hello

the "better" books I've found stress that " X " is a double consonant --- k and s

therefore, because you end up with the "ksc" you say the latter like "scio" or "scelera"

so, therefore, it's "eck-shell"

but I've noticed that some choir members will never say it correctly no matter what you do....

Eggshell- is completely without phonological evidence. There is no reason why the consonant should become voiced.

Here's a fantastic article on voicing, aspiration, and voice onset time.

I usually say (and have the choir say) "ekk-SHEL-sees" according to Roman-Latin. I've also heard "ek-shchel-sees." I believe in Classical-Watin is "ekk-CHEL-seees." (Classical-Latin drives me crazy, every time I hear it all I can think of is Elmer Fudd singing "Way-nee, Way-nee, Eman-u-wew...") The main problem with Latin pronunciation is that it is a dead language in that no man speaks it as his native tongue, and we don't now what a "Latin accent" is. Listen to someone from Germany speak Latin and it will sound more Germanic than if spoken by an Italian, who will sound more Italianate than someone from the US, who will sound different than someone from the UK. I actually saw a video of a TLM High Mass sung by an SSPX priest from the South (Alabama, I think), I had to bite my tongue to keep from laughing when he sang "Dow-mee-nyoos vaw-bis-cyoom."

I drove my choir nuts with this last year ('o9) at Christmas: We were singing mainly French music as so we did "Angels we have heard" (in French and English) and "Ding-dong Merrily" (in a concert before midnight Mass), both are French melodies. In "Angels..." I insisted on the choir using the Roman-Latin "ekk-SHEL-sees" in the refrain; in "Ding-dong Merrily" I insisted on the traditional Anglo-Latin current in the time of Woodward "ek-SELL-sis." Not to mention: io is "Eye-oh" in Anglo-Latin, not "Eee-oh." It was actually kind of a fun mental exercise trying to keep the two pronunciations straight since both pieces are similar. This year we're sing pieces from the British Isles. ("Ther ys no ros off swych vertu" should be fun!)

I think that part of the beauty of Latin is that, since it is a Vniuersal Langvage, its pronunciation can be slightly adapted to the peculiarities of pronunciation of one's native tongue and still be the same language. I found in the basement of my parish Church a book for a Latin course, I can't remember the tittle or the name of the author, but its was written by a priest, that uses as its base pronunciation the "Traditional Received Pronunciation" which is what I call "Anglo-Latin" since its easier to say and write, and had in appendices guides for Roman/Ecclesiastical Latin, and Classical Latin. Food for thought: Which of the following is the correct pronunciation of COELOCANTH?

1: Cheh-lo-kahnt
2: See-lo-kanth
3: Koy-lo-kahntt

Charles, forgive me, but doesn't "dik-sit" (or "deek-seet" for those who like their i's with a longer sound) do the job? I.e., pretty much the same sound we have in the word "Dixie"? It's not a particularly difficult sound to make, which is why a word like "lockstep" doesn't generally come out sounding like "logstep" even in the loosest conversation.

Chris, you've made my point, even though I meant "egg-ZA-mee-neh" not "to forensically examine" our pronunciation tendencies. If it is about singing, then we should, at the least, be aware of the rule of voiced consonants, so should we be compelled to break the rule, we do it knowingly. Classical Latin is not much help in the matter.
I thank God we're singing Latin in the USofA, and not in France or Austria. That way we have license to teach Gregorian/Italianate vowels and consonants without prejudice and tradition. Phonating "Ah-lay-LOO-yuh" is not a tradition, it's uninformed laziness.
Mark, I hope that also clarifies my disposition away from "DEEK-seet" as well. I just believe it places an over-emPHAsis on the transitional consonant. Latin seems to have, for all its pristine purity, allowances for interpretation. For example, I would never teach my singers to render "Rex" as "reggz." But, as we know, syllablic transitions affect such phonetic circumstances.

First, /ch/ is not a plosive; it's an affricate. Moreover, I've never seen any linguist formally write English [t∫] as [tʃʰ]. Even if the English affricate is slighly more aspirated than the Italian (I'm dubious), the solution can't be to voice the velar stop. The cure would be far worse than the disease.

