Re: Country Related: Christmas

Nik Taylor wrote:
>
> Eric Christopherson wrote:
> > When did the new year fall before Christianity came to Britain?
>
> April 1, I think.
>
> > (BTW, did anyone ever think "Celtics" is a stupid name for a sports
> > team? It should be "Celts" if anything :D )
>
> Not to mention the pronunciation, /sEltIks/ rather than /kEltIks/
Funny, I always thought the /k/ pronunciation was strange. I tend to
pronounce c before e, i, or y as /k/ in VERY few circumstances, such
as the word Macintosh (since it's from two words, Mac Intosh) and
words from foreign languages where it is pronounced that way. "Celtic"
is an naturalized English word, so I use a "soft" c (/s/). In fact, I
don't even like to pronounce it as /k/ in Latin words. Why I have such
a fanatical aversion to hard c before front vowels I do not know.

Now, spell it "Kelt" (as I have seen it spelled at least once) and
it's fine :D