How do you pronounce 'Celt'

Just wondering if the pronounciation where I come from is the odd one out. I pronounce it 'kelt', not 'selt'.

You pronounce it correctly. Only the soccer team's name "Celtic" is pronounced with a /s/.

Thanks. I was wondering for exactly that reason actually. I was watching the sports replays on tv and noticed that the soccer team was pronounced that way. I already knew that the American basketball team was pronounced that way as well, and had run into some people who actually always pronounced it with an /s/.

Why do sports teams always pronounce ''Celt'' with the ''c'' sound in ''cent'' instead of the ''c'' sound in ''sceptic''? Does anyone know why? I'm curious as to why.

That's ''Celtic'', not ''Celt''.

I remember Celt and Celtic being pronounced selt and seltik in the 1960's and 70's. The kelt/keltik pronunciation began in the 1980's with the revived interest in Irish folk and harp music for some reason. In French Celte and Spanish celta these would still be pronounced with a soft c sound.

The Ancient Greek colonists of Marsalla (Modern day Marsailles) referred to all of the people in the interior of Gaul as "Keltoi" . However these people included some Iberians, Aquitanians (see Basques) and Ligurians (an Indo-European tribe of unknown affiliation) as well as the Gauls, a people related to the modern day Bretons, Welsh, Irish and Scotts. It is not even in certain if the name Keltoi is "Celtic" at all. That is the irony. Sometimes the names people have are names given to them by their neighbors as in the case of the Eskimos whose name comes from an Algonquin Indian word meaning "flesh-eaters". Or Lapp, a word of Middle German origin.

It's really very simple, both in Latin and in Irish, the letter "C" has (or had in the case of the former) the phonetic value of /k/.

Latin "centum" = /kentum/ (one hundred)

Irish "cal" (a with an acute accent) = /ka:l/ (cabbage)

Ah, yes:

The Irish "cead" (a with an acute accent) also has the /k/ sound in it.

Yes, however, the word has entered English through the French where ce- is always pronounced like s célébrité (sel-e-bree-tay) "celebrity"; Les centipèdes (lay san-tee-ped) etc. "The centipedes" etc. Actually, Webster's Dictionary lists both pronunciations as acceptable the last time I looked.