[Taxacom] pronunciation of Latin, concluding remarks

[Robin Leech]

The thing that has NOT come up in all this discussion is that some hundreds
of years ago, 2 main forms of Latin were spoken. 
One was in the Churches, the other was in academe. 
So, which "official" Latin do you want?
Robin

-----Original Message-----
From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
[mailto:taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of Frederick W.
Schueler
Sent: March-20-12 11:45 AM
To: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] pronunciation of Latin, concluding remarks

On 3/20/2012 1:20 PM, Pierre Deleporte wrote:
>
> Who says "impossible?" It's just difficult, but maybe well worth the pain.
> Many people learn foreign languages. And motivated scientists are not 
> children.

* but many People don't master the foreign phonemes in languages they learn
as adults, and native speakers work around this inability when communicating
with those who speak a natural language as a second language.

The thing that hasn't come up in this thread is the question of whether it's
more beneficial to encourage the widest possible use of scientific
nomenclature within each natural language by pronouncing names as if they
were words in the natural language in which it is embedded, or to further
distance scientific nomenclature from popular use by insisting on a single
universal pronunciation, which only benefits infrequent verbal communication
between speakers of different natural languages.

The major players here are not the "motivated scientists" but the
naturalists, gardeners, and conservationists who need to communicate
accurately about the organisms they deal with, and who are also the voters
who elect governments that are, or aren't, sympathetic to systematic
research.

I vote for the widest possible use of scientific nomenclature, and minimal
obstacles placed in the way of those who would use it,

fred.
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           Frederick W. Schueler & Aleta Karstad Bishops Mills Natural
History Centre - http://pinicola.ca/bmnhc.htm Thirty Years Later Expedition
- http://fragileinheritance.org/projects/thirty/thirtyintro.htm
Longterm ecological monitoring - http://fragileinheritance.org/ Daily
Paintings - http://karstaddailypaintings.blogspot.com/
            http://www.doingnaturalhistory.com/
          http://quietcuratorialtime.blogspot.com/
      RR#2 Bishops Mills, Ontario, Canada K0G 1T0
    on the Smiths Falls Limestone Plain 44* 52'N 75* 42'W
     (613)258-3107 <bckcdb at istar.ca> http://pinicola.ca/
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