Taxacom: Latin

Wed Jun 28 12:46:59 CDT 2023

Dear all,

In the beginning I feared this discussion on gender agreement would lead to a lot of quarreling, but as a matter of fact the whole discussion was balanced and raised interesting points. Someone should write an article on this, if it has not already been done.

Cheers,

Jan

> Op 28 jun. 2023, om 17:30 heeft George Beccaloni via Taxacom <taxacom at lists.ku.edu> het volgende geschreven:
> 
> Hi Doug,
> 
> So you are advocating leaving gender agreement in the Code and not allowing
> a vote on it... All you are proposing is to make it easier for people to
> genderise names... As I and others have argued, gender agreement is an
> outmoded practice which serves absolutely no USEFUL function. It makes a
> mockery of the concept of species-group names being unique identifiers.
> Reverting to the original spelling would be easy to do, and once it had
> been done, the spellings of the names would never, ever have to change - to
> much rejoicing by many taxonomists and people involved in bioinformatics.
> At last we would have unique identifiers! At last, we wouldn't need to
> spend unnecessary time and effort recording the genders of names in our
> databases, and have the burden of recording future changes to them made in
> the name of gender agreement!
> 
> I fear that if there is opposition to such a relatively minor change to the
> Code, that nothing more wide ranging and radical (like having one Code for
> all of life) is ever likely to happen.
> 
> Best wishes,
> 
> George
> ****************************************************************************
> *Dr George Beccaloni FLS*
> *Director, Alfred Russel Wallace Correspondence Project*
> 
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> ****************************************************************************
> 
> 
> On Wed, 28 Jun 2023 at 16:09, Douglas Yanega via Taxacom <
> taxacom at lists.ku.edu> wrote:
> 
>> On 6/27/23 11:51 PM, Mark D. Scherz via Taxacom wrote:
>>> 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.
>> 
>> Then I'll reiterate what I've been advocating:
>> 
>> We (the ICZN) leave the rules in place, but provide two things that
>> would *completely eliminate the need for anyone to learn or understand
>> Latin or Greek*:
>> 
>> (1) We provide a single official list of all genus names and their
>> genders. Contrary to what others here have claimed, we do *already* have
>> an essentially complete list of genus names (ambiregnal, not just
>> zoology; see the IRMNG), and the genders are known for a substantial
>> number of them. Coordinating efforts to get the list "fleshed out" are
>> under way. This is pretty readily attainable.
>> 
>> (2) We provide a single official list that explains which species
>> epithets are declinable adjectives and which ones are ambiguous.
>> Anything not on the list is treated as a noun, and never changes
>> spelling. This is a little trickier to organize, but should also be
>> attainable. For example, I've personally screened over 200,000
>> species-group names, which is over 10% of all zoological names - and
>> other researchers have done the same for their groups.
>> 
>> Again, we agree that there is no justification for *compelling*
>> taxonomists to learn Latin or Greek, not because gender agreement is an
>> outdated practice or unnecessary, but because a taxonomist does not need
>> to know Latin or Greek to *look a name up in a list*.
>> 
>> Would you support the implementation of such a system?
>> 
>> Remember, we are aware that people don't like the status quo, and we are
>> also aware that completely reverting to original spellings for all names
>> is not an option. We want people to consider reasonable alternatives.
>> 
>> Further, the only thing taxonomists are *actually* compelled to do under
>> the ICZN is to read the original description in the 8% of cases that are
>> ambiguous and fall under Article 31.2.2. Even that 8% may ultimately be
>> an overestimate, if we decide to follow the example of the botanists and
>> decide that certain ambiguous terms/suffixes are going to be ALWAYS be
>> treated arbitrarily as nouns, even when they have some historical usage
>> as adjectives (and vice-versa, for certain names that we decide should
>> ALWAYS be treated arbitrarily as adjectives, like the epithet "alba").
>> In fact, by creating an official list, we could *potentially* eliminate
>> Article 31.2.2 entirely, and have NO ambiguous names, *and* eliminate
>> the need to consult original descriptions.
>> 
>> Peace,
>> 
>> --
>> Doug Yanega      Dept. of Entomology       Entomology Research Museum
>> Univ. of California, Riverside, CA 92521-0314     skype: dyanega
>> phone: (951) 827-4315 (disclaimer: opinions are mine, not UCR's)
>>              https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Ffaculty.ucr.edu%2F~heraty%2Fyanega.html&data=05%7C01%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7Cbf73aa0e9a014497368a08db77ffad88%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C638235714733359739%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=q0V3h40iYm3oxPdxuRdirueJBPA%2BrX5%2Bgvcse%2FYddHs%3D&reserved=0
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>>         is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82
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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.