How do you pronounce 'ratio descedendi'

Hunchback

This should be a short thread:-

Is is pronounced 'ratio' like 'Lazio' or 'ratio' like 'fellatio'?

Genuine question - I have to moot in a couple of days and I don't want to embarrass myself.



I seem to recall hearing both pronounciations..

SteoL

Hunchback wrote: »

This should be a short thread:-

Is is pronounced 'ratio' like 'Lazio' or 'ratio' like 'fellatio'?

Genuine question - I have to moot in a couple of days and I don't want to embarrass myself.



I seem to recall hearing both pronounciations..

The latter pronunciation is correct

hullaballoo

It's pronounced "rat-eeo dess-ih-dend-ee."

https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/ratio_decidendi

Peregrinus

You have a choice.

The older lawyers' tradition is to pronounce Latin words more or less as if they were English words.

So ratio is pronounced like the English word "ratio". And decidendi is pronounced something like dessih-dend-eye.

However the more modern tradition is to give them a pronunciation vaguely approximating to classical Latin. So, ratio to rhyme with "Lazio", and decidendi something like dekky-dendy.

Neither of these is "wrong", but arguably one is no longer as fashionable as it used to be.

nuac

You say Kikero, I say Sisero

Ayther will do. There are few Latin native speakers about to rule on these issues

Hunchback

Peregrinus wrote: »

You have a choice.

The older lawyers' tradition is to pronounce Latin words more or less as if they were English words.

So ratio is pronounced like the English word "ratio". And decidendi is pronounced something like dessih-dend-eye.

However the more modern tradition is to give them a pronunciation vaguely approximating to classical Latin. So, ratio to rhyme with "Lazio", and decidendi something like dekky-dendy.

Neither of these is "wrong", but arguably one is no longer as fashionable as it used to be.

Great answer, thanks a million.

I think will opt for the English sounding version. I'd worry that 'dekky-dendy' might be a bit of an eyebrow-raiser. I'll whip it out in conversation some time though.

hullaballoo

I appreciate the points made above and nuac in particular is precisely correct in pointing out no one alive today has the nearest idea how Latin was spoken.

But "dekky-dendy" is not right and it wouldn't make any etymological sense if it was so. My above attempt is how it is supposed to be pronounced according to the OED and if it's good enough for them, it's certainly good enough for me.

Peregrinus

hullaballoo wrote: »

I appreciate the points made above and nuac in particular is precisely correct in pointing out no one alive today has the nearest idea how Latin was spoken.

But "dekky-dendy" is not right and it wouldn't make any etymological sense if it was so. My above attempt is how it is supposed to be pronounced according to the OED and if it's good enough for them, it's certainly good enough for me.

The OED offers six different pronunciations (two English, two American, two Scottish) so it seems like this is one that is hard to get wrong, really.

It's true that we don't really know how Latin speakers of the classical era pronounced things (although we're pretty sure that decidendi would have been given a hard 'c'). But in this context we may not have to worry about that; while the words are Latin the term itself doesn't appear anywhere in any writing from the classical era. It appears to have been coined, by English speakers, in the seventeenth century. They put it in Latin either to sound educated and authoritative, or simply because the Latin phrase was shorter and more convenient than "the rule of law or principle underlying and determining the decision".

So, If you have to have a "correct" pronunciation, arguably it would be the Latinate pronunciation favoured in Britain in the seventeenth century. And we do have a pretty good idea what that was.

Grolschevik

I'm reminded of a comment by philosopher Alasdair Macintyre when asked why the name of his university was not pronounced 'Notreh Damme'.

"Because we're not in France."

Oh, and having done Latin for the leaving (and only got a C), my instinct would tend towards ratty-o dek-eh-dendy. But I've never heard it said...

hullaballoo

Peregrinus wrote: »

So, If you have to have a "correct" pronunciation, arguably it would be the Latinate pronunciation favoured in Britain in the seventeenth century. And we do have a pretty good idea what that was.

Was this not "Church" Latin at that point which is closer to Latin spoken closer to modern Italian?

Although the discussion is interesting, it does not seem to me to have any natural conclusion.

Basically, if you're in Court fumbling over pidgin Latin phrases, whatever feels more natural to you but I would think that most people are comfortable omitting the word "decidendi" at this point and just simply refer to the Razio/Ratio etc.

Peregrinus

hullaballoo wrote: »

Basically, if you're in Court fumbling over pidgin Latin phrases, whatever feels more natural to you . . . .

