Re: Bot. pronunciation
- To: i*@Rt66.com
- Subject: Re: Bot. pronunciation
- From: t*@Lanl.GOV (Tom Tadfor Little)
- Date: Mon, 8 Apr 1996 10:57:09 -0600
Louise writes
:
:I had four years of rigorous Latin in High School taught by a PhD scholar
:who said that the only reason for reading it out loud or speaking it was to
:teach us to "think on our feet"! Since there is no consensus about
:pronouncing, ie no rigidly "correct" pronunciation, we are free to butcher
:the language as we choose!
Yes and no. There are different ways to pronounce Latin, surely, but it's
not a free-for-all. The fact that "some say tomayto and some say tomahto"
doesn't make "tomeeto" a good idea.
The main differences of opinion in pronouncing botanical Latin have to
do with the degree to which vowel sounds (and a few consonants) should be
adapted to the native language of the speaker (English, for most of us).
Thus we say "EYE-ris" even though the classical Latin pronounciation is
"EE-ris".
One thing that is pretty unambiguous is the placement of stress, which is
what the "pseudacorus" question is about. People who recognize what the
word is compounded from say it correctly; many others don't. It's somewhat
analogous to the English compound "hothouse". Since we recognize it as
hot + house, we say it that way. A non-English-speaker might mistakenly
say "ho-thouse", misunderstanding the "th" as a diphthong.
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Tom Tadfor Little tlittle@lanl.gov -or- telp@Rt66.com
technical writer/editor Los Alamos National Laboratory
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Telperion Productions http://www.rt66.com/~telp/
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