Is there an established pronunciation for Archmage in Ars Magica? "Arch" or "Ark"?
Same as in "archbishop" or "arch enemy" I assume. It is not a word/prefix unique to Ars Magica.
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That's what I would think, but I often encounter folks saying it like "Arkmage". I'm not sure where that came from.
It’s from Greek (archi-magos) by way of Latin (archi-magus).
In both Greek and Latin it would be closer to a hard k sound.
So, it depends if you want the English or Latin/Greek pronunciation.
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Searching around a bit on the web, it seems that both pronounications of the "arch" prefix exist.
For example, "archangel" should be pronounced with a "k" sound, while "archbishop" uses a "ch" sound.
Anyway, Ars Magica does not have its own unique pronounciation of "archmage", so use the regular English pronounciation. Whatever that may be....
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I will add that I use “archmage” and “arkmagus”, so pronouncing each by language.
The Oxford English Dictionary entry for the prefix "arch-" (at least as of the on-CD-ROM revision, I don't know since) specifically calls out "archangel" as the sole exception to the general pronunciation in English.
(pushes up glasses)
Arch-magus (hard g) or Arch-magus (soft g)?
Hard g.
Same for magos if you are using Greek in a Theban campaign.
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The closet thing I can find to a "rule" is that if the word pre-existed English - e.g. Gk. archangelos - then it continued into English with the "k" sound. If the word was coined in English, by attaching "arch-" to an existing English word - e.g. Eng. archenemy - then it is pronounced with a "ch" sound. This is because the standard pronunciation of the Greek shifted from "k" to "ch" over time.
So, as a creation of modern fantasy literature in English, "archmage" would be pronounced with a "ch" sound.
But, since we are imagining that in the ArM world archmages existed back into Greek usage as "archimagoi", it would presumably have come forward into ArM Latin with a "k" pronunciation rather than a "ch" one - pronounced as "arkmagus".
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Well, in scholastic (rather than classical) Latin, it would probably be "arcimagus", with a soft "ci" pronounced as the beginning of the word "children" (but a hard "g" as in "goo"). Scholastic Latin is the Latin spoken in 1220, as opposed to Roman times. Then again, the Latin pronunciations we see in Ars Magica products are classical ones ...
But the key here is not how it should be pronounced in Latin or Greek, but in English! I agree with SEE and DHFrew3 that the correct English pronunciation uses a soft ch (and a hard g).
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To be fair, I know classical Latin and Ancient Greek, and both of them are rusty as heck. High school was more than a few years ago for me…
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Terram specialist - Arch.
Holy mage Animal specialist - Ark.
All others, character preference.
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So, does a magus have most in common with a bishop or with an angel?
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