Taxacom: Latin

Tue Jun 27 06:56:32 CDT 2023

I read this discussion with interest and encountered many arguments that I had not thought about before. Being from the continent I admittedly observe matters from a continental perspective. The discussion was certainly worth my time. Still, I do not see the point: I find gender agreement quite natural, although I make occasional mistakes. Being Flemish, speaking a language that few people speak, I had to learn French, German, Spanish and a bit of Italian and Russian. All these languages have gender agreement, three of them in fact being the descendants of Vulgar Latin. It is not a big deal, really. One gets accustomed to it.

Cheers,

Jan

> Op 27 jun. 2023, om 12:54 heeft George Beccaloni via Taxacom <taxacom at lists.ku.edu> het volgende geschreven:
> 
> What a complete waste of time having to go into all of that for zero
> practical benefits. Let's just be allowed to focus on taxonomy and science,
> not ancient languages and deities, like arcane necromancers! I have yet to
> hear a really good reason why we should retain gender agreement.  Gender
> agreement does not help with stability as I think Doug stated - in fact it
> wastes valuable time and hinders communication. I bet few large electronic
> names catalogues contain information about the gender of the genus-group
> names in them. Mine don't and going back and adding this useless
> information would be arduous in the extreme, as one would really need to
> check the original descriptions to do a good job. That would be a massive
> task - LepIndex has more than 20,000 genus-group names. Personally I think
> it very unlikely that the gender of more than a small fraction of all
> published animal genus-group names will be available in electronic form in
> the foreseeable future. People who haven't worked on large databases of
> scientific names think that an army of little unpaid elves will somehow
> make all this information freely available in the near future, but I would
> be very surprised if that transpires.
> 
> Best wishes,
> 
> George
> 
> 
> ****************************************************************************
> *Dr George Beccaloni FLS*
> *Director, Alfred Russel Wallace Correspondence Project*
> 
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> ****************************************************************************
> 
> 
> On Tue, 27 Jun 2023 at 11:28, lynn <lynn at afriherp.org> wrote:
> 
>> It is a false argument that you need to learn Latin to be able to use
>> gender agreement, there are many Latin dictionaries available that usually
>> have detailed information about the grammar. As well as Stearn’s Botanical
>> Latin already mentioned there is also Brown’s excellent book on the
>> Composition of Scientific Words (both available online at archive.org).
>> I have all these as well as English, German, French, Greek and Spanish
>> dictionaries amongst several other books covering scientific etymology.
>> Even the ICZN website has detailed information available. I think that
>> those who reject gender agreement are basically making a mountain out of a
>> molehill.
>> Lynn
>> 
>>> On 26 Jun 2023, at 22.41, George Beccaloni via Taxacom <
>> taxacom at lists.ku.edu> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Just proves my point - so 90% do not offer Latin, and no doubt only a
>>> fraction of those pupils at the 10% of schools which do offer it,
>> actually
>>> take it. Since taxonomy is a global endeavor, the question is (as I said
>> in
>>> my original message), what proportion of students in the entire world
>> take
>>> Latin. I am sure it is much less than 1%. I went to schools on 3
>>> continents (including the USA) and none offered Latin. I would have been
>>> interested as I started collecting and studying butterflies from the age
>> of
>>> 10 and wanted to know more about scientific names.
>>> 
>>> Best wishes,
>>> 
>>> George
>>> 
>> ****************************************************************************
>>> *Dr George Beccaloni FLS*
>>> *Director, Alfred Russel Wallace Correspondence Project*
>>> 
>>> Wallace Correspondence Project: https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwallaceletters.myspecies.info%2F&data=05%7C01%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7Cb351f8a0dcad454ee76408db77058e72%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C638234640694986158%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=NBNAUsApz13skYjaYzyca1xWNRLSasc9PafopnTVGNs%3D&reserved=0
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>>> 
>> ****************************************************************************
>>> 
>>> 
>>>> On Mon, 26 Jun 2023 at 21:33, Richard Jensen <rjensen at saintmarys.edu>
>> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> Do you live in isolation?  About 10% of US high schools offer Latin. so
>>>> hundreds (thousands?) of students take it every year..  I had Latin and
>>>> Spanish in high school and the former certainly helped with the latter!
>>>> 
>>>> Cheers,
>>>> 
>>>> Richard J
>>>> 
>>>> --
>>>> Richard Jensen, Professor Emeritus
>>>> Department of Biology
>>>> Saint Mary's College
>>>> Notre Dame, IN 46556
>>>> 
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>>> 
>>> Nurturing nuance while assailing ambiguity and admiring alliteration for
>> about 36 years, 1987-2023.
>> 
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> 
> Nurturing nuance while assailing ambiguity and admiring alliteration for about 36 years, 1987-2023.