The "How do you pronounce things" thread

greenbean36191 said:
I would pronounce acropolis ah-CROP-o-lis, but how would you pronounce the word pore, which is the other half of the name? I would say acropora akro-PORE-uh.

Don't forget when you try to use hard and fast rules from Latin to pronounce these names, that a lot of them aren't Latin (or even Greek) in origin; they are names of people and places, so the rules don't apply.
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Unlike the legal and medical professions, where Latin words are usually Anglicized, the scientific community has certain conventions for the pronounciation of Latin names. Those rules place the accent on the second sylable in Acropora, which I believe is derived from the Latin for upper and opening, which probably refers to the axial corallites. I guess you would have to place the accent on the next to last sylable if you were pronouncing it in Spanish.

Also FWIW, all of the professors I've had pronounced the "ae" ending on Latinized words as "ee."
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An example of that would be the plural of alga -- algae. The Anglicized pronounciation of algae is AL-jee in the U.S. but it's AL-ghee in most other English speaking countries. We pronounce it with a soft "g" and they pronounce it with a hard "g."

They also stress different syllables than I would expect if I saw the words written. For example isopoda is eye-SOP-ih-duh and chlorophyta is klor-OFF-it-ah.
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Yes, that's correct, and that's why they would say Ah-CROP-or-ah and not Ah-cro-POR-ah. :D
 
original-reefland said:
Hmm.. that is how I originally said it and was correct to "cole" like you would say "coal".
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Whoever corrected you wasn't a native Hawaiian. :D

OK, I'm not either but the word "Ko-le" is the Hawaiian name for Ctenochaetus striatus and in Hawaiian you pronounce every vowel separately.
 
greenbean36191 said:
Don't forget when you try to use hard and fast rules from Latin to pronounce these names, that a lot of them aren't Latin (or even Greek) in origin; they are names of people and places, so the rules don't apply.
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Ah, but the "rules" do apply. Just different rules -- the Rules for Zoological Nomenclature. :D

Unfortunately the rules are often misapplied and it is common to find different spellings -- endings actually -- for the same animal. Some authors even use more than one spelling for the same species. For example, Scott Michael in Angelfishes & Butterflyfishes refers to the Coral Beauty as Centropyge bispinosus everwhere in the book except on page 225, where it is correctly called C. bispinosa. Dieter Brockmann calls the Flame Angel, Centropyge loricula in Fishes and Corals. It should be Centropyge loriculus. This one is spelled incorrectly by a number of American authors, too. (P.S. -- Scott Michael is still using the masculine endings for ALL of the Centropyge species in his new book, Angelfishes & Butterflyfishes, which was just published last year. Several of those are incorrect.)

The problem is that it was incorrectly assumed that the Greek word Centropyge was masculine but now they have finally realized it's feminine. So a lot of authors (example: Gerald R. Allen, 1999) have gone and changed all the masculine endings in the species names of this genus to feminine. But that's not correct because the species name does not always follow the gender of the genus name. Only descriptive species names follow the gender of the genus name (example: bispinosa); substantive species names (example: loriculus) or dedicatory names (example: eibli) remain unchanged.

So, if you used to use Centropyge loriculus and you thought it had changed to C. loricula, it didn't. So go back to using C. loriculus. But if you're still using C. bispinosus for the Coral Beauty (aka two-spined angelfish), you're now wrong because the correct name is C. bispinosa. All of the descriptive species names in the Centropyge genus have changed to feminine endings but only the descriptive ones.

:D
 
Poone said:
This thread is great. Sit in any college taxonomy class and you will hear the same scientific name pronounced differently. As an undergrad my professor pronounced cephalopods with a strong "k" but in graduate school it was a soft "c" like a snake. The difference: My undergrad prof. learned it from a Scotsman.
Greenbean: I have always heard isopoda as i-SO-po-da.
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The correct Latin pronounciation of the letters "c" and "g" always starts a good argument. People disagree on what is correct. For example: Veni, vidi, vici to me should be pronounced "vainee, veedee, veechee" and not "waynee, weedee, weekee" as some prefer. The Italian word "cello" for the musical instrument is pronounced "chello," not "kello." I prefer to lean towards Italian pronounciations of Latin words. It's not hard pronouncing the Latin vowels because there are only five of them and they are always pronounced the same: Ah, eh, ee, oh, oo (a, e, i, o, u). Some of the consonants are pronounced differently and some letters don't exist. "J" is pronounced as "ee" and "h" is silent.

Besides "cephalopods," here are a couple more that are pronounced differently in different parts of the English-speaking world: Ceras -- I think it should be pronounced "cheras" instead of the more common "seras" or "keras." "C" is not always pronounced as "ch." It all depends on the vowel that follows the "c" and whether it's just one vowel or two. "Ca" followed by a consonant would usually be pronounced hard as "Ka." I have heard Tridacna crocea pronounced several different ways. I like to say "Treedakna crochaya" but most people say either "Trydakna crosaya" or "Trydakna croshaya."

Just ask someone how to pronounce "Celtic" and see what you get.

:D
 
Ah, but the "rules" do apply. Just different rules -- the Rules for Zoological Nomenclature.
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True, there is one RIGHT way to say every taxonomic name, and if you wanted to be absolutely correct you would follow all of the rules to the T. In the real world though, not even the people who study these animals and talk about them regularly follow all of the rules. I think if the pros can't even agree how to pronounce the words, but people still understand them it shouldn't be too big of a concern to hobbiests to get the words ABSOLUTELY correct. :) Just get close enough that people understand what you are talking about. I doubt many people at the LFS will be correcting your Latin. If you did follow all of the rules they might not even understand what you're talking about. :lol:
 
Greenbean: I agree there is one right way to pronounce a word. Who is going to correct someone who is an authority on a taxon with 30 years research experience?
Are you a DISL Derelict?
Another one: Pteronarcyiidae. The "p"is silent.
Not every scientific name is Latin or Greek though. What if a species is name after a Russian scientist?
 
Phallus impudicus Linnaeus (stinkhorn fungus, family Phallaceae) There is also Phallus daemonicum.
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My friends and I were actually getting a good laugh about this genus yesterday. You should see the pictures.
 
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