Peace be with you.

In a recent post, I used the word "pace" which comes from the Latin and has developed a meaning something like "yes, I know there are other points of view and I respect them, but this is how I see it...". But how do you pronounce it? Nobody really knows how the Romans themselves spoke their language, but the best guess is that they would have said pah-key. Church Latin on the other hand - not surprisingly - tends to use an Italianate pronunciation, and would say pah-chay. Other than the Church, the main use of Latin in this country is in the law, and - although not everybody agrees - the more usual approach there is to pronounce all vowels as "open", so it would come out as pay-see. The reality is that this is one of those unusual words which are written but rarely if ever spoken out loud - so when reading to yourself in the privacy of your own head, you can please yourself!