The pronunciation of the words Celt and Celtic in their various meanings has been surrounded by some confusion: the initial, <c> can be realised either as /k/ or as /s/. Both can be justified philologically and both are "correct" in terms of English prescriptive usage. Pronunciation refers to: the way a word or a language is usually spoken; the manner in which someone utters a word. ... The word Celtic can refer to: the European Celtic people, ancient or modern the Celtic languages, spoken by these people and their modern descendants the Celtic Lusitania, the Celtici (Celts from the Alentejo). ... In linguistics, prescription is the laying down or prescribing of normative rules for a language. ...

The word presumably originated in an Early Continental Celtic language, but it comes to us from Greek, where it is spelled with a kappa; thus /k/ is the original pronunciation. However in Mediaeval Latin, the letter <c>, originally pronounced /k/, shifted to /s/, a process known as palatalization, and many words and names borrowed from Latin into English after this sound shift are pronounced this way: centre, Cicero, etcetera. Thus /s/ is the inherited pronunciation in English. Palatalization means pronouncing a sound nearer to the hard palate, making it more like a palatal consonant; this is towards the front of the mouth for a velar or uvular consonant, but towards the back of the mouth for a front (e. ... Sound shift can refer to: Chain shift Vowel shift This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ...

Until the mid-20th century, Celtic was usually pronounced with /s/ in English except by academics, but the pronunciation with /k/ has been gaining ground rapidly. Following the usage of philologians, /k/ is now almost invariably used with reference to Celtic languages even in non-academic contexts. It is also the more popular pronunciation when talking about most other aspects of Celtic culture. However /s/ remains the only recognised pronunciation of the word when it occurs in the names of sports teams, most noteably the Glasgow Celtic Football Club and of the Boston Celtics basketball team; as these are proper names, the traditional pronunciation is entrenched. Celtic Football Club, commonly referred to simply as Celtic (pronounced sel-tic) or the Bhoys, are one of the worlds most famous football clubs. ... The Boston Celtics are a National Basketball Association team based in Boston, Massachusetts. ...

There is a great deal of mis-information in circulation on this topic. It should be noted that there is no American-British distinction in these pronunciations nor is there a Scottish-Irish distinction. Neither pronunciation has been influenced by any modern Celtic language, nor by Old Norse. The corresponding words in French are pronounced with /s/ while those in German have /k/, but neither French nor German has influenced English usage; rather, they show independent reflexes of the same phenomena in Latin and Greek. For an example of such confusion see the article Celtic or Seltic? from the sports section of The Guardian, September 2004. This article outlines the differences between American English, the form of the English language spoken in the United States, and British English. ... Diagram showing the geographical locations of selected languages and dialects of the British Isles. ... Proto-Indo-European Indo-European studies Celtic languages are a branch of the Indo-European languages. ... This is the approximate extent of Old Norse and related languages in the early 10th century. ... The Guardian is a British newspaper owned by the Guardian Media Group. ...

The stone tool, a celt, has a completely separate etymology. In English it is only pronounced /selt/. Celt (pron. ...