pronunciations
Liz Day
beebuzz at kiva.net
Sat Jul 28 00:39:24 EDT 2001
For what it's worth:
J.S. Smith, in _Vascular Plant Families_ (1977), says the following stuff,
and refers readers to a 1966 500-page book on botanical latin by a W.T.
Stearn, that I gather he got it from. (There is also an amusing paragraph
about the differences of opinion that exist on pronunciation. Not being
any kind of expert, I wouldn't know.)
(Stuff related to things people have asked:)
"The letters J, U, and W did not occur in the classical [Latin]
alphabet. Some ... insist, for instance, that _Castilleja_ should be
spelled _Castilleia_."
"The dipthongs ae and oe have the sound [of a long e]."
"The consonants c and g are soft (have the sounds "s" and "j") if they are
followed by ae, e, i, oe, or y. Otherwise, c is pronounced as "k" and the
g is hard...."
"An x [at the beginning of a word] is pronounced as a "z", not "ek-z".
Nothing in there gives any guidance to saying "catocala". Since an actual
catocala just entered the room, I will leave this to Borror and get off the
machine now.
cheers,
Liz
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Liz Day
Indianapolis, Indiana, central USA (40 N, ~86 W)
Home of budgerigar Tweeter and the beautiful pink inchworm (Eupithecia
miserulata).
USDA zone 5b. Winters ~20F, summers ~85F. Formerly temperate deciduous
forest.
daylight at kiva.net
www.kiva.net/~daylight
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