Journal: News & Comment

Friday, April 12, 2002
# 10:09:00 PM:

Permalinks to this entry: individual page or in monthly context. For more material from my journal, visit my home page or the archive.

Sounds you wouldn't expect

Peter Ommundsen of Saltspring Island here in B.C. has created a Web site to help you pronounce all those nasty Latin names used in biology. Near the end of his useful guide is something quite neat:

An estimated pronunciation from the Golden Age of Rome (80-14 C.E.) is used for the reading of ancient literature. This pronunciation differs greatly from English scientific Latin, and is more difficult to master. For example, Cicero is "kickero," Caesar is "Kysar," vertebrae is "wertebrye," and Vaccinium is "wakkeeniom."

Those were certainly not the pronunciations I learned when I took Latin twenty years ago -- even though our textbooks told tales of the lives of families in ancient Rome.

By the way, my favourite Latin organism name lets my marine biology degree show. It's for the common green sea urchin: Strongylocentrotus droebachiensis. It may be the longest Latin name of any living animal. Or maybe not.

 |

Journal Archive »

Template BBEdited on 29-Apr-2010

Site problems? Gripes? Angst? - e-mail dkmiller@penmachine.com
Site contents © 1997–2007 by Derek K. Miller

You may use content from this site non-commercially if you give me credit, under the terms of my Creative Commons license.

eXTReMe Tracker