Second, it has to be noticed that there is a morpheme boundary between ex and celsis. A morpheme is an indivisible component of a word that conveys meaning. Normally in ecclesiastical Latin, sce- is pronounced like English she-. However, in this situation, ex- is its own morpheme, and so we can't think of it as ec-scelsis. Even roots that began with s usually retained the s after the prefix ex-, such as exspectare. Celsus itself was an adjective, so it was perfectly apparent that excelsus was a prefixed form, and so we expect -celsus to be pronounced as if uncompounded. eksCHELsees (better: eksTSHELsees) or eksTSELsees are to my mind the only acceptable ecclsiastical pronunciations (in classical Latin the pronunciation is eksKELsees). The problem with the assimilation argument is that assimilation explains why an unvoiced consonant becomes voiced when followed by a voiced consonant or vice versa. There is no voiced consonant in the -stsh-/-sts- cluster, hence no reason at all for voicing the c. In ancora and hung, the dental nasal becomes velarized in the environment of a following velar stop. Of course, assimilation can happend across morpheme boundaries, but there is no reason to expect voicing in this linguistic environment. Voiced k's and unvoiced g's are contradictions in term; the situation in in German is one of unaspirated stops.

W.S. Allen also points out in Vox Latina that there is no softening of c before front vowels before the 5th century. Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustine would have heard nothing except eksKELsees until perhaps very late in life if at all, so don't knock the classical pronunciation.

For dixit, the morpheme boundaries are dic-s-it and properly pronounced DEEKsit. Again, no reason for the c to be voiced to a /g/. There is no evidence that s was ever voiced (i.e. /z/) in any period of Latin, so assimilation is not a possibility. Even Latin loanwords preserved in Gothic (all from contact after c. 150 A.D.) are universally spelled in Gothic with s rather than the symbol for /z/. There is no evidence that X ever had the value of /gz/, though there is no shortage of misspelled inscriptions throughout the centuries that replace x with cs.

Of course we wish we knew more about how Latin was pronounced, but we know a great deal that shouldn't be dismissed.

(Let's see if I can get IPA to display properly! I didn't even try last time :-))

I apologize for accidentally calling /ch/ a plosive; it was a writing error rather than a conceptual one. But I have seen at least one linguist write English [t∫] as [tʃʰ]. The particular examples I remember are the words "chin" and "cheese." An Italian student's non-aspirated versions were being heard as "gin" and "Jeez" by English speakers. I wish I could find a better citation than this rather pitiful one, but American English definitely does aspirate the affricate at least in certain conditions. I am not a native speaker of Italian, but I was taught to never or virtually never aspirate their consonants, including [t∫], and drilled on it in the language lab ad nauseam :-). I doubt these above recollections will make you less dubious, but maybe I'll try and find my old textbooks, just for my own satisfaction.

As far as the "cure" being worse than the "disease"... well, I'm happy to just let our tastes differ there. I'd rather hear something on the very lightly voiced part of the spectrum (in Italian) rather than as aspirated any day (in Italian). Especially if it's conscious, as a means of training one's ear and vocal mechanisms.

But for Latin? Whether all that work is necessary for a simple American to sing "excelsis"? I have absolutely no opinion. I only know that I have sung under directors who were hard core against word-internal aspirated consonants in liturgical Latin, and used this technique to help their singers get there. I do believe many people use this reasoning, even if it is perhaps an overreaction for Latin. My intention is not to defend it as appropriate, but to point out that -if- that's what you're trying to do... it does work.

One other small, but important point, is that it matters less what you say than what is perceived. Sometimes a "wrong" pronunciation will sound more correct to the listener than the "right" one. An example is "Hosanna." Most agree that the h is not pronounced, and the word is sometimes written "Osanna." But in a church like mine, where the entire choir can sing lor-DUH and we will still not hear the final d, an h is certainly not going to carry into the room any more than key noise on wind instruments (that we often hear on recordings) will be heard in a symphony hall.

(And for the record, an unvoiced g is more or less a [k] and a voiced k is more or less a [g]. One is a spelling, the other is a sound).

It might not have been your pronunciation, Olbash, but your choice of words: a native speaker would probably answer the question more casually.