On 13/1/06 12:25, in article
, "Des Higgins"
wrote:

snip
Most of my plant pronunciations, I copied
from other botanists and turn out to be pretty arbitrarily different from
how the Romans would have said it. The religion reference was from a
supervisior in university who chuckled at how I pronounced Occellus and said
I was using catholic pronunciation (I learned latin from teh Christian
Brothers in Dublin).

Anyway, I would have said sissy rather than sizzy but realise I have no
grounds for this preference other that what I guessed the pronunciation to
be when I saw the name first and that is probably wrong anyway :-)


We've had pronunciation discussions on here quite often and I don't think
any one group has ever 'convinced' any other group! I say CLEMatis and
my husband says CleMAYtis. I say Kernomeles (Chaenomeles) and he says
SheNOMeles etc. etc. I suspect most of us pronounce the names of plants as
they are first taught to us by whoever - I'm sure I do.

--
Sacha
www.hillhousenursery.co.uk
South Devon
(remove the weeds to email me)