Latin names and how we say them

[mark smyth]

If I don't know a plant and the owner says this is a _ _ _ _ I will then know the plant as this name and will not know if this is right.

A guy I know thinks he knows it all but is very poor at remember botanical names and always addds letters into the pronunciation or is it pronounciation?

[ranunculus]

but then all words in English starting with 'sc' ignore the 'c'.

That doesn't seem to scan, Anthony ...     Scorry!

[Anthony Darby]

You pronounce it skan Cliff? I should have added, before 'i' and 'e'.

[Hjalmar]

You pronounce it skan Cliff? I should have added, before 'i' and 'e'.

I am sceptic to this claim. Or is it septic? Anyway, be grateful that you did not have to learn this bizarre language in school.

[Hjalmar]

I just looked up "sceptic" in my dictionary and found it's the American spelling. Hope I didn't offend anyone by bringing it up.

[Joakim B]

I think part of the problem with different pronunciations comes when Latin words become also the "local" name and then the local name is pronounced like the locals do and then the Latin is also pronounced that way.

How do people pronounce Galanthus? For Germanic speakers (maybe with the exception for the mixed Germanic language English) it should be gal-an-tus. I presume Mark´s German collector is not alone.

[mark smyth]

I say gal-an-thus

[Ezeiza]

Hi people:

I laughed a lot at your funny remarks.

I remember one international conference with people from 14 countries attending and there was no problem understanding botanic names provided a bit of good will was added. It was in California and most people used the English pronounciation. Martyn Rix and Brian Mathew used a most probable Latin pronounciation.

During another one also in California (a Symposium on South America), Josef Halda gave a lecture on Tierra del Fuego in which he pronounced the many names in a most admirable Latin, true Latin. The photos were superb and the lecture up to his usual standards. After it was over, American friends were coincident: "I did not understand a single name".

So, if one becomes accostumed to a local pronounciation, it will be difficult to understand a "universal" one. And, it is not completely true that it is impossible to know how a "dead" language was pronounced. Comparing it with other derived languages it is possible to figure a good number of rules. afew consonants remain a mystery and open to debate but most not.

best

[Michael J Campbell]

I am very reluctant to get involved in this discussion,but I was taught Latin by Monks in a Monastery. The simple rule was,pronounce it as you spell it,all the syllables.
I have been contradicted so many times at discussion weekends and meetings by people who think that they know better, that I would not dare to pronounce a Latin name in public, I just pretend I don't know. So forgive me if I do not reply to any questions from this post.

Cheers,

Michael

[4moreaction]

 ...I tend to go for the pronouncing everything as it is written... that is the way we were taught that latin is vocalized...

[Hjalmar]

The simple rule was,pronounce it as you spell it,all the syllables.

I think this is the natural approach for most non-English speakers. In most European languages there is a rather clear correspondence between the letters written and the sounds pronounced, so when we see a word in a foreign language it is natural to just look at the letters and say them one after the other as clearly as we can. This does not always lead to the same result, for instance Swedish and Germans say "galantus" since there is no "th" sound in our language. However usually it is close enough so we can understand each other. I imagine that English speakers rather try to find some similarly spelt English word and pronounce it similarly. This leads to a pronounciation that is often incomprehensible to outsiders.

I remember hearing that in the days when Latin was taught at Swedish schools there was an "Uppsala" and a "Lund" system of pronounciation. These are the counterparts of Cambridge and Oxford. If there were two competing systems in Sweden, I think it is hopeless to come up with a "universal" system. We just have to enjoy the differences and try to understand each other.

[Anthony Darby]

You pronounce it skan Cliff? I should have added, before 'i' and 'e'.

I am sceptic to this claim. Or is it septic? Anyway, be grateful that you did not have to learn this bizarre language in school.

What was that about 'the exception that.......'?

[gote]

You know for us non-native English speakers the way you express youself when you try to explain in writing how you pronounce is a complete mystery. (or Greek as we say in Sweden about something we do not understand)

Professor Karlgren used to say that when English do not know how to spell a foreign word they put in an 'h'  That was his explanation for some quirks in the Wade system of romanizing Chinese.
So we have the pronounciation of th as in 'thing' But in some cases the h stands for an aspiration - meaning that Thor is pronounced "T-or" with a small pause after the T. The wade system would write T'or as in T'ang dynasty. This use of h is used in romanization of Sanskrit.

I hope that I by this have confounded those who confound me by their spelling.

O by the way : I am having ghoti for dinner 
Göte

PS
I say Skilla
 

[Maggi Young]

I am having ghoti for dinner   
Göte

How are you having your fish.... phried or boyled?

[Maggi Young]

Though the names we discuss are in latin, the problem really arises with the english connection, so I cannot resist posting this:

Poem 'The Chaos' : Pronunciation and spelling     
Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.

Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain .
(Mind the latter, how it's written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.

Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.

Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation's OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.

Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.

Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.

Liberty , library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.

Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas .
Sea, idea, Korea , area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.

Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.

Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.

Pronunciation -- think of Psyche!
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won't it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It's a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.

Finally, which rhymes with enough–
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give it up!!!

—Gerald Nolst Trenite (1870-1946)