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Unread 05-07-2009, 01:02 PM
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John Whitworth John Whitworth is offline
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Location: United Kingdom
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In my opinion Byron must have pronounced it SarDANa - PAILus. I have looked at the first four times he uses it in his tragedy and that seems to be the pronunciation that best fits the metre. You must remember that the English tended to anglicize classical names and oten changed the stress - at least until before the war. My father pronounced Latin in what I thought was a very peculiar way. He said Caesar said VAYNEE VEDEE VEECHEE whereas I was told to say WEENY, WEEDY, WEAKY. This turns up as a joke in '1066 and All That'. We call the poet MARSHALL though the Romans said MAR-TI-AL. And of course we say SEE-ZAH where the Romans said, with the Germans, KAISER. God, how boring I get.
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