shit still sounds the same and still makes no sense XD
When I first heard the classical pronunciation of "Caesar", it finally made sense to me that the German word "Kaiser" and the Dutch word "keizer" are derived from it, brcause the pronunciations of both are very similar to the clasdical pronunciation of "Caesar"
Ah, so that's where Indonesian _kaisar_ (emperor/empress) came from. It's pronounced as /kaisar/ (almost like _caesar_ in Classical Latin pronounciation).
That is incorrect. It's pronounced Gaius Octavius. Also when someone refers to the man "Caesar" it's generally assumed they're referring to his adoptive father-Gaius Iulius Caesar.
My mother learnt Latin from a heavily accented Scottish teacher. In Australia. Let's put it this way...her pronunciation of Latin was...unique! Thanks for the wonderful clarity of your explanation. Much appreciated.
Languages have changed through time, but today it is slang and innovations that bring in new words. In Shakespeare's works there are things that are no longer used like types of carriages, and the word cousin meant a relative. The King James' bible was written in archaic English to make it sound authoritative. We spell ancient Egyptian names by filling them with vowels when ancient Egyptian like most Afro-Asiatic languages did not write vowels.
As I recall, in fallout:NV, the legion are a bunch of pretentious genocidal Rome cosplayers. They pronounce it the way which is closer to Latin whereas most of their enemies or those who are indifferent to them tend to stick to the normal English pronunciation. The fact that different people and factions in the game have different pronunciations is part of its worldbuilding. Arguing over which of the pronunciations is better seems a bit confused.
*sits down on hood of wrecked car while drinking Sunset Sarsaparilla waiting for NCR and Legion soldiers to fight. “Big Iron” playing full blast on old radio* Go on, then…
As a bilingual and self proclaimed lover of correct pronunciation, thank you for this video. The delicate balance between "who cares" and professional pronunciation mixed with a bit of OCD is always fun at parties 🤣 I must commend your ability to rage-explain with the expert grace of a falling feather. I discovered your channel yesterday and am loving the content. Thank you!
It is a bit much for an English person who only speaks English to correctly pronounce German, Italian, Greek, French or Latin as if a native speaker of those languages. Look Americans say Zee for z, and British and other English speakers say Zed, now some pedant wants us to pronounce Caesar, Tacitus, Cato, Cicero, Severus, Tiberius, Julius.... the Latin way.
Even the thumbnail, you can tell he's about to wrap his hands around your neck in sheer rage, but ultimately give up as his hands reach you, then go drink a coffee while slurping menacingly
You made me realize that all my life I was pronouncing consonants wrong when speaking English. I never used any aspiration, that's why I sounded off. On the other hand, it's interesting that as a native Polish language speaker I have no problem whatsoever with pronouncing classical latin form of Caesar or Cicero.
I have easier to pronounce classical Latin than English as well, although my language Swedish theoretically is much closer to English. English has a distorted phonology and unlike French not even pronunciation rules of any kind. Even that British history professor Mary Beard speaks Latin with a heavy English accent.
That is unpossible! No matter how hard I try I cannot pronounce a k without aspiration. What is this dark magic used to produce unpronounceable sounds?!?
I'm a native English speaker, but it was funny for me to listen to this as he kept saying "in English" yet pronounced every sound different to how I do it
@@MrHoundDoug well, you can, but only when it's not the first sound in a word. here's something to try; say 'skid', then 'kid. with a bit of repetition, careful listening, and maybe a hand in front of your mouth to feel the puff of air, you'll be able to isolate the unaspirated 'k' in 'skid', and how it sounds (and feels) different to pronounce. you can also do this for spin/pin and stone/tone. It takes a bit of practice to hear the differences in sounds that your language doesn't distinguish between, but it is possible!
It still blows my mind that the german "Kaiser", which I once thought was a comically bastardized version of "Caesar", is actually close to the original pronunciation - while "Caesar" on the otherhand is pronounced "Tseh-za" by germans.
Same exact thing in danish. The danish word for emperor "Kejser" is also closer pronunciation-wise to the original Latin way, while, like german, Ceasar is like the german way. Funny how that happens.
It's not actually. The Russian and Spanish are.. Que-Tzar/ Seh-Zaar. // Hu- Li- OH Seh- Zar . I don't were hey got German is closest. The 's' in German is like Z and the R would be dropped because the r is used for Reich, so the actual real German word was Kai-za-reich, and that's way too germanic to be Cesar at this time period. It probably would have been close in the 2nd century during the Germanic invasion, but not when Cesar was alive. The Helenic and Iberian prounciation were more closer to Cesars latin when he was alive.
@@chibiromano5631 he didn't say German is closest, he said that it is close. And that is absolutely true. The Latin pronunciation sounds almost exactly like the German word Kaiser = emperor. The s in German is not necessarily like Z, there is a voiced and a voiceless s in German. It also depends where in Germany you are from. In the south west for example the Z sound doesn't exist at all. S is never voiced there. Also the R is not necessarily dropped. The word Kaiserreich you mentioned means empire not emperor.
@@chibiromano5631 I don't know where you got that "Que-Tzar" thing from, but in Russian there is either Kesar' (used only in the Bible), Tse-Zar' (used in relation to roman emperors), or a completely bastartized version Tzar'.
This video was soooooooo satisfying. Everything he says is absolutely correct, and he pronounces all the non-English sounds perfectly (I'm a native Castilian Spanish with knowledge of Latin and Ancient Greek).
Quick fun fact. In polish language Milan is called Mediolan. Till now I didn't know that it dereived straight from Latin. 😮
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@Carlo Carugati It's Włosi, not Volsci (where did this come from btw)? It doesn't refer to the original name of the region (Italia), but to the name of an ancient tribe that used to live nearby (Volcae).
@ The Volsci were another tribe living in Italy in ancient times, but they were Italics, while the Volcae were Celts. I guess since the Italian name for the Volcae is Volci, it's quite easy to confuse the two, I most certainly did 🤣 (I had to check on Wikipedia oops)
Sometimes I stumble on people in YT algorithms that are so far above me in some very specific specialty I just stop in awe. Also I'm sad I haven't found you previously in my random linguistic wormholes.
Linguistics major weighing in: yes, thank Og that someone else gets it! Pronunciations change as they are adapted to fit into a new language. What the pedants never remember is that it isn’t just names; it’s *all words.* Do you pronounce “the” as it was in Old English? Do you pronounce “ebony” as it was in ancient Nubian or Egyptian or whatever? And Hebraic names like Michael and Isaac, I bet you preserve the 1st-century Semitic pronunciation there, too, right? And loan words like mozzarella, chocolate, taco, and avocado? If the nitpickers are going to put their collective foot down on originalist pronunciation, man, they have a lot of work to do.
@@JormundFenris Yes, the "ye" was an orthographic approximation for the thorn character or whatever. I know it wasn't actually pronounced /ji/, but I also doubt that it sounded exactly the way "the" does today. The vowel particularly would have drifted a bit.
It's like insisting that everyone call Paris pah-ree, even when speaking English, when in reality even French speakers will call it Paris (with the S pronounced) if they're speaking English. Time to go have some Kwaa-son, hon hon hon.
I've never hear a native French speaker pronounce the "s" in "Paris", but I'm still new to French, so I could be wrong. I still agree, though, that insisting on a more French-like pronunciation is pointless when speaking English.
Such a great video discussion of the nuances of different sounds. Interesting that the German word Kaiser is kind of similar to the ancient Greek pronunciation. Obviously there are a lot of subtle differences, but I am continually surprised at the little bits of German that connect to Latin and French.
@@Tommi414 Yeah I wonder why polish language has Latin names for some places. Another example that comes to mind is region of Savoy. In Italian you call it Savoia, in polish it's Sabaudia and in Latin it's Sapaudia. It's strange how polish just stuck to the older names
@@Hounker or region of Rome is called Lacjum (Latsyum) - Lazio, Munich is Monachium, Naples - Neapol.. but Italy is not Italia or something like this, it is Włochy 😅 (from a name of one of the tribes)
My native language is German. My major in college was linguistics. I find it really impressive and fascinating how you seem absolutely comfortable producing and switching between all these various sounds. Pronouncing a T or K or P without aspiration or, since we are on this subject, pronouncing initial vowels without a glottal stop is just completely beyond me and, to me, borders on witchcraft.
For me (Polish native speaker) pronouncing the voiceless stops in English *with* aspiration felt weird and I struggled to do it consistently and in the right places for quite a long time so it's two sides of the same coin. For me it was also pronouncing "n" and "l" before "ee" without palatalising them. But still, the thing is practice, you'll learn it eventually
I love how even though this was a rant, you took us on a history journey as to how different countries and their languages say the names. I definitely learnt something new about how the name's pronounced. Thanks you.
