this post was submitted on 18 Dec 2025
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[–] lugal@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Same for German Kaiser which sounds quite different

[–] groet@feddit.org 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Not if you pronounce it correctly. Cesar was not seesaw but Ke(tamin)sar(in gas). And Ke-sar to kei-sar is pretty close.

[–] lugal@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

There is no one "correct" way to pronounce a language that's spoken over centuries in such a huge area. The German is close to the classical pronunciation of Julius' time while the Russian was borrowed much later when Latin already undergone a number of sound shifts. That's why German Kaiser is very different from Russian царь as I said in my first comment and I hope you won't deny that.

[–] lvxferre@mander.xyz 7 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

while the Russian was borrowed much later when Latin already undergone a number of sound shifts

The changes in the word aren't from Latin, they're Slavic in origin. They show the borrowing was rather early, and a bit messy:

  • Latin ⟨Caesar⟩ /'kaɪ̯.sar/ →
  • Greek ⟨Καῖσᾰρ⟩ /'kâi̯.sar/~/'cɛ:.sar/ →
  • Gothic ⟨𐌺𐌰𐌹𐍃𐌰𐍂⟩ /'kɛ:sar/ →
  • Common Slavic *cěsãřь; this should be around ['tsʲĕsa:rʲĭ] in IPA. Eventually shortened to *cãřь, roughly [tsa:rʲĭ]

Then either Russian inherited *cãřь, or side-borrowed it from Old Church Slavonic. Either way the ending yer got dropped, the long vowel shortened, and you get the modern Russian form, ⟨царь⟩ [tsarʲ].

/aɪ̯/→/ɛ:/ could be from Latin, Greek or Gothic; all three underwent it.

That /k/→/tsʲ/ change is the progressive palatalisation of Common Slavic. Something similar happened in Latin, but after Greek borrowed the word, and Common Slavic interacted way more with Greek than with Latin.

But the biggest change was that completely erratic shortening, from *cěsãřь to *cãřь. Wiktionary mentions this happened with English cyning→cyng→king and mistress→miss; I've also seen this happening with Portuguese ⟨senhor⟩ mister, dialectally rendered as "siô", "sô", "nhô" etc. (Plus its female form ⟨senhora⟩→siá, sá, nhá etc.)

[–] lugal@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

TIL Thanks! I think my Latin teacher said it wrong to explain Latin sound shifts to us and I never looked it up.

[–] lvxferre@mander.xyz 2 points 1 week ago

To be fair with your Latin teacher, something similar could have happened in Latin. All the pieces are there; it's just they don't fit in time and place for this specific word.