I've always heard initial psi as /s/ in ecclesiastical Latin - and, sung, it's certainly much less likely to distort pitch and intelligibility (which, to my mind, would be the conclusive reason to avoid bucking that common practice). In classical Latin, it could have been pronounced as psi in Greek.

I agree, but do you have a source?

No, but I don't need links to 10,000 recordings, just one, sung by real Italians, not Brits, Americans, Germans, etc.

'Ps', as I suspect most here know, is a peculiarity of Greek. When speaking Greek words one pronounces the 'p' - as in P'tolemy or p'salm. However, I've never heard the 'ps' in a Latin (or English, for that matter) context pronounced other than 's', and hope that I never do. As MaryAnn illustrates, a choir that sang 'P'sallite Domino' would likely be receiving some well deserved snickers for such an affectation. Of course, 'psalm' is a Greek word indicating a sung or chanted text, but when it appears in Latin verbiage one pronounces it as the Romans Italians do. - Just as one pronounces Latin itself the way the, um, Romans did Italians do. (At least, in church.)

Unfortunately, this makes no mention of ps. I'm simply trying to make sure my longtime pronunciation is not simply the unchecked assumption of a native English speaker, that's all. In English, both the p and l of psalm are silent; in German, both letters are pronounced. The p is also pronounced in the French psaume. I can say with a reasonable degree of certainty that German-speaking choirs using their traditional manner of Latin pronunciation pronounce the p in Latin texts as well - snicker-inducing for Anglophones or not. But that's neither here nor there. The Italian language, like Spanish and Portuguese, spells the word salmo. If they don't have ps in their mother tongue, why should we assume that they would not pronounce it as spelled? Oh wait - maybe because we English speakers have a tendency to think everybody else imitates us! If it weren't for us, they'd all be speaking German, right? I'm going to e-mail an Italian friend to settle this and will report back when I've received his reply.

Good observations, madorganist! And accurate, as well! True, many on the continent continue to pronounce Latin as they have for well over a thousand years: as they pronounce their own tongues. The English continue this as well - in their universities and public schools. It seems that (so far as I can tell) the only people who hie to the Italianate, Liber Ususalis, Latin are English, American and Italian church choirs. This eccentric 'Latin' has little appeal outside the Anglo-phone and Italo-phone spheres. And, why should it? We should, all of us, pronounce Latin reasonably close to what we are told by linguists and clacissists is the way that (educated) Romans pronounced it... at one point in time. Just as one's French hasn't passed muster until it brings a smile to a Parisian's face, and light into his eyes, likewise, one's Latin should be judged by the manner in which it would have brightened a Roman Roman's countenance. (But, we digress.)

I disagree with you on only one point: I have always pronounced the 'l' in 'psalm', and consider this to be TPP (The Proper Pronunciation). People who say 'sawm' seem, clearly, to suffer from a TPP deficiency... a condition which, usually, is congenital.

In the absence of a special rules dealing with particular combinations, isn't the norm that individual consonants should be distinctly pronounced?

C.f. these recordings:

Psallite Domino (Communion)

Jubilate Deo (Introit)

Jubilate Deo (Offertory)

Lauda anima (Offertory)

MJO, my understanding is that the Italian pronunciation wasn't adopted in Catholic churches in English-speaking countries until St. Pius X's 1903 motu proprio and even later among Anglicans. Before then, it was like we hear in some recordings of Byrd, for example, where it's pronounced like English before the Great Vowel Shift.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pySTHOJKIlA
I think we've all struggled with choir members who can't break the habit of ay diphthongs or words (or parts thereof) that look similar to English words, such as cherubim (in last Sunday's proper), thronem, the soft g in longe or jurgia, hard s at the end of a word (fons, mors), or even how to say in properly in Latin, because none of these pronunciations comes naturally to us. Americans are bad enough, but the Irish priests I've known all pronounced their liturgical Latin in a manner that would immediately give them away as foreigners if they were to celebrate Mass in Rome.

MaryAnn, the schola member in question is fond of recordings from Solesmes, so perhaps that's where he picked it up.

Note that the IPA for the Italian psicologia (psychology) is /psikolodʒa/.

The Italian word salmo is certainly suggestive; Copeman's Italian Latin chapter in Singing Early Music is oddly silent on "ps" (as is WP), though he mentions "santus" and "sangtus" as examples of dropped consonants. Perhaps there's something in the standard reference, his earlier book.

I have more performances of Athanaeus' hymn coming up soon and it's really a lot of fun to pronounce the h's following p, t & r in a reconstructed 2c BC Attic accent.

CCooze the difference is that there is a rule in Latin that "c, like k in all postions, except bfore e, I, ae or oe; then , like ch in church: cena, circa, caelum, coenobium. - A Preimer of Ecclesiastical Latin by John F. Collins.
This book also states (page 3 Notes:)
7. Doubled consonants are doubly pronounced: ancil/la, mis/sa, pe/catum, sab/batum, com/mit/to.
8. There are no silent consonants in Latin.

