Re: REF: Pronounce Species Correctly

Robt R Pries <rpries@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
One rule was that the accent should always be on the penultimate syllable. In that sense pseud AK corus would be preferred over pseuda COR us. 

Robert,

This statement is somwhat confusing to me. Since "penultimate" refers to the next to last syllable in a word, the rule as you have stated it would seem to privilege the pronuciation pseu-da-COR-us over pseud-AK-cor-us.

Iris timofejewii was named after a general in the Russian Army. So I would assume that a Slavic pronunciation would be appropriate with the J more like a Y and the W more like a V for us. 

This example highlights some of the complexities involved in the whole process. Since as you have noted, Timofeyev is a Russian surname, it had to be transliterated from the Cyrillic to the Roman alphabet in order to be used as an element of a botanical name. The form in which this was done makes it obvious that this conversion was based on the principles of pronunciation in the German language. Globalization with its complexities is not a purely recent phenomenon.



Jeff Walters
in northern Utah
(USDA Zone 4)

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