[math-fun] Did René Descartes say "Cogito, ergo sum"?
Wikipedia: *Cogito, ergo sum*[a] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cogito,_ergo_sum#cite_note-capitalization_and_punctuation-1> is a Latin <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin> philosophical <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy> proposition <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposition> by René Descartes <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9_Descartes> usually translated into English as "*I think, therefore I am*".[b] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cogito,_ergo_sum#cite_note-better_translation-2> The phrase originally appeared in French <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_language> as *je pense**, donc je suis* in his *Discourse on the Method <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discourse_on_the_Method>*, so as to reach a wider audience than Latin would have allowed. I heard that the real reason was that Descartes was lousy at Latin and paid someone for the translation! Using Google Translate for the French pronunciation, I am baffled by the sound of mysterious consonants in "je suis". ACW, Simon, is that authentic? How is it written phonetically? I have no confidence in Google Translate's pronunciations after hearing Joe, The Pizza Guy say "Cogito, ergo sum" in "Latin". —rwg
RWG: "I have no confidence in Google Translate's pronunciations after hearing Joe, The Pizza Guy say 'Cogito, ergo sum' in 'Latin'." NativLang is a delightful YouTube channel dealing with all manner of linguistic curiosities. The one on what Latin sounded like had me hooked: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_enn7NIo-S0
The Google Translate pronunciation sounds okay to me, though I am not a fluent French speaker. Gosper, I don't know which consonants are bothering you. To a rough approximation, the pronunciation of "je suis" could be spelled in English as "zhuh swee". The consonants are as in "seiZure", "Sweet". Now for nuances. The sound immediately after the "s" in "suis" is not really a w. Rather, it bears the same relationship to w as "oo" has to the German u-umlaut sound. W-umlaut, if you will. (The IPA symbol for the sound is ɥ <https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%C9%A5>). The vowel in "je" is not exactly that of English "shut", but closer to a German o-umlaut, and it can be very brief. Have I resolved any of your questions? If not, give me more clues. On Mon, Dec 2, 2019 at 12:42 PM Hans Havermann <gladhobo@bell.net> wrote:
RWG: "I have no confidence in Google Translate's pronunciations after hearing Joe, The Pizza Guy say 'Cogito, ergo sum' in 'Latin'."
NativLang is a delightful YouTube channel dealing with all manner of linguistic curiosities. The one on what Latin sounded like had me hooked:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_enn7NIo-S0
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participants (3)
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Allan Wechsler -
Bill Gosper -
Hans Havermann