You know Paris, France? In English they pronounce it "Pari-IS", but everyone else pronounces it as the French do, without the S. But with Venezia, everybody pronounces it the English way, "Ven-ICE". There's "The Merchant of Venice", "Death in Venice"... WHY, though? Why isn't the title "The Merchant of Venezia"? Are you shitting me? This takes place in Italy, so use the Italian name, dammit! That shit pisses me off! Bunch of dumbasses!
This reminds me about a part in "The Name of the Rose" (Umberto Eco), where a monk traveling through Europe gets to an Italian monastery and tries to tell them something about William of Occam. It was customary at the time to translate names in local equivalents. But because he traveled through many countries, he mixes the names: "Wilhelm... aaa... Guillaume... ah! Guglielmo!"
I was watching a video of you on another channel speaking Latin to a Romanian. I don’t speak either, but for some reason I could, with hearing you and reading the text, understand what you where trying to have the other person guess. It was such a crazy feeling. It felt like immersion. How does the brain do that ? It was glorious
He's a great teacher, and knows how to emphasize certain words or even use some words and word order that makes it easier for native romance speakers to understand. Probably since he also speaks romance languages himself. Great guy, really!
Actually the Chinese name for Caesar spells like "Kai Sa", which also reflects the Latin pronunciation of Caesar. Thanks for making this video to explain the differences in pronunciation! Very professional, helpful and informative!
If someone said to me "Kaiser" without the Gaius Iūlius part I'd immediately think of Wilhelm II. Obsession with "correct" pronunciation also poses the question, should we say Germania instead of Germany? No, because it's Deutschland.
Seriously? The first fucking Kaiser that comes to your mind is that idiot Wilhelm II. and not ANY of the great Kaiser we had? For example: Friedrich II., ein Staufer, genannt "stupor mundi": das Staunen der Welt. Oder Otto höchstselbst, ein Liudolfinger, der aus Heinrichs "deutschem Königreich" das Heilige Römische Reich Deutscher Nation formte.
@@bobbwc7011 Pardon me. Have you ever considered that perhaps there's no need to be rude. My brother has an interest in modern history and in particular The Great War, that's why Wilhelm II comes to mind primarily for me personally, a piece of context I feel I shouldn't have to explain were folk to mind their manners. Good day to you sir.
Well, also because Germania was practically just anything north of the Rhine, Germania was much larger and has barely anything to do with the English name Germany. It's actually a bit of a gripe i have with English, just why? It's the only language that confuses Germanic with Deutsch, and i've had the unfortunate pleasure of encountering several people that legitmately thought that German and Germanic are interchangeable, for no other reason than English speakers calling Deutsch German lol Life's hard
Funniest thing... in (relatively) modern Roman dialect, if you pronounce it "kick-ero" (or, often, "kick-erone"... the "one" stands for "big") it means "ass". :D
Yes and Naples is Neapol. There was a funny situation when I was in Italy and the road signs were all saying Napoli so my polish brain got confused and somehow the polish "Neapol" and italian "Napoli" merged into "Napoleon" 😂
@@vedranb87 Those weird and frequent spelling (and also pronunciation) exceptions bug me to heck in English. I mean why would you write it that way when you literally have the words pronoun and pronounce both written with 'ou'? I know it's probably because Arkan saw what Arkan sas, but he hasn't sought to sue for the sowing of saws (if you get the joke). 🤣
Funnily enough, the classical Latin pronunciation of Caesar sounds quite similar to how native Spanish speakers pronounce "Kaiser" (such as in "Kaiser Permanente"). So somehow, us trying to pronounce German brought us closer to the original Latin!
Nosotros pronunciamos distinto el æ. Creo que lo usamos igual que lo franceses. Suena AE para curriculum vitæ Pero É para etcétera o César et cætera Cæsar Al final quién sabe, muy raro que se haya perdido algo tan valioso como la pronunciacìón del æ en todos los idiomas originados del latín y se haya preservado en los germanos.
Actually German pronouciation of words IS pretty similiar to Classical Latin. It is so similiar in fact that in school, when Germans learn Latin (you only learn Classical Latin in Germany), the teachers say "sprich das Wort einfach, wie es da steht" (just speak/pronounce the word as it is written). There are a few differences ofcourse, but generally speaking a German has not many problems learning the Classical pronounciation.
He was actually wrong about the [w] sound in Germanic too, since it existed in German even in the late middle ages and still exists in rural places in Sweden:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_High_German#Phonology But most of his content is brilliant.
I love you for this! It has been a pet peeve of mine when corrected continually when I too know DAMN WELL what the original pronunciation was. You Rock!
You are literally the reason why I can love Latin. After years of these snobbish Latin teachers and students in school that seem to care more about showing how "smart" they are, it makes it so hard to stay motivated. Thank you so much!
I am so glad I was kicked out of Mick school before I had to learn Latin, church Latin that is. I remember picking up one of my brother's Latin books, he hated Latin lessons, and reading about the Republic, the part about Brutus sending his sons to be executed. I didn't know Latin, but it seemed the Latin chosen was like English. I learned one thing Peninsula means almost an island.
This is a huge pet peeve of mine, too. Even though I can switch between a Greek and English accent pretty easily, doing it for just one damn word or name when I can just keep using my native English phonological habits is just a big effort! I also end up not being able to switch back until after the first syllable of the following word (which happens a lot when I’m teaching Greek haha)
It's interesting to see how different languages have ended up with different pronunciations and thus transcriptions of the name - Caesar, Cesar, Cesare, Kaiser, Kaísaras, Keyser, Sezar, Czar/Tsar
BTW "czar/tsar" is a colloquial pronunciation, when Russian tsars were addressed in high style, the full form "tsesar" (much closer to Caesar) was used. Also, Russian Bible offers yet another rendition of the word - "kyesar", which is distinctly biblical and was not applied to Russian tsars.
I remember many moons ago when I first learnt about how C was a velar plosive in Classical Latin, that languages such as German and Dutch preserved this sound; Kaiser, keizer; caseus, Käse, kaas....because such words were amongst the earliest of borrowings from Latin.
When I clicked on this video all I could think about was Fallout New Vegas and how the pronounciation of Caesar is used to show how much of a LARPer Edward Sallow (Caesar) is, refusing to pronounce it normally in English
Until now i thought the idea was that they were so far removed from education and civilisation that they simply read it wrong after finding some book in some ghoul infested school and having no frame of reference or teacher to correct them didnt realise its true pronunciation. Having learned something new today i am so glad that the joke is even better and more layered and not an ignorant mistake by the developers since its such a good game and it so deserves to be loved. Just shows who does fallout best, amirite? Yes, the people that originally created and lovingly nurtured the fallout franchise, not some ugly, exploitative, multinational corporation with no love or respect for gamers, their fans, source materials or anything that isnt money, basically. Oh, im nerd-ranting and this is old and tired, isnt it? Sorry!
@@KingDomIV 4's gunplay was better, 3 was less buggy, and 76 has multiplayer options for people who want it. new vegas was an unfinished mess not just because bethesda gave obsidian such a bad time limit, but because obsidian don't know how to coordinate a team to make a concise or mechanically solid 3D game. Fallout 1 & 2 were the best in the series and the only thing you should bother arguing back at me is whether or not Van Burin (or however it is spelled lol) would have been EVEN BETTER than 1 & 2
@@KingDomIV Yeah buddy that's what I thought. Now go on your merry way, having a different opinion which with I disagree aggressively but still respect as we are all entitled to our own opinions.
@@CornCarson K. Thnx. Bye. (Sorry but I can't do commenting on the internet, I don't enjoy it the way everyone else seems to and I shouldn't have left that last comment or the one before it, I'm an idiot, sorry).
Ave true to Caesar… but in seriousness, I am positive that the Legion thinking it was pronounced with a hard sound was meant to show just how stupid they really are. Also, all true New Vegas fans know it is pronounced Scissor
@@atticusshadowmore3263 Actually it was because Caesar actually understood latin, and forced his legion to address him with the "proper" pronunciation, even if they still did it with the wrong sounds as described in this video. So it was an ego thing.
I don't get why NV fans would get triggered by this, because in the game there are people that pronounce Caesar in the proper English way. In fact, I think most people do.
Thank you for this. I'm Spanish and I recently started studying Latin just for fun. I started with my old high school textbook and watched some videos on pronunciation. I was really confused when I found people on TH-cam pronouncing Caesar as "Kaiser" as in German. I also found videos that said the "r" was just strong or just soft, and I was pretty sure that wasn't the case. I'm glad I found your video on pronunciation of the Latin "r" as well, as I was getting very confused between the TH-cam videos and my high school memories of Latin. I'm starting to think that I can study intuitively using my own language as a reference.
German had/has Kaiser as an approximation. I'd like Polymath's take on how it arrived there, whether it was always spelled that way in German, and how it was pronounced in German over the years. I don't trust the English to stay close to what they read in the first instance - and, of course, it REALLY DOESN'T MATTER, does it?