This seems to say that you would pronounce the "p" in psalm. However, when we sing Latin we do pronounce things differently than when we say them.

I would imagine that the p should be there but only as loud or accented as the "l" in psalm is sung or spoken.

IMHO only.
I am no linguist.

If the Italians see "salmo", and pronounce an "s", I would think this makes it more, rather than less, likely that when they see "psalmum" with a "p", the "p" would be pronounced.

Here's one "psalmum".

"There are no silent consonants in Latin."

But, if /ps/ is /psi/ it's a single vocalized consonant....

@donr, maybe I missed something in your explanation, but I don't see at all how that answered the question of why people will pronounce caeli/coeli as "say-lee."

Two of us sang the Charpentier Regina Caeli for Easter this year.

This was the best, though obnoxious, recording I could find at the time:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXiIZcoLv7U

As I said above, it's almost impossible to hear the pronounced “p” in front of “s”... French phonics do trick me, even after several years of study, but it's a sound a non-native speaker will not get with any ease, if at all, and I’ll ask a professor I know, but my guess is it’s not the sound a native speaker uses to gauge the fluency and non-nativeness of a non-native speaker. So extrapolate all that to Latin and basically ignore “p.”

This topic actually took me aback, because my initial inclination was to say, of course they didn't pronounce the p. Then I thought about it a little more carefully (I hope), and it occurs to me that there might be more to it than that. So I write this in a spirit of inquiry, rather than that of laying down what I think is the best practice.

This all has to do with sounds in the Greek words that Latin speakers borrowed, and there are six of them: PS from the letter Psi (Ψ), CH from Chi (χ), TH from Theta (θ), PH from Phi (ɸ), Y from Upsilon (Υ), and Z from Zeta (ζ). These letter combinations occur almost exclusively in words borrowed from Greek and, later, Hebrew, to indicate sounds that were not native to Latin. If the Romans of the 1st and 2nd centuries BC had not heard a difference between F and PH, for example, they would not have transcribed the Greek word ɸαɩδων as Phaedo, they would have opted for a much easier Faedo, and learners of English would not be bedeviled by all the words that use "ph" to spell "f". PH, CH, and TH all signified an aspirated consonant, rather than the plain P, C, and T. Or a more familiar example: Greek Κυϱɩε came into Latin as Kyrie, with the Upsilon (υ) intact as the new letter "y", instead of being spelled with an "i", because at this point, it was probably pronounced in Greek as a German "ü". This tells me that when the bulk of the borrowings took place, speakers of Latin still heard a difference in sound, so the Greek sounds were still approximated by Latin spelling.

However, I think what probably happened very soon after was that all these non-native sounds were assimilated into more familiar ones by the common people. Cicero and Marcus Aurelius spoke Greek, and so they would have known the difference between T and TH, but the man in the street would not, and in short order Thomas would become To-mas, Psalmus would become Sal-mus, and Psyche would turn into English Sigh-key. Some expert in Latin epigraphy would have to weigh in, but my guess is that this happened before the sixth or seventh centuries. Words like Psychology are modern coinages, so they would not reflect "traditional" pronunciations coming from Medieval Europe.

Does that make sense?

How surprising I found this!

I always pronounce the p in ps when reading or singing Latin. Never occurred to me to do otherwise. Never been corrected, either. It strikes me that singing "sallite" or "salmo" would be as over-italianated as singing "eccelso" or "estra".

In 1934, it could still be stated that "The Italian pronunciation does not appear to have made much headway in Anglican cathedrals or college chapels up to the present." Quite interesting, considering this is a mere 82 years ago. The author also attributes the Italian pronunciation in England to "Faberism." Check it out: Latin in Church: Episodes in the History of Its Pronunciation Particularly in England

"LenaH, what about psicologia or psichico?"

Madorganist, I must thank you for correcting me on the fact that there are many Italian words beginning with the "ps" combination. Honestly, I had no idea, so thanks again. (It is amazing how much we learn on this forum.)

My schola sings "psalmum" and "psallite" with /s/ since I am the director. They always follow my directions! : )

No, it's not silent in standard Italian pronunciation. The silent p in English and Spanish is the exception actually. Please see http://forvo.com/search/psicologia/it/. I'm opting for the Italianate pronunciation. The whole point of this thread was to establish exactly what the Italinate pronunciation is in this particular case.

GregP,
Interesting and plausible thoughts. :)

How do you do it well? I can hear it only when I’m trying to hear the sound, and I can’t make the sound...

Pshaw.

Ptomaine.

(as in Governor Lepetomane . . .)

Good one, melofluent! I suppose /pʃ/ is as close as we get to an initial /ps/ in English. I'll take it! ;)

Thanks. Interesting.