Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Does the c have the "S" sound or the "k" sound? I have heard it pronounced both ways at shows. ????

leu - sys - tik
-----
Chondros and colubrids... my 2 favorite types of snakes!

"Life is hard. Life is harder if you're stupid." - John Wayne

I've always pronouced it with a "k" sound.

>>Does the c have the "S" sound or the "k" sound? I have heard it pronounced both ways at shows. ????
-----
Lora

i've always heard it pronounced with an S sound

Techincially, it should be pronounced with the hard rather than the soft C, but most people don't do that with many words - i.e. cephalic vs leucocyte. It's much more common to use the soft c, which really isn't that incorrect 'cause everyone else does it and will probably figure out what you mean if they're picky over their greek

.

If you dig into a dictionary, you will find that the root of leucistic is "leucos" or "leukos", a Greek work meaning white. The Greeks pronounced it with a "k" sound. However, from the Latin language, a "ci" spelling tends to get pronounced like "si".

My preference is for the leukistic pronumciation. But I also figure that both pronunciations must be considered acceptable variations. As the song says, "you say po-tay-to, and I say po-tah-to."

Paul Hollander

np

By the way, the Latin /c/ is also pronounced like a /k/. Hence, the name Cicero should be pronounced as if it were spelled Kikero. The name Caesar is pronounced like the German "Kaiser." That's your Latin lesson for today. When words such as these came to English through French, they lost the /k/ phoneme, which was replaced by /s/ for /c/. Lew-sis-tick.

np