As linguist teaching French to English speakers, I have the opposite problem that is just as frustrating. My students regularly pronounce cognates in French as they are pronounced in English: instead of "histoire" they say "historie", "victoire" is "victorie", and they pronounce ALL the S's. They're like "well isn't it the same word?" ........ Like ok you wanna speak Old French then we'll learn Old French, see how you like that.
Oh English and its struggle with phonetic. I really appreciate being a native romance language speaker. However you're right, if you are speaking in English it's normal and perfectly fine to pronounce those words in English.
Well it is fine because when speaking English saying Caesar is an English word, when speaking Latin then saying it the Latin way is correct. It is foolish to say Tacitus in the Latin way when addressing a audience of English speakers.
We in one language have both pronunciations of < C > in this name: [k] and [ts] but these words mean different things. tsezar - is the name of Julius Caesar and in Salad. In other uses, it is [k]: emperor title / german monarch / and C-section.
In Norwegian, the word for "emperor" is "keiser", and pronounced very similar to how you pronouced Ceasar. Edit: I just checked the Norwegian Wikipedia article for keiser, and it says: The word «keiser» is derived from the German word Kaiser, which in turn is derived from Cæsar, which in classical latin was pronounced similiar to «kaisar». The more you know.
I honestly clicked on this video to learn how my name is pronounced in other languages. before I clicked on it I expected to click off in a matter of seconds, but the way you were explaining things had me hooked up... last thing I knew, I watched the entire video lol great video.
Well, you have to remember from your history classes that the Holy Roman Empire included Austria (actually Vienna was its capital in 1497) , so all these terms like Kaiser came from titles and names in the classic Roman Empire that they were trying to imitate/perpetuate
Are these people also mad that we say Jesus instead of Yeshua? My name is Evan. Do they think I pronounce my own name wrong because it isn't Yehohanan? Do they want me to spell it in Hebrew as well? Names evolve. It's okay.
First one yes, second one no because YOUR name was originally "Evan" even if the name came from something else. Along the same lines, someone in modern times with the name "Caesar" pronounced "seezer" or "sayzar" or whatever might be treated differently from, say, Iulius Caesar, because whoever named them intended it to be pronounced the modern way even if they see that as a butchered reference...
@@Ithirahad Why would you be mad about that? It's a perfectly logical rendering of the Greek Ιησούς. And it's useful for differentiating Jesus from Joshua son of Nun in common parlance
I don't know about other language speakers, maybe the French, but English speakers don't like learning languages and don't like learning pronouncing. They expect everyone to speak English. It is like in the Indiana Jones movies of that chap in Turkey expecting everyone to speak English.
Haha, love this :) I just learned from you that the Latin way of pronouncing Caesar is closer to Keizer (Emperor in Dutch) than the way we pronounce Ceasar, of which the word is derived from obviously.
I am not super interested in language but watching something get explained to death to show people who think they are right because they don't go into depth on the issue was just so emotionally satisfying. This is like a masterclass in how to respond to uneducated critics.
You're exactly right, what's 'correct' is completely relative to the exact language and moment in history. Even just withint modern English there's one generation between "May I do X" and "Can I do X". Would love to see you do a series on the International Phonetic Alphabet. It's like the periodic table of languague and I love it.
Re 'may' and 'can': a little more than 70 years ago I was sitting in my elementary school classroom in England when another kid asked the teacher, "Please miss, can I go to the toilet?". Her reply was a model of grammatical precision: "You can but you may not". Such accurate discrimination, alas, is fast fading.
I totally agree. I have a friend who always says “fess” for Fez, when he’s speaking English, based on the Arabic pronunciation…I live there, but would never pronounce it that way when I’m speaking English. But at least he doesn’t criticize me when I say Fez. The person who complained about your English pronunciation of Caesar and Cicero is just ill-informed/confused/etc :)
I did not know Fez is pronounced Fess. Arabic is not written normally in Latin characters, it is occasionally transliterated but it depends on which form of Arabic is used.
I didn't know that Caesar was truly announced like that. That's the version they use in the Fallout series, and I always thought it was intentionally mispronounced
I came here from the game Fallout New Vegas due to the in game pronunciation of Caesar and Kaiser as it always grated on me as a non US American. This is a splendid explanation of its latin origin and how language is used word for word through time and across the world. This has brought me back to the idea of me studying another language at an older age once again as it is fascinating.
Can you make a video on the pronunciation of “qu”, please? I am quite surprised this isn’t covered on your channel alongside with aspirated ph/th/ch and “gn”
I totally agree. I used to be quite pedantic when it came to the original names of Roman authors but then one day I realised that my own name, "Niklas", will almost never be pronounced correctly by native English speakers and that it's waay easier to just call me "Nick" or "Nicholas" and that that is totally fine!
One of the things I found strange about when I was a child is that English speakers use a phrase in French or Latin but pronounce it like an English speaker. It confused me. In Australia, croissant is not pronounced as in French. It would be better just to use English and maybe make a new word for croissant.
Here too it's considered pretentious to pronounce foreign words exactly as they're pronounced in their respective languages. There are a few news anchors who try to emulate foreign pronunciation and they're ridiculed
In Australia George Donikian was noted for pronouncing foreigner's names correctly, he wasn't ridiculed exactly though in comedy sketches there always a Donekian lookalike who would go through a list of foreign names and pronounce them outrageously.
First time seeing your channel. Obviously this comment is late. I'm Serbian but i adore languages, especially Latin. You make learning languages fun. You've earned a new subscriber. Thank you for respecting languages and sharing your amazing knowledge. Sending love from Novi Sad!
@@hydrargyruschaldaecus2572 Or even the same dialect. I was watching a video about a Router and the guy in the video pronounces it /rutə/, with people in the comments saying "It's pronounced 'router' not 'rooter'. FYI: I would pronounce it ['rəʊw.ʔa]* Just one thing, my rhotic sound, my top teeth touch the inside of my bottom lip, and there is no IPA character for it.
@@Icsant3 Yeah, and Caesar was Italian in fact, so that pronunciation never made sense, all the more so since his middle and last names are close to Italian pronunciation so th is not English th and z is actually pronounced like ts.
@@redlamper Exactly! It makes sense Jojo and Speedwagon would call him Cesar because they're english, but he just takes it! And I think the other italian speakers just call him that as well. Maybe his father name him Cesar (in english) cos he thought it sounded cool or something ?)
Seeing this video on Cesar, I was wondering if and how familiar you were with the French comic book series Astérix ? There’s a ton of word play with Latin (written or spoken by characters) and Ancient Rome during the era of Julius Cesar. It would be interesting to see a video on that! If you haven’t I totally recommend reading it specially in the original French since I’m not sure the quality of the English translation and a lot might have been lost in translation. Great channel and content by the way 👍🏻
@Simon England no problem! well I'm glad the English translation is of great quality! yes the whole Asterix series still holds up to this day, which is a testament to the genius of its two creators. I'll look forward to your videos if you do it on this subject. There's a number of other Ancient Roman inspired bande dessinées I'd also recommend, in particular Murena which is set during Emperor Nero, it's more mature and adult though with not much latin but it's also a high quality series, unfortunately I'm not sure there's an English translation of it
Out of curiosity have you ever thought about exploring the Latin of Fallout New Vegas, there's a faction in there that bases itself loosely on Roman myth and history, with the use of Latin to varying degrees of competency, and I thought it would be interesting to hear your thoughts.
One of the many peculiarities of the human species, any subject, any hobby, any interest it could be something as odd as shirt button collecting and there will always be those "Well actually" nerds! Those who always have to chime in with their pretentious BS.
Excellent, thanks for the clarification. Unfortunately there will be always a lot of people that, knowing the rudiments at best of something, will try to "teach" those who have actually gone into the trouble of mastering that very field...
Luca di dici in inglese Milàn, non perché sia derivato da Mediolanum, ma perché Milàn è il nome della città in Lombardo occidentale, ossia come tutti la chiamavano fino a prima dell'imposizione dell'italiano.
lombardo occidentale che è evoluzione diretta del latino parlato dai Galli cisalpini (con un po' di contributo del longobardo e successive influenze francesi)
Really interesting! Funnily enough, when trieng to pronounce caesar and cicero with a thick dutch accent resulting into kaisar and kikero, they sound quite similar. I guess the Dutch and English language just got too intertwined as we share quite a lot of words, and ended up with the english pronounciation. Thanks for the nice video! :)
The sheer amount of intelligence in this is absolutely amazing. I've learned some classical Latin in college due to my degree as a portuguese teacher, and oh boy, it reminded me of those golden days.
Est nempe mirabile visu quod tibi necesse erat pelliculam facere huius rei describendae causa Luci aliis hominibus. Re vera laudanda est patientia tua! Salutem e Graecia amice!
