Sell Ticks!

[Élistariel]

I'm not one for sports, but my pop was watching basketball a minute ago. The Celtics were playing. Only the announcer kept pronouncing it "sell ticks." Why can't anyone say it right? :confused:
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=celtic

[BlackMagicalCat]

I have no clue,im an uneducated old man,bless you little one.

[Cinnamon Girl]

Heh, I thought this was some kind of twist dealing with the nefarious tick insect (hate those things!).

Anyway, here's are a couple sites explaining the hard and soft 'Celtic' pronunciations:

http://www.medievalscotland.org/postings/kelticseltic.shtml


It is interesting to note that when the British Empire was distinguishing itself as better and seperate from the rest of humanity, it was decided that British Latin should have different pronunciation from other spoken Latin. Therefore, one of these distinguishing pronunciational differences was to make many of the previously hard k sounds move to a soft s sound, hence the Glasgow and Boston Celtics.

The above excerpt comes from this site: http://shop.store.yahoo.com/4crests/whowerecelts.html

So it's not really ignorance, and when referring to the Boston Celtics, the announcer was correct in his pronunciation. :)