Taxacom: Latin

Wed Jun 28 01:51:09 CDT 2023

It should read ‘in principle, in most cases, if you have a good working
knowledge of Latin declensions…’. George pointed out that this knowledge is
not widespread. So far I have only seen numbers on the US here. In the UK,
less than 3% of students have Latin in school. In Germany, less than 5% and
declining. And these are countries with long traditions of classics; most
of the world has less than this. I’d be very interested to know the stats
on Latin teaching in India and China. The point being, this ability, while
achievable, is available to a privileged few.

I prefer the up-front investment of time to discuss it here, if it could
potentially save time in the future.

Cheers,
Mark

On Wed 28. Jun 2023 at 01:34, Frank T. Krell <Frank.Krell at dmns.org> wrote:

> "(2) In principle, in some cases, you can logic out the correct ending of
> a species name if you know the genus and the stem of the species name. (as
> pointed out by Frank T. Krell)."
> - paraphrased almost correctly. It should read: "In principle, in most
> cases..."
>
> Zoo-taxonomist have lots of time on their hands to engage in gender
> agreement discussions. This has been proven again and again.
> The time waste argument seems to be a red herring 😊.
>
> Frank
>
>
> Dr. Frank-Thorsten Krell
>
> Senior Curator of Entomology, Editor-in-Chief
> Commissioner and Councillor, International Commission on Zoological
> Nomenclature
> Department of Zoology
> Denver Museum of Nature & Science
> 2001 Colorado Blvd
> Denver, Colorado 80205-5798, U.S.A.
> Frank.krell at dmns.org
> Phone 303.370.8244
> Fax 303.331.6492
> https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.dmns.org%2Fscience%2Fzoology%2Fstaff%2Ffrank-krell%2F&data=05%7C01%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7Cc1d81d60ae384108f50408db77a415cd%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C638235318871096586%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=%2FZb0%2FOiFo%2B%2FFVx3jR8KAKRwSyyf6edtGvwiQaHsH8nU%3D&reserved=0
>
> Bugs: They’re bigger, they’re better, they’re buggier than ever! It’s all
> about precision flight, swarm intelligence and mind control in the world of
> “Bugs," the exhibition. Marvel at their adaptive genius and see if you can
> match their brilliance.
>
>
> Bugs: Son más grandes, mejores y más increíbles que nunca. En la
> exhibición "Bugs" todo gira en torno al vuelo de precisión, la inteligencia
> en grupo y el control mental. ¡Descubre lo genios que son!
>
>
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Taxacom <taxacom-bounces at lists.ku.edu> On Behalf Of Mark D. Scherz
> via Taxacom
> Sent: Tuesday, June 27, 2023 4:59 PM
> To: Jared Bernard <bernardj at hawaii.edu>
> Cc: Taxacom Mailinglist <taxacom at lists.ku.edu>
> Subject: Re: Taxacom: Latin
>
> I have followed this debate with some interest. I note that practically
> all arguments I have seen presented so far are exclusively from the
> perspective of taxonomists, but we must also take into account all of the
> users of taxonomy as well. To non-taxonomists, changes to species epithets
> following genus changes are often totally mystifying, and sometimes
> downright annoying. In several cases I know, the users of the names have
> simply failed or refused to update. For example, *Paroedura picta*, a gecko
> used as a model organism for developmental biology, is frequently referred
> to as *Paroeudra pictus *in the literature and in the pet trade*—*a
> holdover from the original name, *Diplodactylus pictus* Peters, and
> incorrect gender assignment of *Paroedura* when it was first moved to that
> genus in 1994 (remedied in 1995! but the damage was done)*. S*ome even call
> them 'pictus geckos', using the original spelling in the common name. We
> are making life harder not just for ourselves, but also for the biological
> community at large, when trivial names themselves change spelling as a
> result of reclassification.
>
> So far, I have seen a lot of strong arguments for the discontinuation of
> gender agreement (at least as a rule), expressed by several members of the
> community, especially George Beccaloni and Scott Thompson. To summarise
> these briefly:
> (1) As above: it is very inconvenient for everyone who is not a taxonomist
> and doesn't understand the intricacies
> (2) It makes tracing names in the literature challenging, necessitating
> the use of wildcards or stem-based variants. This might be fine for those
> of us with experience, but for young students, and for non-taxonomists,
> these kinds of steps are often overlooked or not understood, and they
> consequently miss swathes of literature. And even for those of us with
> experience, it adds a step, costing us time.
> (3) We do not have definitive lists yet of all the genera that have been
> described, and we are still further from the existing lists having
> information on the gender of all genera. From the sounds of it, we are
> potentially *decades* away from having such complete lists in most groups,
> and thus also from a complete list for all animals. This means that the
> action of finding the relevant genus and its gender is often not so simple,
> and this will probably not change in the immediate future for many, if not
> most, groups.
> (4) Even if we had a database full of genera with all their genders,
> figuring out the correct way to modify a given adjective or noun is not
> necessarily straightforward. *Yes* there are tools out there to do this,
> but it is still time-consuming, especially when you are doing large
