Quoting Dann Pigdon <dannj@alphalink.com.au>:
On Mon, Feb 1st, 2010 at 12:15 PM, Nick Pharris <npharris@umich.edu> wrote:Do you ever pronounce <c> as [s] when it appears in the sequence <ca>?Caesar (and its derivative caesarian), and caecum.
Ah, good catch, though as you note below, this is only true when the <a> is part of the digraph <ae>.
Does the 'ae' make the exception, or is the German word 'kaiser' closer to the original pronounciation?
Both. The original pronunciation was [aI], as in "Kaiser", but in the Romance languages this diphthong merged with the vowel(s) written with <e> and similarly caused palatalization ("softening") of a preceding <c>.
-- **************************************************************** Nicholas J. Pharris