Okay so I’ve been identifying for almost a year now, and I always learn the scientific names. Every species I know how to identify, I know the scientific name. BUT… I have no idea how to pronounce them! I would hate to be talking with someone and totally butcher a binomial name like that. I’m hones…

I thought he Latinized himself.

[image] jhbratton: Chirocephalus diaphanus Lol not those. Detailing; he said “cave shrimp, like fairy shrimp. Cave fairy shrimp”. Def amphipods, ex Niphargus glenniei. Look up research by Lee Knight. I confirmed it during the trip with him and my friend colleague who finally translated the c…

Have to use scientific Esperanto, for those foreigners :laughing:

[image] benkendrick: Phonetically correct is generally all people ask for. Even that can be open to question. The phenomenon of Batesian mimicry is named after Henry Bates, so that means that it is pronounced “BATES-i-an.” But based on the spelling alone, it would seem to phonetically rhyme w…

One of my first research jobs was studying Florida Scrub-jays, in the genus Aphelocoma. I worked for two experts on this species, who had studied it together for decades, and they pronounced the genus entirely differently from each other. Eventually I asked about this and was told, “It is a dead lan…

As someone who is self taught in just about everything, I mangle scientific names all the time. The best advice I ever got was “The correct way to pronounce scientific names is to say them loudly and with confidence, then just don’t worry about it.”

I came here to say this. The purpose of scientific names is to be understood without ambiguity, so as long as you’re achieving this your pronunciation is “correct” in my opinion.

[image] sedgequeen: Callitriche I tried Google Translate on this one and it pronounced the word just as you described it, i.e., Call IT tricky. Although GT usually mangles Thai sentence translations, I frequently use it for pronouncing Thai words. For Latin, I set the from language to Latin, …

I took Latin I in high school. That is EXACTLY what the teacher said.

Where Do I Start With Pronouncing Scientific Names?

Nature Talk

jnstuart June 26, 2022, 2:00pm 71

If I think about this topic of pronunciation for too long, “I feel a coma”coming on … which is how I remember Aphelocoma.

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Where Do I Start With Pronouncing Scientific Names?

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