> taxonomic changes like transferring dozens of species from a genus of one
> gender, to a genus of another gender.
> (5) There are exceptions to some grammatical rules, making for strange
> variants that have to be known to be used correctly. This takes some
> specialist experience/knowledge.
> (6) Many languages do not have a gendered noun concept at all, and the
> concept can be challenging to learn for native speakers of those languages,
> resulting in frequent errors. (Adam Cotton made this point much more
> eloquently)
> (7) With English as the lingua franca of taxonomy, most taxonomists are
> already working in a language that is foreign to them; adding rules of
> another language on top adds an unnecessary barrier to a field that is
> already littered with barriers. Those barriers disproportionally affect
> taxonomists in developing countries. Many might not have access to books of
> Latin Grammar, and navigating the internet to find websites that will
> decline their putative names for them is not so easy.
>
> On the other hand, so far I have seen only two cogent arguments for
> retaining gender agreement (i.e. not arguments along the lines of 'I find
> it easy, so why don't you?'; these seem to be rather myopic views of the
> issue that miss the points above):
> (1) Names have changed until now, and if we were to force all back to
> their original spellings, things could get messy for a time (although
> George Beccaloni made a persuasive, if someone fanciful argument of how we
> could do this and eventually stabilise the literature). David Campbell made
> a good point here: 'Incorporating gender agreement into databases is
> essential for compatibility with existing usage, whether or not it is
> continued into the future.' Either way, the reality is that we need to
> accommodate it in our databases. So the infrastructure to deal with it will
> be there in any case.
> (2) In principle, in some cases, you can logic out the correct ending of a
> species name if you know the genus and the stem of the species name. (as
> pointed out by Frank T. Krell).
>
> Douglas Yenega asked 'If you never in your life had to personally research
> the linguistic properties of names again, would you be willing to continue
> using gender agreement?'
> To that, my answer is increasingly 'no'. Even if it is zero effort for me
> as a taxonomist to figure out what ending I should be using, the fact of
> the matter is that it is confusing to everyone *else* in biology, and is
> inconvenient for databasing and literature searches. I get frequent
> complaints from colleagues about how taxonomists are changing names all the
> time. We could make things a little easier on our friends by at least
> abandoning changes to the spelling of the species name as it jumps from
> genus to genus.
>
> Personally, I quite liked the idea of recognising all gender variants as
> the same name, but I fear this would ultimately lead to chaos in the
> literature (especially the non-taxonomic literature). I think I prefer Adam
> Cotton and George Beccaloni's suggestions; navigating our way towards
> abandonment of gender agreement, through either adoption of original
> spelling, or somehow taking the prevailing usage into account.
>
> Jared said 'I think there are far more important matters to overhaul in
> the field of taxonomy.' I don't disagree, but I have seldom seen a thread
> with so much engagement from the taxonomic community on this listserv. That
> says something about the importance and relevance of this issue.
>
> Cheers,
> Mark
>
>
> *- - -Dr Mark D. Scherz, PhD (Dr rer. nat.)* *Curator of Herpetology &
> **Assistant Professor of Vertebrate Zoology* Natural History Museum of
> Denmark, University of Copenhagen IUCN SSC Amphibian Specialist Group IUCN
> SSC Chameleon Specialist Group <mark.scherz at gmail.com>
> Skype: mark.scherz
> @MarkScherz <https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.twitter.com%2F%40MarkScherz&data=05%7C01%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7Cc1d81d60ae384108f50408db77a415cd%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C638235318871252824%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=SPcLd88vqrUWKPw831fA38i41aaoAFazy3v4XIUvSAo%3D&reserved=0>
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>
>
> On Tue, 27 Jun 2023 at 16:38, Jared Bernard via Taxacom <
> taxacom at lists.ku.edu> wrote:
>
> > I had no idea people had such intense objections to gender
> > nomenclatural rules. Prior to a century ago, entire species
> > descriptions had to be in Latin. It makes sense to switch descriptions
> > to the language of the publications' readers, but does it not make
> > sense to at least maintain nomenclatural rules to be consistent? I
> > agree with Jan, Eckhard, and Lynn; gender agreement rules don't seem
> > that difficult and I think there are far more important matters to
> > overhaul in the field of taxonomy, such as that it's scarcely taught
> > anymore (let alone practised) so that people studying biodiversity often
> have no grasp of the basic units of biodiversity.
> > Jared
> > _______________________________________________
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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.
>
-- 

*- - -Dr Mark D. Scherz, PhD (Dr rer. nat.)*
*Curator of Herpetology & **Assistant Professor of Vertebrate Zoology*
Natural History Museum of Denmark, University of Copenhagen
IUCN SSC Amphibian Specialist Group
IUCN SSC Chameleon Specialist Group
<mark.scherz at gmail.com>
Skype: mark.scherz
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