Re: Latin pronunciation puzzle

"Franz Gnaedinger" <frgn@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> 1) Zaglossus attenboroughi
>
> 2) dsa-glOssous ad'n-burO-phy
>
> 3) dsa-glOssous ad'n-b'rO-w-y
>
> 4) dsa-glOssous ad'n-b'rO-phy
>
> Antonius Marcus told me that we are free to pronounce a zoological
> name (1) as we please (2, 4) - as long as we are getting understood.

You mean only as in 2, 3, or 4? Sounds odd. I have _never_ before heard a "z"
pronounced as [ds] or such pronunciation recommended; instead, [ts], [z],
[dz] have been used or proposed, and some people might use [s]. I'm not
saying that [ds] is wrong (though I think it is odd); just that from the very
first letter, there is considerable variation that exceeds the variation
in 2, 3, 4.

I think the realistic approach is that the pronunciation of scientific names
of species varies so much that everyone has to select a pronunciation that
works best for the intended audience. There is little hope of having the
pronunciations understood across languages and cultures. This isn't as
serious as we might think, since the names are mostly just written. When
spoken, they are typically spoken within a culturally narrow community
(say, Finnish ornithologists, or German aquarium fish hobbyists, or
Californian linguists). Such a community can develop, one way or another,
some consensus on the "right" pronunciation; and that will be right for them.

> The w (2) amalgamizes the English name and Latin ending, and is
> justified by the Middle English burw(e), precursor of burg / borough.

If you get deep into the etymology and history of proper names, I'm afraid
you will have trouble in finding people who agree with you on the
pronunciation, even if they would follow your reasoning and agree with its
linguistic correctness.

The logical, though not always practical, approach to pronouncing words like
"attenboroughi" is to read the proper name in its base form according to the
language it belongs to (here, a version of English) and to append the Latin
suffix -i pronounced by the particular rules of Latin you are applying in
general (probably [i] or [ai] or [i:]). If you have problems in the
transition from the base to the suffix, you just have to find a way that
makes it possible to you. I don't see much difficulty here, even though a
hiatus between a schwa and (e.g.) [i:] doesn't sound very natural.

In practice, even proper names change their pronunciation according to the
native language of the speaker, more or less. In isolated occurrences, such
as scientific names, we might still make it an _ideal_ goal to use the
original pronunciation, but in normal fluent speech, nobody pronounces all
foreign names that "correctly" unless he wants to sound very... er...
original. In practice, I would probably say [tsaglossus ætenboroui] and have
myself understood in Finland (by anyone who knows the name in written form).
If I had to say the name to an American, I wouldn't - I would write it down
instead. But if I really had to, I would probably try to read it as if the
entire name was English, and pronouncing the final -i would be among the
least of my problems then.

--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
.

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