This. When it comes to foreign words, phrases, names, etc, you can pronounce them any way you like, as long as you pronounce them with confidence and fluency. That way, you use a pronunciation that other people don’t, they’ll assume that their pronunciation must be wrong and yours right, because you so obviously know what you’re talking about.

hullaballoo wrote: »

Was this not "Church" Latin at that point which is closer to Latin spoken closer to modern Italian?

Actually, accent-wise there are a couple of different “church Latins”

In Romance countries, they give it a very Italianate pronounciation. So ratio would be “rah-ssio”, for example (don’t forget to roll the ‘r’!), and the ‘c’ in decidendi would get a “-ch-” sound. Whereas in Germanic countries ratio would be “ratzio”, and the ‘c’ in decidendi would get either a “-tz-“ or an “-ss-“ sound.

If you’re a total tragic, you can observe these differences by comparing YouTube videos of Pope Benedict (Germanic) and Pope Francis (Romance) celebrating liturgies in Latin.

Right. By the seventeenth century England didn’t have any church Latin, but they did use Latin in academic circles (which is why Newton’s great work is called Principia Mathematica). When they had had church Latin, they favoured a Germanic pronunciation - we have a few contemporary righters sneering at visiting Italian or French clerics for their Latin pronunciations.

The sneering, if anything, intensified after the English reformation, and the Germanic pronunciation used in England became more Anglicised. So in the sixteenth century, for example, decidendi in England would have been something like “dessydendy”, but by the eighteenth it was “dessihdend-eye”. The seventeenth century would have been right in the middle of this transition.

endacl

hullaballoo wrote: »

"dekky-dendy"

Yizzer legal folks is great craic!

What does "oingyboingy" mean?!?

hullaballoo

endacl wrote: »

Yizzer legal folks is great craic!

What does "oingyboingy" mean?!?

It means "indefatigably capricious" afaik.

Hunchback

In hindsight, I could just as well have called this thread 'How do you spell ratio decidendi'. Oh well.

johnnyskeleton

Peregrinus wrote: »

It's true that we don't really know how Latin speakers of the classical era pronounced things (although we're pretty sure that decidendi would have been given a hard 'c'). But in this context we may not have to worry about that; while the words are Latin the term itself doesn't appear anywhere in any writing from the classical era. It appears to have been coined, by English speakers, in the seventeenth century. They put it in Latin either to sound educated and authoritative, or simply because the Latin phrase was shorter and more convenient than "the rule of law or principle underlying and determining the decision".

Nerd Alert:

Most of the "Latin" phrases come from Law French:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_French

Latin was probably never very common in Britain, and would've fallen out of favour during the Anglo-Saxon period. We still don't really know how William the Conqueror would have pronounced these words, if he ever felt a need to do so! And of course, you're right that much of the history between then and now is a hodge podge of trends where some things fall in and out of favour.

In the UK, there is a trend towards using everyday language in Court. So saying "the reasoning of Donoghue v Stephenson is that...." is perfectly fine.

Sure most lawyers can't even agree on English pronunciations:

The burning e-shoe of our times is the pronunciation of iss-you.

We are constantly harr-assed by American pronunciations too!

Hunchback

Well, the Moot did not go as well as I had hoped. As I referred to each case that I was opening, I asked the judge if the court was familiar with the facts of the case (which I understand you are supposed to do, but none of my colleagues did). Unfortunately for me, the judge did actually want to hear a brief synopsis of one of the cases and this ate into my time a good bit with the result that I didn't have time to properly tease out my final point and it was horribly rushed.

To make matters worse, I would have synopsised and recapped on the three main points of argument I was making at the end, but I didn't have time to. The judge at the end asked me if my argument was based on the last of the issues that I addressed, and like a rabbit in the headlights, I said yes, when actually that was only one point of three that I was making. Basically I did not leave myself enough time to signpost it. Pretty disappointed about that to be honest because my delivery was relaxed and engaging (I hope). I'll be lucky to progress to the next round.

Hunchback

And I avoided the use of all latin terms

Hunchback

Actually, I progressed. Well there you go. Less interesting then the debate within the thread, but I'm happy

Jentle Grenade

I was reminded of this thread today when in the middle of a meeting a colleague went down the Dekkydendi route. Not once before had I heard it pronounced as such, despite spending most of the last five years in the courts. He must read boards!

Hunchback

Jentle Grenade wrote:

I was reminded of this thread today when in the middle of a meeting a colleague went down the Dekkydendi route. Not once before had I heard it pronounced as such, despite spending most of the last five years in the courts. He must read boards!

Or post on it, even