John Wolff wrote,
(I'm no expert, but) I believe that all Romance languages, of which Latin is
one, pronounce c followed by  e as a "soft" s.

It's always tricky to decipher what ancient languages (and music) sounded
like. Linguists reconstruct pronunciations based on descriptions by
contemporary grammarians, puns, rhyme and meter, mistakes in transcription,
transliteration into other contemporary languages, words borrowed at an
early date by other languages whose pronunciation has changed little, and so
on.

Apparently the early Romans pronounced C much as English K is pronounced
today, so that Cicero's mother called him 'keekayro" not "sissero". As time
went on, C before E and I became pronounced farther forward. If you pay
attention to what your tongue does as you pronounce KU (coo, not kyoo) and
then KI (kee, not kie), you will notice that the two K's are not pronounced
in exactly the same way in English. K before U is pronounced considerably
farther back in the mouth than K before I, and this is natural, because U
(oo) is pronounced in the back of the mouth and I (ee) is pronounced in the
front. The Romans must have done the same thing. Eventually, they softened
KE (kay) and KI (kee) to TSHE (chay) and TSHI (chee) while continuing to
spell them as CE and CI. In some Romance languages, such as French, TSHE and
TSHI were further altered, eventually to SE and SI; the old CU and CO never
changed. But Church Latin changed more slowly and the usual pronunciations
remain TSHE and TSHI except in English-speaking countries.

This is where the going really gets weird. In England, English underwent a
spectacular change in the pronunciation of its vowels -- a change that no
one seems to have noticed at the time. In general, vowels were shunted to
higher and more forward positions in the mouth, and the long vowels also
became diphthongized. A couple of vowels that were already as high as they
could go got shunted back to the bottom of the mouth. A diphthong is a sort
of double vowel that starts out as one vowel and ends up as another, so
that, for instance, the English "ay" sound in "Kate" is pronounced more like
"ay-ee" slurred together (try saying it!). Anway, what was written as E and
pronounced "ay" is now pronounced "ih-ee" slurred together, but still
spelled E. What was written as I and pronounced "ee" is now pronounced
"ah-ee" slurred together.

And in England, since no one noticed this gradual change, the way they spoke
Church Latin drifted in the same way, so CE (with long E, that is) was now
pronounced "chee", chih-ee; and CI with long I as "chie", chah-ee. This is
the traditional English pronounciation of Latin, but as you can see, it is a
late and local development. Later, purists taught their pupils to pronounce
Latin in the European manner, which is also a late development (and which
also differs from country to country, though not as drastically as English
Latin does). And finally, purists who reconstructed the 'original'
pronunciation of Latin taught their students to use that. With the result
that there are many 'correct' ways to pronounce Latin.

If you're a purist, and pronounce every Latin name as if it were Classical
Latin, you run the risk of not being understood. For instance, Ostrea is
usually pronounced AWS-tree-uh by English-speakers, not "oh-STRAY-ah".
Besides, Linnaeus and other early biologists wrote in Church Latin,
developing such a rich vocabulary of descriptive terms that this form is
given its own name, Botanical Latin. This form of Latin is properly
pronounced in the late manner, with soft CE and CI. But if you prefer
another mode, or even want to mix them up in such a manner as to be better
understood, by all means do so. There are no Language Police, and language
is for COMMUNICATION.

Cheers,
Andy

Andrew K. Rindsberg
Geological Survey of Alabama