Fascinating and thanks for the info! While your point is well taken, can you please do a video explaining how the Greek and Roman gods names were actually pronounced in ancient times? I promise to pronounce them the current English way, I'm just curious as to how they were actually pronounced back then (esp "Zeus")!🤔
It’s taken me years as a native English speaker learning Spanish and now Romanian, to learn how to roll my ‘R’s with any consistency. Quite literally my facial muscles were unable to make the proper sounds, so when you mentioned the ‘R’ in Caesar, I felt that one 😂
When you get to a certain age you cannot make certain sounds that exist in one Language but not in English. You mention the letter r, well there are a few types of ways to roll the r and where in the mouth it comes from. I can roll my r because in Maltese r is rolled, I don't even speak Maltese but I was born in Malta and heard my parents speak that language. Also it would be hard for an English speaker to not pronounce the s in Caesar as a z.
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Hey dude, I am 18 years old, and I'm interested to learn Latin, cause I think it'll help me learn a lot of biological, scientific, philosophical terms very easily, plus it will help me with my English language acquisition, plus cause I love history. I am thinking of learning classical Latin. I am also learning French concurrently. I hope to learn ancient Greek, and other romance languages in the future (like Italian, Spanish, Portuguese). But when it comes to Latin I know little to almost nothing, plus I have no textbooks, or books on Latin grammar or literature. I am curious and would like to approach the language with an open mind and humility. What would u suggest me?
@@tazziiiee join his discord, they are very friendly there, and Will help you get started in latin. I Also recommend reading LLPSI
@@pain6424 Thanks! For llspi, should I get 'pars I:familia romana' Or 'pars I:grammatica latina'
@@tazziiiee just watch his video series where he reads out Loud, or search for pdf’s online. just make sure you don’t download them.
Something to think Kaeser has a close ressemblance to the title Kaiser from Germany (Deutschland).
If I were to call every country by its original name in a conversation, people would think I'm some kind of pretentious prick
Or Canadian.....wait a second, you already said that.
My mom and dad, native Korean speakers, always have this kind of discussion whenever they use English words. My mom is like, "It's pronounced north" and my dad is like, "We say nos in Korean, you sound stupid pronouncing it like that" lol
@@jangtheconqueror in portuguese, when speaking to another Portuguese speaker in casual conversations, whe don't strive that hard to pronounce foreign words correctly. Otherwise, you may sound a bit arrogant
@@ErickeTR There's also a few "English-Portuguese" words like "pendrive" instead of "flashdrive". However, when some people learn English, they can get pretty annoying if you don't pronounce phonemes like "th" or the English "r" sound correctly. I had a lot of boring friends and now, because of that, I spell every English word properly to avoid being corrected, even if we're speaking Portuguese.
@@ErickeTR Yep, that's happens also in Spanish and in Italian for what I've seen. Like if i say Washington in Spanish i MUST pronounce it like you would in Spanish "Guachinton". Otherwise it would sound overly pretentions and even worst, people might not know what I'm talking about!
"It's LeviOsa not LevioSA"
😅😂👌
At least Hermione had a point. Mispronouncing wizard latin can make a feather explode in your face.
It's Ka-E-sar, not Kaiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiisar.
For the win!
Now that example just doesn't make sense. I heard that once and that sounded absolutely the same, even though I was Trilingual. Now that I'm learning Japanese and Pitch-accent/intonation is a thing, that shit still sounds the same and still makes no sense XD
When I first heard the classical pronunciation of "Caesar", it finally made sense to me that the German word "Kaiser" and the Dutch word "keizer" are derived from it, brcause the pronunciations of both are very similar to the clasdical pronunciation of "Caesar"
Same for Kzar
*Kaiser
@@Si0Ro, danke
Ah, so that's where Indonesian _kaisar_ (emperor/empress) came from. It's pronounced as /kaisar/ (almost like _caesar_ in Classical Latin pronounciation).
Chinese transliteration also sticks with the Latin.
You know, technically, "Caesar" is pronounced Oct-ta-vi-an.
Oh, very droll!
That is incorrect. It's pronounced Gaius Octavius. Also when someone refers to the man "Caesar" it's generally assumed they're referring to his adoptive father-Gaius Iulius Caesar.
@@jeffa.7298 It was a joke man
I was joking too. You wouldn't say Octavius but anglicized as per the video.
Octavian is generally referred to as "Augustus" (The revered one), a title which the Senate conferred to him in 28BCE
Imagine if people wrote like: "yeah I love the words of ગાંધી, he's so inspirational!"
i never really thought about that, that would be a nightmare!
is that a name ?
@@rouxcool1227 It's Gandhi in Gujarati.
Oh, but "I" should be "iċ" in proper Old English. Why are you spelling it wrong?
અહીં વિષય લેટિન નામો છે
My mother learnt Latin from a heavily accented Scottish teacher. In Australia. Let's put it this way...her pronunciation of Latin was...unique! Thanks for the wonderful clarity of your explanation. Much appreciated.
Unique : oo-ni-kway
Ahh, the classical caledonian latin. Truly a rare gem of a language
Och! Brutus! Ye no cannae be one of them fekkers!
@@MrHoundDoug 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Thats amazing 😍 love it
"Challenged in Basic Erudition" is the name of my punk-ska band and "Phonotactic Limitations" was our first single.
That's rad.
If you told me there was a math rock/post-rock band with such name and single I wouldn't doubt at all.
@@rayres1074 We're punk, we don''t care 'bout no rules, but we're ska, so we're chill about it.
I was into CBE before anyone had ever even heard of them!
I think it would sound better the other way around. _Phonotactic Limitations_ would fit better as the band name.
You could have just said “I sided with the NCR” and left it there
I've been scrolling looking for this comment
Nice
That's a weird way of saying kill Edward and work with Lanius
Ave, true to Caesar.
New Vegas "kaiser" (kai-sar) was a joke speed around the office made and some how found its way in game. See kaiser was a German emperor not Latin.
His ability of changing pronounciation and nailing it everytime is astonishing to me
Omg me too and i speak yhree languages ha
His Italian is soo good. Wonder how his German is
Languages have changed through time, but today it is slang and innovations that bring in new words. In Shakespeare's works there are things that are no longer used like types of carriages, and the word cousin meant a relative. The King James' bible was written in archaic English to make it sound authoritative. We spell ancient Egyptian names by filling them with vowels when ancient Egyptian like most Afro-Asiatic languages did not write vowels.
This sounds absolutely true when you remember the german word "Kaiser" and begin to imagine why it exists.
Or (Cae) - Tsar.
@@pile333 Amazing, thank you for this.
Keizer in dutch (for emperor)
Or 'Kejser' (with J = Y) in Scandinavian languages, derived from the German word.
Also the Russian zar comes from caesar
This debate is still raging on in the Fallout community
The Caesar has marked you for death, and the legion obeys.
*READY YOURSELF FOR BATTLE!*
As I recall, in fallout:NV, the legion are a bunch of pretentious genocidal Rome cosplayers. They pronounce it the way which is closer to Latin whereas most of their enemies or those who are indifferent to them tend to stick to the normal English pronunciation. The fact that different people and factions in the game have different pronunciations is part of its worldbuilding. Arguing over which of the pronunciations is better seems a bit confused.
@@megakillerx Ad Victorim! The New American Republic will fly the 25 star banner west and add another 35 stars to it after crushing the bear and bull!
@Evilanious profligate.
*sits down on hood of wrecked car while drinking Sunset Sarsaparilla waiting for NCR and Legion soldiers to fight. “Big Iron” playing full blast on old radio* Go on, then…
As a bilingual and self proclaimed lover of correct pronunciation, thank you for this video.
The delicate balance between "who cares" and professional pronunciation mixed with a bit of OCD is always fun at parties 🤣
I must commend your ability to rage-explain with the expert grace of a falling feather.
I discovered your channel yesterday and am loving the content.
Thank you!
"Rage explain with the Expert grace of a failing feather" thank you for perfectly expressing my sentimientos so I don't even have to try
It is a bit much for an English person who only speaks English to correctly pronounce German, Italian, Greek, French or Latin as if a native speaker of those languages. Look Americans say Zee for z, and British and other English speakers say Zed, now some pedant wants us to pronounce Caesar, Tacitus, Cato, Cicero, Severus, Tiberius, Julius.... the Latin way.
Sir you’re dangerously close to suggesting that English is not Latin and I won’t stand for it.
I bet he even splits his infintives!
If English is Latin then I should be able to speak, and understand Latin.
@@mansterj pretty sure he's joking. Don't take him seriously.
@@pequenoperezoso3743 I was making a joke as well.
@@mansterj cool
This man is ranting. Venting. He's absolutely infuriated.
Yet, this is one of the most relaxing videos I've seen this week.
Very calming.
Thanks
Yep insane, he completely freaked out and almost destroyed the arpartment xD ... well, for his scale ^^
Even the thumbnail, you can tell he's about to wrap his hands around your neck in sheer rage, but ultimately give up as his hands reach you, then go drink a coffee while slurping menacingly
Absolutely agree 👍👍
Haha 😂
You made me realize that all my life I was pronouncing consonants wrong when speaking English. I never used any aspiration, that's why I sounded off. On the other hand, it's interesting that as a native Polish language speaker I have no problem whatsoever with pronouncing classical latin form of Caesar or Cicero.
