Celts

"Kelts" or "Selts"

When Pronouncing Ur Domhan Ceiltich (New World Celts) , you say "Oor Doun Keltich" according to MacLennan in the Gaelic-English dictionary published in 1979 in Stornoway, Isle of Lewis, Scotland

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 how do you say Celtic?  According to Webster's Third New International Unabridged Dictionary, one can pronounce Celtic either of two ways.  In my experience, how you say the word depends on what you are talking about, so let's learn which is which, and go from there.

Pronouncing the word Celtic like "Sell' - tik" means you are probably talking about the basketball team: the Boston Celtics,  the soccer team: the Glasgow Celtic.

Pronouncing the word Celtic like "Kel' - tik" means we are talking about that which is related to the Celts.  The word Celtic pronounced with the hard "C" refers to things related to the Celts (Kelts).  The origin of the word Celt is from the Latin celtae, and refers to, according to Webster,

"a member of a division of the early Indo-European peoples in Iron-Age and pre-Roman Europe distributed from the British Isles and Spain to Asia Minor and in part absorbed into the Roman Empire as Britons, Gauls, Boii, Galatians, or Celtiberians." 

When translating from Gaelic into English, both C and K are correctly pronounced with a hard K sound.  It is therefore only correct to pronounce CELTS as if spelled KELTS.  Indeed, some translators to English spell it that way. http://barney.gonzaga.edu/~jmullen/SelkirkCelts/Home.html

Many reference books will tell you what scholars know about the Celts. They will tell you that the Celts spoke a language of their own, of which Cornish, Welsh, Breton, Manx, Irish and Scottish Gaelic are the modern descendants of the original Celtic languages. They will tell you that the Celtic languages form two major groups, the Brythonic, or those found primarily in Britain--Cornish, Welsh, and Breton (the latter because of emigration across the English Channel--and Gaelic--those primarily found in Ireland and Scotland. The major difference, you will be told, is the pronunciation of certain letters, among them hard or soft Cs. Perhaps this is where the sehltic or is it kehltic issue comes from. The word Celt is not a word from the Celtic people, it is from the Greek who referred to them as the Keltoi with a hard C. http://www.shopbagend.com/frames.html?page=/celts/index.shtml

The "c" at the start of "celtic" can be pronounced soft, like an "s", or hard, like a "k". The most common convention is to always pronounce it with a hard "c" ("keltic") except when using it as a proper noun (e.g. Celtic Football Club, Boston Celtics, The Anglo-Celt newspaper). In Irish, "c" is always pronounced hard, like the letter "k" which is never used in Irish words. The Greeks were the first to write about the Celts, using the word "Keltoi", which suggests that the hard sound is also historically accurate.

The unity of the Celts was not that of a nation or empire in the Greek or Roman sense, but was more cultural in nature, with no clear central authority. Celtic tribes dominated a huge area, and had their own individual identities, but they shared many common roots including similarities in language, religion, and lifestyle. They probably called themselves something similar to Celts, from which the Greeks got their word for 'stranger' - keltoi: the name given to these people by Herodotus and other Greek writers. To the Romans, the Continental Celts were known as Galli, or Gauls; those in the British Isles were called Britanni.
In medieval and modern times the Celtic tradition and languages survived in Brittany (western France), Wales, the Scottish Highlands, and Ireland. http://www.missgien.net/celtic/celts.html

Pronouncing the word "CELTIC"  http://www.celticlady.com/celtinfo/celthist.html
Personally, I pronounce "Celtic" with a hard "C" but while visiting Ireland I heard it pronounced either way - a hard "C" like in "cat" or a soft "C" as the basketball team "The Boston Celtics" is pronounced. Being a book-a-holic my dictionary gives both pronunciations but one Gaelic dictionary indicated only the hard "C". I have received many comments on this subject and most point to the hard "C". Yet, in Scotland, I am told that it is pronounced with a hard "C" unless you are talking about the football (in America we say "soccer") team which like the Boston Celtics uses the soft "C".
It is also thought that when the Roman armies first encountered the Celtic tribes they called them by the Greek word "Keltoi" using a hard "C" sound.

http://www.standingstones.com/celtmusic.html   

One last point is how the word "Celtic" should be pronounced. Apparently during the Celtic Twilight period both hard ("Keltic") and soft c ("Seltic") pronunciations were used. By coincidence, this was the same period that professional sports got underway, and both in Britain and the U.S., sports teams were named "Celtic". These are universally referred to with the soft c pronunciation. The modern convention is to keep the soft c pronunciation to refer only to sports teams. The use of the hard c version in cultural matters indicated, until recently, that the user was somewhat knowledgable in these matters. This has changed since Riverdance, Titanic, etc., and also the use of the term "Celtic Tigers" to refer to the improved economy of Ireland and Scotland. (It doesn't seem to me that the economy of the other four Celtic countries has improved all that much, aside from people from outside coming in and buying holiday homes.) I suppose the term "tiger" is a reference to similarly improved Asian economies.

I was amused to hear during my last trip to Ireland an announcer giving sports scores on the radio say "Keltic" and then correct himself!

In French the soft c pronunciation is standard for "Celtique", following standard French pronunciation rules. Irish ("Ceilteach") and Breton ("kelt" ethn., "keltiek" ling.) both use a hard c sound. Modern Breton also has a word "Keltia", meaning the Celtic world.

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