h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I was dong my library volunteering stint this afternoon when a teenager and her mother came to ask if the computer answered questions. "Probably," said I, "what do you want to know?"
"Well, do you speak Latin?"
(I know this was once a Roman settlement, but how old do they think I am?)
"Yes" *
"Well what does 'fecit' mean?"
"He, she or it made..."
"See, I told you she'd know" !
*I failed O level Latin in 1959

Ooooh, one of my proudest achievements is that I got an A in my O level Latin! That would have been in *counts on fingers. and toes....* 1978

It's hard to find a school these days that still teaches it.

"Why do you ask?"

"Well - everytime my former Latin teacher sees me he exclaims "Fecit!" "

What would be the accepted pronunciation in English classrooms (those rare ones where Latin is still spoken)? My husband would have to teach that as Duncan presumably meant with his pun. My liturgical music teacher would have us pronounce it "Fetch it" and normal practice in German church music and the general lay populace is "Fets it".

Is there acceptable Latin pronunciation? Does anyone have records of what the words actually sounded like? Were there regional dialects?

I guess there must have been regional accents, and I can't believe that the Latin spoken in, say, southern England by non-native speakers would have sounded exactly like that in Rome.

Where i find difficulties on the infitisimally rare occasions on which I use a Latin word or phrase is that it takes 3 or 4 goes before my German colleagues get what I mean because the pronunciation we're taught in England (or how I remember it) is different to that which is taught in Germany.

Or something - my brain hurts a bit this morning

I am used to the German pronunciation because we sing a lot in it, but I always bear in mind what my husband says.

There is quite a divide between the "Altphilologen" - Ancient philologists? - Perhaps Classical philologists is better. Which is what my husband is, and the church Latin-speakers. The woman who teaches us liturgical singing (including the reading/interpretation of neumes) says she wishes they would get together more often, because the neumes do give a lot of indications as to the pronunciation of consonants and emphasis.

(For example, the symbols indicate that the "g" and "c" are pronounced the Italian way, as can clearly be seen from the little hooks on the ends of the symbols.)

Maybe I ought to introduce her to my husband.

Dunx is assuming "Feck it" as in the Irish Father Jack which is the pronunciation I would have given it as did my questioners. The English favoured the 'hard' c,g etc.
Interestingly etc itself seems to have changed from Etketera to Etsetera

The differences in pronunciation gave rise, in part, to the different Romance languages. Perhaps the hard consonants are due to the Irish and Anglo-Saxon monks who taught and used it in these islands.