[HN Gopher] 'The Celts: A Modern History' by Ian Stewart Review
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'The Celts: A Modern History' by Ian Stewart Review
Author : lermontov
Score : 85 points
Date : 2025-03-21 06:08 UTC (16 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.historytoday.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.historytoday.com)
| neallindsay wrote:
| I feel like any article that talks about "Celts" or uses the word
| "Celtic" should clarify that it starts with a hard "c". Americans
| familiar with the basketball team will probably pronounce it
| wrong otherwise.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| The US is only around 5% of the global population right now,
| and many of us, if not most, know the correct pronunciation
| (for uses other than the basketball team). There's no reason to
| bog down articles with pandering nonsense.
| pasc1878 wrote:
| For the rest of the world they will have the same problem as
| the Americans except they know the word from the football
| club Celtic which is pronounced with a soft c as well.
| neolithicum wrote:
| And others still will not have heard of either and would
| think the clubs are pronounced like the historic culture
| littlestymaar wrote:
| Why should the people know how the culture is pronounced
| in English?! (If they knew about the culture in the first
| place)
| Xmd5a wrote:
| Non-anglo celt here. Selt. Didn't know it's supposed to be
| pronounced kelt in english (us an uk alike). I upvote GP.
| labster wrote:
| It's not an Anglo thing. It's from the Greek name for the
| people, Keltoi. That's a kappa, hard K.
| like_any_other wrote:
| The correct pronunciation depends on language (German vs.
| Deutsch, for an extreme example), so non-English speakers
| could still use the wrong pronunciation when speaking
| English. In my own language, 'celts' sounds like 'kelts', but
| until now I thought the correct way to say it in English was
| 'selts'.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| This exactly. In French we use a soft "c" and I assumed
| English did the same because the only use I knew was about
| Larry Bird's team!
| alsetmusic wrote:
| And then there are those of us who are history nerds who don't
| even consider the possibility of pronouncing it otherwise. I
| think a history-based domain and a book with "history" in the
| title will self-select this group.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Is there an actual negative association with the "Selt"
| pronunciation or something? It is the French version of a word,
| which was at times applied to the French and the Irish (among
| others). Maybe it can be used to celebrate their shared
| heritage of having to deal with English nonsense...
| DonaldFisk wrote:
| In English Celt is generally pronounced kelt nowadays. Celtic
| is always pronounced seltik when referring to sports teams
| (e.g. Celtic Football Club), but keltik otherwise, e.g.
| Celtic languages.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celts
| caper2025 wrote:
| Resident of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia (trans. New Scotland)
| here. In somewhat of an acknowledgment of this issue, we've
| used "Keltic". See for e.g. Keltic Lodge:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keltic_Lodge
| jimnotgym wrote:
| How the Anglo Saxon English pronounce it is not really the
| point. In Wales, Scotland and Ireland, the Celtic fringe,
| we call ourselves Kelts... the football club is a fun
| anomaly! That is definitely Seltic
| timeon wrote:
| > Celtic Football Club
|
| Interesting, there are to "C"s here but they aren't same
| letter...
| littlestymaar wrote:
| Why is it pronounced like that in English? And why are the
| Boston Celtics pronounced differently? For thr record in French
| we pronounce _Celtes_ with a soft "c".
| spookie wrote:
| English doesn't share the same linguistic root, so these
| differences are bound to appear. Well, if you take out indo-
| european that is.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| > English doesn't share the same linguistic root. [...]
| Well, if you take out indo-european that is.
|
| It's a bit more complex, English is half a Germanic
| language but also half French.
|
| But that doesn't explains why "Celtic" is pronounced
| differently in "Boston Celtics".
| jimnotgym wrote:
| For a bit more fun, inside the Celtic (hard 'c') fringe, in
| Glasgow you will find Celtic (soft 'c') football club!
| timeon wrote:
| > hard "c"
|
| So "k" (as opposed to "s")?
|
| I still find it strange that there is letter "c" in English,
| while not really used.
| sherr wrote:
| Thanks. This looks like a good book and probably one I'll buy. I
| have many books on the "Celts" and their history, plus many more
| on the Iron Age in general. It's a fascinating period
| unfortunately let down by the lack of many good sources. The
| Greeks and then the Romans were very confused about these people
| and that's made it very hard to sort out the reality. As the
| review states, add a large helping of racism (not necessarily all
| of the negative sort), nationalism, romanticism and mythology and
| it can be a recipe for many competing histories. Hopefully we're
| starting to untangle what we can with help from books like
| Stewart's.
| netfortius wrote:
| Rule to remember: all Gauls (Gaulois) were Celts, but not all
| Celts were Gauls
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| All I know is that all Gaul is divided into three parts.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| Ave Caesar.
| I_complete_me wrote:
| Having reading the posts thus far and having listening to,
| say, Indians speak English I can't help saluting thus:
|
| Awe Kaiser
|
| Languages are a hodge-podge.
| nivertech wrote:
| _> Rule to remember: all Gauls (Gaulois) were Celts, but not
| all Celts were Gauls_
|
| and not all Gauls (Gaulois) ... were Gauls
|
| See:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galicia_(Spain)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galicia_(Eastern_Europe)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galatia_(Roman_province)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galatia
| fdb345 wrote:
| You still get resistance from the low IQs. Celticism was a on a
| whole, a fashion not a peoples. The results are in.
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