I have easier to pronounce classical Latin than English as well, although my language Swedish theoretically is much closer to English. English has a distorted phonology and unlike French not even pronunciation rules of any kind. Even that British history professor Mary Beard speaks Latin with a heavy English accent.
That is unpossible! No matter how hard I try I cannot pronounce a k without aspiration. What is this dark magic used to produce unpronounceable sounds?!?
I'm a native English speaker, but it was funny for me to listen to this as he kept saying "in English" yet pronounced every sound different to how I do it
@@MrHoundDoug I don't have a single aspersion myself and I'm a native speaker
@@MrHoundDoug well, you can, but only when it's not the first sound in a word. here's something to try; say 'skid', then 'kid. with a bit of repetition, careful listening, and maybe a hand in front of your mouth to feel the puff of air, you'll be able to isolate the unaspirated 'k' in 'skid', and how it sounds (and feels) different to pronounce. you can also do this for spin/pin and stone/tone. It takes a bit of practice to hear the differences in sounds that your language doesn't distinguish between, but it is possible!
It still blows my mind that the german "Kaiser", which I once thought was a comically bastardized version of "Caesar", is actually close to the original pronunciation - while "Caesar" on the otherhand is pronounced "Tseh-za" by germans.
Same exact thing in danish. The danish word for emperor "Kejser" is also closer pronunciation-wise to the original Latin way, while, like german, Ceasar is like the german way. Funny how that happens.
It's not actually. The Russian and Spanish are.. Que-Tzar/ Seh-Zaar. // Hu- Li- OH Seh- Zar .
I don't were hey got German is closest. The 's' in German is like Z and the R would be dropped because the r is used for Reich, so the actual real German word was Kai-za-reich, and that's way too germanic to be Cesar at this time period. It probably would have been close in the 2nd century during the Germanic invasion, but not when Cesar was alive. The Helenic and Iberian prounciation were more closer to Cesars latin when he was alive.
@@chibiromano5631 He didn't say "closest" only that it's closer than the english pronunciation
@@chibiromano5631 he didn't say German is closest, he said that it is close. And that is absolutely true. The Latin pronunciation sounds almost exactly like the German word Kaiser = emperor. The s in German is not necessarily like Z, there is a voiced and a voiceless s in German. It also depends where in Germany you are from. In the south west for example the Z sound doesn't exist at all. S is never voiced there. Also the R is not necessarily dropped.
The word Kaiserreich you mentioned means empire not emperor.
@@chibiromano5631 I don't know where you got that "Que-Tzar" thing from, but in Russian there is either Kesar' (used only in the Bible), Tse-Zar' (used in relation to roman emperors), or a completely bastartized version Tzar'.
As Roman larpers in the mojave desert would say: "True to Caesar!"
“Ave, true to Caesar”
Ave. True to Caesar!
Did... did they survive?
Ave, True to Caesar!
PROFLIGATE
This video was soooooooo satisfying. Everything he says is absolutely correct, and he pronounces all the non-English sounds perfectly (I'm a native Castilian Spanish with knowledge of Latin and Ancient Greek).
Quick fun fact. In polish language Milan is called Mediolan. Till now I didn't know that it dereived straight from Latin. 😮
@Carlo Carugati It's Włosi, not Volsci (where did this come from btw)? It doesn't refer to the original name of the region (Italia), but to the name of an ancient tribe that used to live nearby (Volcae).
That's interesting. I wonder though why in German it's "Mailand". Where that "ai" diphthong comes from, I don't have a clue.
@ The name doesn't come from the Volcae, but is a loan from Germanic *walhaz.
@ The Volsci were another tribe living in Italy in ancient times, but they were Italics, while the Volcae were Celts. I guess since the Italian name for the Volcae is Volci, it's quite easy to confuse the two, I most certainly did 🤣 (I had to check on Wikipedia oops)
@@ХристоМартунковграфЛозенски and we Czechs stole the word and use it as "a lot of money"
Such a nerd video. Absolutely like it.
Nerds of the world, UNITE!
Is that Schopenhauer in ur display pic?
@@tazziiiee Yes indeed.
exactly my kind of video
Sometimes you've got to out-nerd the nerds.
Sometimes I stumble on people in YT algorithms that are so far above me in some very specific specialty I just stop in awe. Also I'm sad I haven't found you previously in my random linguistic wormholes.
That's very kind. I'm just an enthusiast.
Linguistics major weighing in: yes, thank Og that someone else gets it! Pronunciations change as they are adapted to fit into a new language. What the pedants never remember is that it isn’t just names; it’s *all words.* Do you pronounce “the” as it was in Old English? Do you pronounce “ebony” as it was in ancient Nubian or Egyptian or whatever? And Hebraic names like Michael and Isaac, I bet you preserve the 1st-century Semitic pronunciation there, too, right? And loan words like mozzarella, chocolate, taco, and avocado? If the nitpickers are going to put their collective foot down on originalist pronunciation, man, they have a lot of work to do.
When I hear one of these people correctly pronounce 'atlatl' as though it were nahuatl, I will admit defeat :P
The was just "the" in old english. the whole "ye"-thing is a myth. Unless you talk about something else, in that case: SCREW YOU I'M GOING HOME.
@@JormundFenris Yes, the "ye" was an orthographic approximation for the thorn character or whatever. I know it wasn't actually pronounced /ji/, but I also doubt that it sounded exactly the way "the" does today. The vowel particularly would have drifted a bit.
Let them have a go at smorgasbord.
@@SailorYuki Or Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitänsmützenschirmpolitur.
It's like insisting that everyone call Paris pah-ree, even when speaking English, when in reality even French speakers will call it Paris (with the S pronounced) if they're speaking English. Time to go have some Kwaa-son, hon hon hon.
"Kwáson" /ˈkwä.sɒn/ is the standard British pronunciation. If you say "cruhsónt" /kɹəˈsɑːnt/ to a Brit, they're gonna cringe out their spines! XD
If someone tries that, just point to something ridiculous, say Copenhagen. If they say 'Pah-ree', then they should absolutely say 'Kir-behn-haun'.
Another example would be insisting people who are not Polish call 'Warsaw' with how it's called in Polish, that being 'Varshava'.
And if you are in Italy, I guess you have to call it Parigi.
I've never hear a native French speaker pronounce the "s" in "Paris", but I'm still new to French, so I could be wrong. I still agree, though, that insisting on a more French-like pronunciation is pointless when speaking English.
Such a great video discussion of the nuances of different sounds. Interesting that the German word Kaiser is kind of similar to the ancient Greek pronunciation. Obviously there are a lot of subtle differences, but I am continually surprised at the little bits of German that connect to Latin and French.
Fun fact: Milan in my native Polish language is still Mediolan ;)
It’d be interesting to now how it became Milano in Italian. Luke could maybe do a video about this sort of stuff?
@@Tommi414 Yeah I wonder why polish language has Latin names for some places. Another example that comes to mind is region of Savoy. In Italian you call it Savoia, in polish it's Sabaudia and in Latin it's Sapaudia. It's strange how polish just stuck to the older names
@@Hounker I guess they were brought by Latin-speaking scholars in the Middle Ages and stuck around.
@@Hounker fun fact: in Italian “Savoia” when used as an adjective can become “sabaudo/sabauda” like in “bandiera sabauda”, “Savoy flag” in English.
@@Hounker or region of Rome is called Lacjum (Latsyum) - Lazio, Munich is Monachium, Naples - Neapol.. but Italy is not Italia or something like this, it is Włochy 😅 (from a name of one of the tribes)
My native language is German. My major in college was linguistics. I find it really impressive and fascinating how you seem absolutely comfortable producing and switching between all these various sounds. Pronouncing a T or K or P without aspiration or, since we are on this subject, pronouncing initial vowels without a glottal stop is just completely beyond me and, to me, borders on witchcraft.
Practice. It goes a long way. You don't need much really!
For me (Polish native speaker) pronouncing the voiceless stops in English *with* aspiration felt weird and I struggled to do it consistently and in the right places for quite a long time so it's two sides of the same coin. For me it was also pronouncing "n" and "l" before "ee" without palatalising them. But still, the thing is practice, you'll learn it eventually
Haha it's taken years of practice
Language is cool
Nuff said
How is it physically possible to pronounce an initial vowel without a glottal stop?
I love how even though this was a rant, you took us on a history journey as to how different countries and their languages say the names. I definitely learnt something new about how the name's pronounced. Thanks you.
But when you pronounce it "Che-zar" (ecc. Latin), you inflict holy damage on your haters.
Ave true to cheez its
And also on Jojo fans who get Battle Tendency flashbacks.
This video is basically a rant to
“IT’S VENEZIA! NOT VENICE!”
