Sue & Bob Hobden wrote:

"sacha" wrote in message after another Bob:

I've always pronounced "Ceanothus" as "Key-An-Oh-Thus", with the
emphasis on the "An". Is this correct, or am I completely wrong (does
it have a soft C for example).

kee-a-no-thus (a hard c, it's Latin )

Actually its Greek, from keanothus, meaning 'plant with spiny leaves'. Proper
pronunciation of the Greek would give you kee-a-no-thus, just as you indicate.
However, on the west coast of North America, the native habitat of the majority
of ceanothus species, and throughout the rest of North America, it is pronounced
see- a-no-thus. The convention for pronouncing botanical Latin in this country
is to pronounce the 'c' as soft when followed by the vowels e, i or y and hard
when followed by any other letter.

Pronunciation of plant names tends to be very regional in approach - as long as
one is understood when talking about the plant, it really makes no difference
one way or another. You cannot imagine the garbled plant names one hears working
at a retail nursery - sometimes it is nearly impossible to distinguish to what
plant they are referring and other times the result is just plain funny. I often
recall the older lady asking for "penis neegra". However, it is NOT considered
good form to laugh at the customers :-))

pam - gardengal




My neighbour pronounces "Cotoneaster" as "Cott-On-Ee-Aster" (Emphasis
on the "Ee") whereas I have always thought of it as if it were the two
words "Cotton-Easter" - is he right and me wrong again? :-)

ko-ton-ee-a-ster.

. Take Kniphofia. We
pronounce it "Niphoffia" but friends of ours pronounce it "Nyefofia"

nee-fof-ee-a

- I say
CLEMatis and Ray says CleMAYtis -

klem-a-tis

we say Daylia, friends say Dalia

dah-lee-a

all from The Collingridge Dictionary of Plant Names written by Allen.J
.Coombes ex Head of Latin at Eton. He's sorted out many a dispute in our
household. :-)

He says in his introduction that it all depends on where the name came from,
i.e. if it's from a town, person etc then it's pronounced that way if it's
from the Latin then it should be pronounced the Latin way, i.e. all "C's"
are hard as in cat.

Now try... Coelogyne :-) (p.s. it's an Orchid family)

--
Regards
Bob

Use a useful Screen Saver...
http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/
and find intelligent life amongst the stars, there's bugger all down here.