[Taxacom] Asterales

[Dr Brian Taylor]

Who cares and why?  I too learnt Latin at school but nobody knows how Latin
was spoken.  Surely it is only correct spelling that matters?  This seems
typical of Code pedantry.  I note nobody replied when I asked what is a
species-group other than a species??

Brian Taylor

On 14/03/2012 04:49, "Curtis Clark" <lists at curtisclark.org> wrote:

> I'd like to add two things. First,
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditional_English_pronunciation_of_Latin,
> which 
> explains the way Latin is traditionally pronounced in English.
> 
> Second, Prof. Lehtinen sent a response off-list which I suspect he meant
> to go to the list. I asked him about it, and have not heard a response,
> so I won't forward it, but he did bring up an interesting
> interpretation: That the requirements of both the ICZN and ICN that
> scientific names be in Latin form also refers to their pronunciation.
> Unless something happened at Melbourne that I don't know about, I don't
> think the ICN mentions pronunciation. If in fact the ICZN does, I
> apologize, and will endeavor to use Latin pronunciation with my
> zoologist colleagues (who will be greatly befuddled).
> 
> What I still don't understand is what constitutes "correct" Latin
> pronunciation. I learned a pronunciation in school in the 1960s that
> differs from the current scholarly views
> (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_spelling_and_pronunciation),
> especially in such thing as nasalization of vowels and the value of some
> of the consonants. It is of course a reconstruction (all the audio tapes
> were burned in Nero's Rome :-), but its pronunciation must have been
> quite different from that of either Linnaeus or the Church of Rome.
> Certainly, the differences are no greater than those of English among
> Received Pronunciation, General American English, Cockney, and 'Strine,
> but those are often mutually unintelligible to unfamiliar listeners.