Latin replaced??

[John McNeill]

As the Latin thread is showing remarkable persistence and as one of my
asides has been picked up a couple of times, I should clarify that the
suggestion by Llamas in the most recent issue of Taxon (February 1999)
(see quote below) is just that -- an informal suggestion.  Only one
formal proposal on the subject, that by Craven, to which Redeuilh and
others have referred, was submitted by the deadline.

It is, of course, always possible to make proposals from the floor, but,
except in unusual circumstances (e.g. when the members of the
Nomenclature Section of the Congress are convinced of the need for
change, and are, perhaps, looking for compromise), these have little
chance of success.  Moreover, if the Craven proposal receives the same
minuscule degree of support that Chaudhri's much less extreme proposal
did in 1993, the issue of Latin for diagnoses of new taxa will not even
be discussed in St. Louis.  [It is customary for the Section to rule as
rejected without debate all proposals that receive 75% or more "No"
votes in the Preliminary Mail Ballot -- unless at least 5 members of the
Section request discussion of the proposal].

In my previous intervention on this aspect of the topic, my English got
hopelessly confused; this is what I meant to say:

'Perhaps one of Llamas's (1999) suggestions in the most recent published
contribution to the debate might be worth pursuing, namely that "to
publish a new name under the BioCode, it should be compulsory to provide
a description, not merely a diagnosis, of the taxon in two different
major modern languages".  Llamas goes on: "optionally, Latin could be a
substitute for one of the modern languages".  Llamas does not suggest
this for the Botanical Code (indeed he wants to maintain the _status
quo_), but the addition to Art. 36 of a provision for a description in
TWO modern languages as an alternative to Latin would have merit.'

John McNeill

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
      John McNeill, Director Emeritus, Royal Ontario Museum,
      100 Queen's Park, Toronto, Ontario, M5S 2C6, Canada.
      Telephone and fax number:  416-586-5744
      e-mail: johnm at rom.on.ca
---------------------------------------------------------------------------