You know Paris, France? In English they pronounce it "Pari-IS", but everyone else pronounces it as the French do, without the S. But with Venezia, everybody pronounces it the English way, "Ven-ICE". There's "The Merchant of Venice", "Death in Venice"... WHY, though? Why isn't the title "The Merchant of Venezia"? Are you shitting me? This takes place in Italy, so use the Italian name, dammit! That shit pisses me off! Bunch of dumbasses!
@@MasonGreenWeed I mean, The Merchant of Venice was written by an English guy for an English audience, so I doubt that anybody would've cared.
Giacchio has entered the chat
I thought the rant was: "Call it whatever you want you pedantic twit, nobody cares."
@@MasonGreenWeed Not everyone pronounces it like in French, in italian it's Parigi for example.
This reminds me about a part in "The Name of the Rose" (Umberto Eco), where a monk traveling through Europe gets to an Italian monastery and tries to tell them something about William of Occam. It was customary at the time to translate names in local equivalents. But because he traveled through many countries, he mixes the names: "Wilhelm... aaa... Guillaume... ah! Guglielmo!"
Was that in the film, or just the novel?
I told people this so many damn times.
Thank you!
I was watching a video of you on another channel speaking Latin to a Romanian. I don’t speak either, but for some reason I could, with hearing you and reading the text, understand what you where trying to have the other person guess. It was such a crazy feeling. It felt like immersion. How does the brain do that ? It was glorious
He's a great teacher, and knows how to emphasize certain words or even use some words and word order that makes it easier for native romance speakers to understand. Probably since he also speaks romance languages himself. Great guy, really!
THIS IS PURE BULLCRAP AND EVERYONE KNOWS IT :(
@@andrej_urod_iljic Everyone apparently doesn't know it? can you expand on this? I don't know much about Romanian at all.
@@TheHopperUK LOL I'M JUST BEING EDGY AND SHIT
I ALSO DIDN'T MEAN THE LANGUAGE PART BUT MORE THE DESCRIPTION OF THE EXPERIENCE
@@andrej_urod_iljic Okay, well, you have a good day then.:)
Actually the Chinese name for Caesar spells like "Kai Sa", which also reflects the Latin pronunciation of Caesar. Thanks for making this video to explain the differences in pronunciation! Very professional, helpful and informative!
but 普通话（英文叫啥来着的?） aspirates the k, i think, 反正我是那么说的
also： 开撒儿 (
If someone said to me "Kaiser" without the Gaius Iūlius part I'd immediately think of Wilhelm II.
Obsession with "correct" pronunciation also poses the question, should we say Germania instead of Germany?
No, because it's Deutschland.
Seriously? The first fucking Kaiser that comes to your mind is that idiot Wilhelm II. and not ANY of the great Kaiser we had? For example: Friedrich II., ein Staufer, genannt "stupor mundi": das Staunen der Welt. Oder Otto höchstselbst, ein Liudolfinger, der aus Heinrichs "deutschem Königreich" das Heilige Römische Reich Deutscher Nation formte.
@@bobbwc7011 Pardon me. Have you ever considered that perhaps there's no need to be rude.
My brother has an interest in modern history and in particular The Great War, that's why Wilhelm II comes to mind primarily for me personally, a piece of context I feel I shouldn't have to explain were folk to mind their manners.
Good day to you sir.
@@bobbwc7011 Wilhelm is the only German monarch most English speakers have ever heard of.
@@anthonyj.manttan9986 Excellent rebuke.
Well, also because Germania was practically just anything north of the Rhine, Germania was much larger and has barely anything to do with the English name Germany. It's actually a bit of a gripe i have with English, just why? It's the only language that confuses Germanic with Deutsch, and i've had the unfortunate pleasure of encountering several people that legitmately thought that German and Germanic are interchangeable, for no other reason than English speakers calling Deutsch German lol
Life's hard
*If you really want to use the classical pronunciation, you would say, "KICK-ero", and "KAI-sar". Huehuhuhuhuhuho!*
🤓
kick-ero also knows as kick the horny
Funniest thing... in (relatively) modern Roman dialect, if you pronounce it "kick-ero" (or, often, "kick-erone"... the "one" stands for "big") it means "ass". :D
In modern greek it is pronounced Kikéron and Késar,Virgílios, Orátios. Κικέρων,Καίσαρας, Βιργίλιος,Οράτιος
@@vanguelisk err, is the Greek name for Caesar written correctly? That feels off...
Funnily enough, in Polish you say not "Milan", but "Mediolan" , so it seems the more classical version was preserved there 😋
Yes and Naples is Neapol. There was a funny situation when I was in Italy and the road signs were all saying Napoli so my polish brain got confused and somehow the polish "Neapol" and italian "Napoli" merged into "Napoleon" 😂
@@askarufus7939 my english brain also does this
Also Kolonia for Colgne (the city) - way closer to the original Latin than the modern German “Köln”.
Thanks for clarifying something that's confused me since college Latin, 50 years ago. Your videos are excellent, BTW.
The moral to this story is: Don't try to correct Luke on pronunciation unless you enjoy feeling like a fool.
😂
Or is it pronounciation? 😉
@@weavehole Pro Nuns!
@@vedranb87 Those weird and frequent spelling (and also pronunciation) exceptions bug me to heck in English.
I mean why would you write it that way when you literally have the words pronoun and pronounce both written with 'ou'?
I know it's probably because Arkan saw what Arkan sas, but he hasn't sought to sue for the sowing of saws (if you get the joke). 🤣
@@weavehole pro-noun-citation 😎
Funnily enough, the classical Latin pronunciation of Caesar sounds quite similar to how native Spanish speakers pronounce "Kaiser" (such as in "Kaiser Permanente"). So somehow, us trying to pronounce German brought us closer to the original Latin!
Nosotros pronunciamos distinto el æ. Creo que lo usamos igual que lo franceses.
Suena AE para
curriculum vitæ
Pero É para etcétera o César
et cætera
Cæsar
Al final quién sabe, muy raro que se haya perdido algo tan valioso como la pronunciacìón del æ en todos los idiomas originados del latín y se haya preservado en los germanos.
Actually German pronouciation of words IS pretty similiar to Classical Latin. It is so similiar in fact that in school, when Germans learn Latin (you only learn Classical Latin in Germany), the teachers say "sprich das Wort einfach, wie es da steht" (just speak/pronounce the word as it is written). There are a few differences ofcourse, but generally speaking a German has not many problems learning the Classical pronounciation.
We don’t actually. We pronounce it exactly the same as in Latin. We don’t “I” our E’s.
The Balls it takes to think you of all people would make such a linguistical mistake is staggering lol xD
I’d rather say ingenuity and pedantry. At least those guys will think twice before showing their " " knowledge "".
*dont tell the other germanic language speakers (germans dutch scandinavians)
haha yeah it cracks me up
He was actually wrong about the [w] sound in Germanic too, since it existed in German even in the late middle ages and still exists in rural places in Sweden:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_High_German#Phonology
But most of his content is brilliant.
One of the kindest and most balanced "rants" I've ever heard. Thank you for the message.............
I love you for this! It has been a pet peeve of mine when corrected continually when I too know DAMN WELL what the original pronunciation was. You Rock!
You are literally the reason why I can love Latin. After years of these snobbish Latin teachers and students in school that seem to care more about showing how "smart" they are, it makes it so hard to stay motivated. Thank you so much!
I am so glad I was kicked out of Mick school before I had to learn Latin, church Latin that is. I remember picking up one of my brother's Latin books, he hated Latin lessons, and reading about the Republic, the part about Brutus sending his sons to be executed. I didn't know Latin, but it seemed the Latin chosen was like English. I learned one thing Peninsula means almost an island.
One word: YES!
You tell ‘em, Luke!
This is a huge pet peeve of mine, too. Even though I can switch between a Greek and English accent pretty easily, doing it for just one damn word or name when I can just keep using my native English phonological habits is just a big effort! I also end up not being able to switch back until after the first syllable of the following word (which happens a lot when I’m teaching Greek haha)
@@altralinguamusica YES!!! but for me in other languages. especially Spanish which is so close to English
It's interesting to see how different languages have ended up with different pronunciations and thus transcriptions of the name - Caesar, Cesar, Cesare, Kaiser, Kaísaras, Keyser, Sezar, Czar/Tsar
BTW "czar/tsar" is a colloquial pronunciation, when Russian tsars were addressed in high style, the full form "tsesar" (much closer to Caesar) was used. Also, Russian Bible offers yet another rendition of the word - "kyesar", which is distinctly biblical and was not applied to Russian tsars.
I remember many moons ago when I first learnt about how C was a velar plosive in Classical Latin, that languages such as German and Dutch preserved this sound; Kaiser, keizer; caseus, Käse, kaas....because such words were amongst the earliest of borrowings from Latin.
You have a delightful way of speaking. It's clear that you have worked hard to achieve it.
I love you man, I feel like this so often when other people talk about things; we just like study, learning & thinking.
