Re: Reactions to the secret vice (was: Steg's wonderful sig.)

On Mon, 15 Nov 1999 01:32:27 -0800, Barry Garcia
<Barry_Garcia@...> wrote:

>Well, of course botanical Latin is going to be said according to how a
>speaker says words normally, which is why people who know how to say the
>Latin right that I know, go into fits about the proper pronunciation of
>plants like "caesalpinia" or "Cupressocyparis leylandii". Here's how I
>would pronounce Caesalpinia - /sejsAlpIni@/ (i hope i did that right!). =
I
>remember on a plant mailing list I am on, we had a talk about "correct"
>botanical Latin pronunciation. The concensus was to not corrrect a
>speaker, even if you know how it should be said.
I've heard all kinds of pronunciations of Latin bird names on bird sound
recordings, even one who pronounced "u" consistently as [ju]! For =
instance,
"(Napothera) brevicaudata" ends up as [brEvikaju'data].

There does seem to be a rough degree of consistency in the Anglicized
pronunciation of Latin bird names, often using English pronunciations of
long vowels where we'd expect them in English words, even if the Latin
vowel itself isn't long; initial "p" in combinations like "pt" and "ps" =
is
always silent, and so on. Since I've heard only "Thryomanes" pronounced
with a stressed short o, though, I've adopted that pronunciation even
though it looks like it ought to be long.

--=20
languages of Kolagia---> =
+---<http://www.io.com/~hmiller/languages.html>---
      Thryomanes        /"If all Printers were determin'd not to print =
any
   (Herman Miller)     / thing till they were sure it would offend no =
body,
   moc.oi @ rellimh <-/  there would be very little printed." -Ben =
Franklin