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For example:

Styracaceae, Suidae, Sulidae, Sylviidae, Symplocaceae, etc.

I don’t know how to pronounce them correctly.

Ricky
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Ceiling
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    I'm very tempted to post the pronunciations in Latin, but I think it differs quite a little from the English pronunciation of those words. – Alenanno Sep 05 '11 at 09:02
  • I've heard very few native English speakers pronounce Latin the way it's supposed to be pronounced, namly close to today's Italian. Instead they apply the phonetic rules of their own Language - which is influenced by Latin, but also carries influences of French for instance. – Raku Sep 05 '11 at 11:10
  • @Alenanno An approximation of the Latin is acceptable as there is no standard Anglicisation. I've heard many different versions of veni vidi vici and vice versa and so on. – z7sg Ѫ Sep 05 '11 at 11:20
  • @z7sg Ѫ: should I post it? – Alenanno Sep 05 '11 at 11:56
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    Wasn't there a certain date when the pronunciation of Latin taught in English public schools was switched? In one of those old movies (maybe "The Browning Verison" or "Goodbye Mr Chipps"??) the old curmudgeon complains: "Why should I teach them to say Kikero, when for the rest of their lives they will be saying Sissero?" – GEdgar Sep 05 '11 at 12:41
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    Maybe you should specify which dialectal variation you intend to represent correct pronunciation. –  Sep 06 '11 at 01:31

4 Answers4

16

I'm listing the English words ending with -ae and formed as the plural of a word in -a of Latin origin. I found in the New Oxford American Dictionary (by alphabetical order):

word          American English        British English
---------------------------------------------------------
algae         -dʒi or -gaɪ            -dʒiː or -giː
alumnae       -mnaɪ or -mni           -niː   
amoebae       -bi                     -biː    
antennae      -ni or -naɪ             -niː 
axillae       -li or -laɪ             -liː 
ballistae     -sti or -staɪ           -stiː   
branchiae     -kii or -kaɪ            -kiiː                  
bursae        -si or -saɪ             -siː              
catenae       -ni or -naɪ             -niː               
drachmae      -mi or -maɪ             -miː                
exuviae       -vii or -viaɪ           -viiː

I stopped there, but it appears clear that:

  1. There is a rather general rule, i.e. most of them are pronounced either -i (rhymes with tea) or -aɪ (rhymes with cry).
  2. There is a US/UK difference, with British English favouring the -i form, ending in long i (same as tea, again).
  3. You can do no wrong if you go with the ending —i (short for US English, long for British English)
F'x
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  • What do you mean there is no general rule? The general rule is either /aɪ/ or /i/. I would say both are acceptable for all these words, with the more commonly used ones tending to be pronounced /i/ more often. – Peter Shor Sep 05 '11 at 12:14
  • @Peter: for “amoebae”, /aɪ/ apparently isn't observed (according to NOAD, at least)… But, I went over more words, and don't find any more exception, so I agree that there apparently is a consistent rule :) – F'x Sep 05 '11 at 12:22
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    "Sundae" is, of course, an exception. – Peter Taylor Sep 05 '11 at 12:27
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    Don't worry about short and long -i's in American English. It is only in British English that the length actually makes any phonemic difference (so in British English, there is apparently a difference in the vowels ending happy and algae). In American English, the length change, if there is one in your dialect, follows automatically from the position in the word and the stress on the syllable. – Peter Shor Sep 05 '11 at 12:27
  • @Peter Taylor - ...which is why most of us lazy Americans write "Sunday" instead. – T.E.D. Sep 08 '11 at 17:48
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I'm going to post the pronunciation of the diphthong ae in Latin. It might differ from the actual pronunciation that is being adopted nowadays; this because it's inevitable that the mother tongue language influences the pronunciation of words coming from other languages (being recent or not).

There were different phases for the Latin language, although the ones that we are interested in are these ones. The expression names might be different, considering I translated them from the italian ones:

  1. Classic pronunciation: Using this expression, we refer to the Latin pronunciation adopted by the upper class in the Ist century B.C.; the one of Cicero and Horatio. This pronunciation is based on the principle that assigns to each grapheme a single phoneme. In brief, for a single letter there is a single sound.
    So, to make an example related to your question, the word Caesar is read ['kaesar].
  2. Scholastic or Ecclesiastical pronunciation: After the year 1000, the first universities were born, and the lectures were done in Latin. This Latin differed a lot from the Latin of Horatio and Cicero. The scholars elaborated a new Latin, called Scholastic, that could express the abstract concepts full of undertones of the philosophy of that time, a philosophy that was called, precisely, Scholasticism.
    This pronunciation is more difficult than the other and one of its features is the different pronunciation of the diphthong ae: Caesar would be ['tʃesar].
Alenanno
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  • Forvo confirms the classic pronunciation: http://www.forvo.com/word/gaius_julius_caesar/#la – Bogdan Lataianu Sep 07 '11 at 23:55
  • on second thought, ae in that forvo link sounds more like aj, and this is confirmed by Wikipedia – Bogdan Lataianu Sep 08 '11 at 07:22
  • Yes, but on Forvo, there is also the second pronunciation under the classic one. :) – Alenanno Sep 08 '11 at 09:18
  • which one? It might be better to write "So, to make an example related to your question, the word Caesar is read ['kajsar]." – Bogdan Lataianu Sep 08 '11 at 09:43
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    Here :) – Alenanno Sep 08 '11 at 09:45
  • I downvoted, not necessarily because the information about Latin is wrong, but because of what is absent: any discussion of English pronunciation. This site is called "English Language and Usage," not "Latin Language and Usage." Neglecting to mention the pronunciation tradition that gives us [siːzɚ] seems to me to be a pretty big problem. – herisson Aug 08 '15 at 11:40
  • @sumelic I don't see the problem: the question has a latin tag and since the words are clearly latin, my answer is certainly not out of place. – Alenanno Aug 08 '15 at 15:57
  • @Alenanno: But the site is about "English language and usage." There is no need for a tag; all answers need to deal with how words, even Latin words, are pronounced in an English-language context. In Italian, I understand that the Ecclesiastical pronunciation is used. But in English, it's common to use either the traditional English pronunciation of Latin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditional_English_pronunciation_of_Latin), or a variant of this where word stems are pronounced with the trad. English pronunciation and suffixes are pronounced approximately as in Classical or Ecclesiastical. – herisson Sep 17 '15 at 22:51
  • Besides the pronunciation of the name "Caesar," which invariably uses the trad. English pronunciation and neither the Classical nor the Ecclesiastical pronunciation, see the reference in this comment to "Sissero": http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/40671/pronunciation-of-words-ending-with-ae/40713#comment74634_40671 – herisson Sep 17 '15 at 22:51
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This gent seems to have what I'd consider a clear, definitive answer on the matter. Even if it's largely anecdotal it seems well supported. I was unable to come to any conclusions based on the above, hence:

http://n8henrie.com/2012/09/pronunciation-of-words-ending-in-ae

So to the poster (if s/he's still unclear) and anyone else searching I would err on the side of the blog writer.

Peter Shor
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K.C.
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    Welcome to EL&U. Could you provide a short summary of what the link has to say? Link-only answers are frowned upon as URLs are unstable over time, and future visitors will not be able to benefit if this link goes bad. – choster Feb 09 '15 at 13:51
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Considering their origin is Latin, the "ae" should be pronounced the 'a' in "master", American English.

Usually words ending in -ae are the plural form form of a word ending in -a, e.g.

puella - girl 
puellae - girls

Italian, the modern day successor or Latin is using -a and -e for female singular and plural:

ragazza - girl
ragazze - girls

But you can clearly see that the pronunciation -e is closer to -ae than -ay.

Raku
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    +1 for the probably original pronunciation (although “man” is probably a better example since its British pronunciation also works) but you won’t hear this very often in English. – Konrad Rudolph Sep 05 '11 at 14:05
  • Yup, "man" is definitely better. Thanks Konrad :-) – Raku Sep 05 '11 at 15:38
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    Also, according to Wikipedia ae sounded like ay ! – Bogdan Lataianu Sep 08 '11 at 07:08
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    Theta30, Alenanno gave a good explanation of how the pronunciation has changed over time. Whether you anglicise the pronunciation of a Latin word or not is up to you. But considering, for example, how cruel French sounds if you pronounce it the English way, and how cruel English sounds if you pronounce it the French way, you should probably use the native pronunciation instead. But that's just my private opinion. – Raku Sep 08 '11 at 08:40
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    Italian is only "the modern day successor to Latin" in a geographic sense. French and Spanish are just as much successors to Latin in a linguistic sense. That doesn't make this a bad example, just that you shouldn't imply that Itialian is any more authoratative in matters relating to Latin than any other Romance language. – T.E.D. Sep 08 '11 at 17:52
  • The "a" in "master" is a really bad example. As you allude, it has a different pronunciation in British English that would be completely wrong. The pronunciation in American English is closer to the right thing, but only Italians think the vowel in "master" sounds like an "e." If you want to give an example for a non-monophthongized "e" sound in English, just use a word like "wet." Anyway, this is an Italian pronunciation that is not used in English as far as I know. – herisson Jul 11 '16 at 00:34