When I clicked on this video all I could think about was Fallout New Vegas and how the pronounciation of Caesar is used to show how much of a LARPer Edward Sallow (Caesar) is, refusing to pronounce it normally in English
Until now i thought the idea was that they were so far removed from education and civilisation that they simply read it wrong after finding some book in some ghoul infested school and having no frame of reference or teacher to correct them didnt realise its true pronunciation. Having learned something new today i am so glad that the joke is even better and more layered and not an ignorant mistake by the developers since its such a good game and it so deserves to be loved. Just shows who does fallout best, amirite? Yes, the people that originally created and lovingly nurtured the fallout franchise, not some ugly, exploitative, multinational corporation with no love or respect for gamers, their fans, source materials or anything that isnt money, basically. Oh, im nerd-ranting and this is old and tired, isnt it? Sorry!
@@KingDomIV 4's gunplay was better, 3 was less buggy, and 76 has multiplayer options for people who want it. new vegas was an unfinished mess not just because bethesda gave obsidian such a bad time limit, but because obsidian don't know how to coordinate a team to make a concise or mechanically solid 3D game. Fallout 1 & 2 were the best in the series and the only thing you should bother arguing back at me is whether or not Van Burin (or however it is spelled lol) would have been EVEN BETTER than 1 & 2
@@CornCarson erm... OK but I don't wanna.
@@KingDomIV Yeah buddy that's what I thought. Now go on your merry way, having a different opinion which with I disagree aggressively but still respect as we are all entitled to our own opinions.
@@CornCarson K. Thnx. Bye. (Sorry but I can't do commenting on the internet, I don't enjoy it the way everyone else seems to and I shouldn't have left that last comment or the one before it, I'm an idiot, sorry).
I can feel the Fallout: New Vegas fans seething
Ave true to Caesar… but in seriousness, I am positive that the Legion thinking it was pronounced with a hard sound was meant to show just how stupid they really are. Also, all true New Vegas fans know it is pronounced Scissor
@@atticusshadowmore3263 Actually it was because Caesar actually understood latin, and forced his legion to address him with the "proper" pronunciation, even if they still did it with the wrong sounds as described in this video. So it was an ego thing.
I don't get why NV fans would get triggered by this, because in the game there are people that pronounce Caesar in the proper English way. In fact, I think most people do.
Thank you for this. I'm Spanish and I recently started studying Latin just for fun. I started with my old high school textbook and watched some videos on pronunciation. I was really confused when I found people on TH-cam pronouncing Caesar as "Kaiser" as in German. I also found videos that said the "r" was just strong or just soft, and I was pretty sure that wasn't the case. I'm glad I found your video on pronunciation of the Latin "r" as well, as I was getting very confused between the TH-cam videos and my high school memories of Latin. I'm starting to think that I can study intuitively using my own language as a reference.
I know it defeats the purpose of this video but now im just gonna tell people it was pronounced Guisar XD
Winged Guisar, Polska strong!
Zsar
So there's this Geezer, right?
German had/has Kaiser as an approximation. I'd like Polymath's take on how it arrived there, whether it was always spelled that way in German, and how it was pronounced in German over the years. I don't trust the English to stay close to what they read in the first instance - and, of course, it REALLY DOESN'T MATTER, does it?
Geyser?
As linguist teaching French to English speakers, I have the opposite problem that is just as frustrating. My students regularly pronounce cognates in French as they are pronounced in English: instead of "histoire" they say "historie", "victoire" is "victorie", and they pronounce ALL the S's. They're like "well isn't it the same word?" ........ Like ok you wanna speak Old French then we'll learn Old French, see how you like that.
🤣🤣🤣
Douce damme jolie...
Qu'il n'a de riens envie
Fors d'estre en vo baillie;
Et se ne li ottrie
Vos cuers nul aligement
@@empyrionin Is that poem old French?
@@empyrionin C'est de qui? J'aime beaucoup les poésies écrites dans un français ancien !
@@empyrionin Fun fact : j'ai découvert qu'en anglais l'ancien français peut se dire "francien" comme fr et ancien, la beauté de la langue !
modern humour, mixed with professionality, mixed with educational linguistics, mixed with the beautiful language of Latin. This is perfect
This video had to be made. It is a service to humanity🙏🏼
Oh English and its struggle with phonetic. I really appreciate being a native romance language speaker. However you're right, if you are speaking in English it's normal and perfectly fine to pronounce those words in English.
Well it is fine because when speaking English saying Caesar is an English word, when speaking Latin then saying it the Latin way is correct. It is foolish to say Tacitus in the Latin way when addressing a audience of English speakers.
We in one language have both pronunciations of < C > in this name: [k] and [ts] but these words mean different things.
tsezar - is the name of Julius Caesar and in Salad.
In other uses, it is [k]: emperor title / german monarch / and C-section.
British accent on point 👌
🇬🇧 ♥️
To be honest, to my native Brit ear, it sounded more like an attempt at a circa-1935 Transatlantic Accent.
Posh southern English accent
@@Meevious Yes, the Scots may have something to say about that - and they sure are a contentious people!
@@scollyer.tuition at least we Scots can role Rs and say ch like in Loch
In Norwegian, the word for "emperor" is "keiser", and pronounced very similar to how you pronouced Ceasar.
Edit: I just checked the Norwegian Wikipedia article for keiser, and it says: The word «keiser» is derived from the German word Kaiser, which in turn is derived from Cæsar, which in classical latin was pronounced similiar to «kaisar».
The more you know.
same in German and Dutch and... many languages actually
The Russian word "Tsar" - also (especially previously) spelled "Czar" in English - is also ultimately derived from Caesar.
I honestly clicked on this video to learn how my name is pronounced in other languages. before I clicked on it I expected to click off in a matter of seconds, but the way you were explaining things had me hooked up... last thing I knew, I watched the entire video lol great video.
Thanks! That’s very kind
0:26 holy shit now I know why we called our monarchs Kaiser here in Austria, I feel pretty stupid now for not knowing it all these years
Genau!
Well, you have to remember from your history classes that the Holy Roman Empire included Austria (actually Vienna was its capital in 1497) , so all these terms like Kaiser came from titles and names in the classic Roman Empire that they were trying to imitate/perpetuate
@@maximus7288 yeah I know that I just didn't know (or I just forgot) that the word Kaiser was directly lifted from classical latin
Also the reason why the Russian Rulers were Tsars (Czar).
Dude.. cmon man 😑.. I'm glad to know that you did learn something though
Are these people also mad that we say Jesus instead of Yeshua? My name is Evan. Do they think I pronounce my own name wrong because it isn't Yehohanan? Do they want me to spell it in Hebrew as well?
Names evolve. It's okay.
First one yes, second one no because YOUR name was originally "Evan" even if the name came from something else. Along the same lines, someone in modern times with the name "Caesar" pronounced "seezer" or "sayzar" or whatever might be treated differently from, say, Iulius Caesar, because whoever named them intended it to be pronounced the modern way even if they see that as a butchered reference...
Thank you. Language evolves period.
@@Ithirahad Why would you be mad about that? It's a perfectly logical rendering of the Greek Ιησούς. And it's useful for differentiating Jesus from Joshua son of Nun in common parlance
Yeshuah, Jesus, Yahweh, Jehovah, don't care really. Mohamed, Muhammad, don't really care.
THANK YOU SO MUCH. This video seriously needed to be released on the net.
I’m glad you think so too.
0:26 John Cleese ranting about mispronouncing "Cicero" and "Caesar."
I don't know about other language speakers, maybe the French, but English speakers don't like learning languages and don't like learning pronouncing. They expect everyone to speak English. It is like in the Indiana Jones movies of that chap in Turkey expecting everyone to speak English.
Haha, love this :) I just learned from you that the Latin way of pronouncing Caesar is closer to Keizer (Emperor in Dutch) than the way we pronounce Ceasar, of which the word is derived from obviously.
Goeiemorgen Jan
Yeah same in Hebrew, Keizar
So how do you pronounce Caesarian in Dutch?
@@Ponto-zv9vf Keizersnede :) , translated 'cut of the emperor'
This was soooo satisfying to watch. You let them HAVE it. I love your videos!
I am not super interested in language but watching something get explained to death to show people who think they are right because they don't go into depth on the issue was just so emotionally satisfying.
This is like a masterclass in how to respond to uneducated critics.
You're exactly right, what's 'correct' is completely relative to the exact language and moment in history. Even just withint modern English there's one generation between "May I do X" and "Can I do X".
Would love to see you do a series on the International Phonetic Alphabet. It's like the periodic table of languague and I love it.
Re 'may' and 'can': a little more than 70 years ago I was sitting in my elementary school classroom in England when another kid asked the teacher, "Please miss, can I go to the toilet?". Her reply was a model of grammatical precision: "You can but you may not". Such accurate discrimination, alas, is fast fading.
That was the calmest rant I've ever heard.
