"Sacha" wrote in message
.uk...
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.

absolutely (we just copy pronunciations from each other).
I have noticed that some pronunciations are more manly and striking and
others are more wishy washy.
I have always thought liken rather than litchen for lichen to be more
assertive but then I prefer CLEMatis to cleMAYtis as teh latter sounds
american. I remember trying to pronounce urtica dioica when I was a kid as
ooortika dye-osha which sounded weird until I heard someone say dye-oyka
which sounded so much more knowledgeable and I have never looked back ever
since. Senecio as senekio I cannot get used to though so I say seneesio
which I am sure is wrong.




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