Botanical Latin
- To: medit-plants@ucdavis.edu
- Subject: Botanical Latin
- From: t*@eddy.u%2Dnet.com (Tim Longville)
- Date: Sat, 11 Sep 1999 18:25:38 GMT
As the proud possessor of a copy of Prof Stearn's BOTANICAL LATIN, I
can support Sean's notion that, in the strange private world with
which it deals, this is indeed the bees' knees, the tops, the ne plus
ultra. 'All you'll ever need to know - and much more.' 566 pages of
it, dealing in detail with grammar and syntax as well as hundreds of
pages devoted to the actual vocabulary. It's also written in elegantly
old-fashioned English and has a dry sense of humour.
Re pronouncing plant names so as to preserve the pronunciation of the
names of people commemorated in the plant names: it's fine and
admirable in theory but in practice it, like just about everything
else to do with botanical 'Latin,' can cause problems. Mr Dahl and his
dahlia, Mr Fuchs and his fuchsia.... I do actually pronounce
Colquhounia as Ca-hoonia but I don't know whether I'd have the nerve
to pronounce Menziesia as Ming-esia but since, in Scots English,
Menzies is pronounced Mingiz, presumably that's how you SHOULD
pronounce it... (Put that 'should' in as many sets of inverted commas
as you feel appropriate. About six, I should think.)
Tim Longville