I totally agree. I have a friend who always says “fess” for Fez, when he’s speaking English, based on the Arabic pronunciation…I live there, but would never pronounce it that way when I’m speaking English. But at least he doesn’t criticize me when I say Fez. The person who complained about your English pronunciation of Caesar and Cicero is just ill-informed/confused/etc :)
Indeed, David!
I did not know Fez is pronounced Fess. Arabic is not written normally in Latin characters, it is occasionally transliterated but it depends on which form of Arabic is used.
@
These are the possibilities according to Wiktionary:
فَاس • (fās)
* IPA(key): /faːs/
Fez (English)
* IPA(key): /fɛz/
Fès (French)
* IPA(key): /fɛs/
Let's just go back to calling him Tully
Nice reference! I almost mentioned that in this video but I held back
Edmure?
I loved his "Thick as a Brick" album!
I didn't know that Caesar was truly announced like that. That's the version they use in the Fallout series, and I always thought it was intentionally mispronounced
Ave, true to Caesar!
Thank you for saying this!
“Phonotactic limitations.” How I love this.
Χαίρε Καίσαρ!!!
From Kαισαρ🇬🇷 to Kaiser🇩🇪 and Tsar🇷🇺!!!
I came here from the game Fallout New Vegas due to the in game pronunciation of Caesar and Kaiser as it always grated on me as a non US American. This is a splendid explanation of its latin origin and how language is used word for word through time and across the world. This has brought me back to the idea of me studying another language at an older age once again as it is fascinating.
Can you make a video on the pronunciation of “qu”, please? I am quite surprised this isn’t covered on your channel alongside with aspirated ph/th/ch and “gn”
Will do
I totally agree. I used to be quite pedantic when it came to the original names of Roman authors but then one day I realised that my own name, "Niklas", will almost never be pronounced correctly by native English speakers and that it's waay easier to just call me "Nick" or "Nicholas" and that that is totally fine!
One of the things I found strange about when I was a child is that English speakers use a phrase in French or Latin but pronounce it like an English speaker. It confused me. In Australia, croissant is not pronounced as in French. It would be better just to use English and maybe make a new word for croissant.
Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts on this. You've a rock solid point and you illustrate it well. Great watch.
Keeping this video playing on loop for my next playthrough of Fallout: New Vegas.
Here too it's considered pretentious to pronounce foreign words exactly as they're pronounced in their respective languages. There are a few news anchors who try to emulate foreign pronunciation and they're ridiculed
In Australia George Donikian was noted for pronouncing foreigner's names correctly, he wasn't ridiculed exactly though in comedy sketches there always a Donekian lookalike who would go through a list of foreign names and pronounce them outrageously.
First time seeing your channel. Obviously this comment is late. I'm Serbian but i adore languages, especially Latin. You make learning languages fun. You've earned a new subscriber. Thank you for respecting languages and sharing your amazing knowledge. Sending love from Novi Sad!
Thanks!
i like how someone tries to call him out on pronunciation and then they don't even use ipa lol
"It's "Kye-sarr" not "sea-sar""
@@mollof7893 hurts my soul every time i see people try to write pronunciations like that xD
@@Kewljack02 Yeah, it only works if the person you're talking to also speaks the same language.
@@Kewljack02 So for me, a Vietnamese, "see-zur" would literally be pronounced as [sɛzuɹ]
@@hydrargyruschaldaecus2572 Or even the same dialect. I was watching a video about a Router and the guy in the video pronounces it /rutə/, with people in the comments saying "It's pronounced 'router' not 'rooter'.
FYI: I would pronounce it ['rəʊw.ʔa]*
Just one thing, my rhotic sound, my top teeth touch the inside of my bottom lip, and there is no IPA character for it.
Meanwhile Joseph Joestar: SHIIIIIZAAAA
Ever since I watched it I get annoyed cos like... it's an Italian name! Why is his name pronounced like it'd be in English lol
There are three ways Japanese spell it:
セザール (seza-ru)
シーザー (shi-za-)
and カエサル (kaesaru)
@@Icsant3 Yeah, and Caesar was Italian in fact, so that pronunciation never made sense, all the more so since his middle and last names are close to Italian pronunciation so th is not English th and z is actually pronounced like ts.
@@redlamper Exactly! It makes sense Jojo and Speedwagon would call him Cesar because they're english, but he just takes it! And I think the other italian speakers just call him that as well. Maybe his father name him Cesar (in english) cos he thought it sounded cool or something ?)
In SBR, Gyro's real name is Iulius Caesar and he pronounces it like in Latin so instead of Shiza it's Kaiza.
Seeing this video on Cesar, I was wondering if and how familiar you were with the French comic book series Astérix ? There’s a ton of word play with Latin (written or spoken by characters) and Ancient Rome during the era of Julius Cesar. It would be interesting to see a video on that! If you haven’t I totally recommend reading it specially in the original French since I’m not sure the quality of the English translation and a lot might have been lost in translation. Great channel and content by the way 👍🏻
@Simon England no problem! well I'm glad the English translation is of great quality! yes the whole Asterix series still holds up to this day, which is a testament to the genius of its two creators. I'll look forward to your videos if you do it on this subject. There's a number of other Ancient Roman inspired bande dessinées I'd also recommend, in particular Murena which is set during Emperor Nero, it's more mature and adult though with not much latin but it's also a high quality series, unfortunately I'm not sure there's an English translation of it
I could never get into those films. Asterix and Obilix.
Good one. Glory to the once great Roman Empire, and you keep on doing good work.
Out of curiosity have you ever thought about exploring the Latin of Fallout New Vegas, there's a faction in there that bases itself loosely on Roman myth and history, with the use of Latin to varying degrees of competency, and I thought it would be interesting to hear your thoughts.
Caesars Legion: "Ave, True to Kai Ser
Joseph Joestar: "Caesarino"
So much love for this point - and so applicable to so many lend-words.
One of the many peculiarities of the human species, any subject, any hobby, any interest it could be something as odd as shirt button collecting and there will always be those "Well actually" nerds! Those who always have to chime in with their pretentious BS.
Eh. Thus is TH-cam.
Funny you say that, considering the video is also a “well, actually”.
Excellent, thanks for the clarification. Unfortunately there will be always a lot of people that, knowing the rudiments at best of something, will try to "teach" those who have actually gone into the trouble of mastering that very field...
“Ave, true to Caesar!”
Luca di dici in inglese Milàn, non perché sia derivato da Mediolanum, ma perché Milàn è il nome della città in Lombardo occidentale, ossia come tutti la chiamavano fino a prima dell'imposizione dell'italiano.
lombardo occidentale che è evoluzione diretta del latino parlato dai Galli cisalpini (con un po' di contributo del longobardo e successive influenze francesi)
Milàn l'é semper Milàn
Really interesting! Funnily enough, when trieng to pronounce caesar and cicero with a thick dutch accent resulting into kaisar and kikero, they sound quite similar. I guess the Dutch and English language just got too intertwined as we share quite a lot of words, and ended up with the english pronounciation. Thanks for the nice video! :)
Thanks for the nice comment
The sheer amount of intelligence in this is absolutely amazing. I've learned some classical Latin in college due to my degree as a portuguese teacher, and oh boy, it reminded me of those golden days.
Est nempe mirabile visu quod tibi necesse erat pelliculam facere huius rei describendae causa Luci aliis hominibus. Re vera laudanda est patientia tua! Salutem e Graecia amice!
"vera laudanda est patientia tua! Salutem e Graecia amice!"
Truly admirable is your patience? Greetings from a Greek friend?
Did I got anything right?
@@rogeriopenna9014 The first one, the second one is kind of a transliteration meaning greetings from Greece.
@@musicmaniac-xp9gi what does amice means? It sounds like a false cognate to AMIGO.
@@rogeriopenna9014 it's my friend, vocative singular
@@rogeriopenna9014 I think the last part should be: greetings from Greece, friend. If I recall my high school Latin
There's something beautiful about watching someone talk about a subject with passion and complete authority.
Fascinating and thanks for the info! While your point is well taken, can you please do a video explaining how the Greek and Roman gods names were actually pronounced in ancient times?
I promise to pronounce them the current English way, I'm just curious as to how they were actually pronounced back then (esp "Zeus")!🤔
Great idea
Zeus is from Indo-European, Dyeus.
Hahahahahaha! good rant, I love it
It’s taken me years as a native English speaker learning Spanish and now Romanian, to learn how to roll my ‘R’s with any consistency. Quite literally my facial muscles were unable to make the proper sounds, so when you mentioned the ‘R’ in Caesar, I felt that one 😂
When you get to a certain age you cannot make certain sounds that exist in one Language but not in English. You mention the letter r, well there are a few types of ways to roll the r and where in the mouth it comes from. I can roll my r because in Maltese r is rolled, I don't even speak Maltese but I was born in Malta and heard my parents speak that language. Also it would be hard for an English speaker to not pronounce the s in Caesar as a z.