pronunciations

[Chris J. Durden]

True,
    Latin was the international common language of its day and it survived 
in a number of specialized pockets  long after it was lost in general 
usage. Church Latin differed from Legal Latin, differed from Classicists' 
Latin, differed from Scientific (Biologists') Latin.
    Latin became the language of commerce with the expansion of the Roman 
Empire a little over 2k years ago. Before that the common language of 
commerce was Greek. The Roman Empire lingered on culturally long after the 
fall of Rome. The Roman Catholic Church only recently stopped using Latin 
in general services. A Latin diagnosis is still needed for proper 
publication of a new botanical taxon. Latin was used to publish 
entomological papers as late as 1910 in South Africa and as late as the 
1950's in Finland.
    I have always used (my understanding of) a generic "European" 
pronunciation for entomological Latin. I always pronounced *Erebia* as 
Eh-re-bi-a as if it was named after Mount Erebus until in 1957 at the 10th 
International Entomological Congress, I heard Klots, dos Passos and Forbes 
talking about Eh-ree-bee-ya. I have since heard French and Italian 
entomologists use the former pronunciation. Which is correct? As long as we 
can spell the name and understand what we are talking about both are! After 
all, who (other than scholars of Greek) "speaks" Latin anymore? We should 
have respect for diversity.
    It is possible and useful that a Norwegian, a Singaporean and an Indian 
can talk together about Science, in English and understand each other. This 
is functionally no different from a 10th Century Viking, a Venetian 
navigator and an Irish priest talking together in Latin.
    Let us value both Latin and English as languages for international 
communication since Esperanto has apparently not been generally accepted. I 
expect Chinese will be the next international language - are you learning yet?
    I usually hear the plant family as Eri-casey. Then there is 
See-no-nim-fa, Fie-see-oh-dees etc.
...................Chris Durden

At 06:14 PM 7/27/2001 -0500, you wrote:
>When I listen to plant people, they seem to pronounce "eae" as "ee-ee".   Thus
>Ericaceae (the heather family) becomes  ERR - ih - CAY - see - ee.
>
>But then I pronounce antennae "an - TEN - eye", with a long i.  Thus I can 
>be assured of being wrong at least half the time.  :-)
>
>I vote for having different pronunciations for animals and plants, on the 
>grounds that there is no linguistically complicated situation that can't 
>be fixed by making it even more complicated. :-)
>
>Seriously, my understanding is that there is no longer a single accepted 
>pronunciation for Latin.
>True?
>
>Liz
>
>
>-------------------------------------------------------------
>Liz Day



 
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