That’s why I liked starting to learn Chinese. Chinese characters can be written with pinyin using English letters. But it is lots of fun learning how to pronounce xia, zhang, and shui other pinyinized Chinese words!
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Came here to say this. The Codes are completely silent on pronunciation, they regulate only the written forms of names. So there is no “official”, “standard” or “correct” pronunciation of scientific names. The correct pronunciation is whatever is understood by you and the people you are speaking with. This will depend greatly on your (and their) language background, dialect, accent, and just personal preferences.
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One Generic name I have never heard said aloud, and am not sure how to pronounce is Lithophane.
Is it ‘lith o fane’ or is it ‘lith o fan e’? It sort of bothers me, because when I read names I like to have a mental sense of how it sounds!
I use the first one, but I don’t know.
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I’m happy to have started such a lively discussion!
So what I’ve learned is, and correct me if I’m wrong, it doesn’t matter that much? XD
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I consulted my brother Ray, who majored in Latin and Ancient Greek, and I’m correcting my earlier position. Based on his guidance, it’s best said as Anax-EE-rus, retaining the X and not Z sound, although the Y (Greek upsilon) is pronounced more like an umlauted U which I probably can’t manage. Incidentally, in his research he found the name is Greek, but borrowed from Persian, and means “baggy pants” in reference to the loose skin of these toads. So I learned something new in this exercise!
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I’m not sure I get the difference between your examples :D, but it’s someting like “litófʌne”.
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Yeah, I’m thinking you don’t treat the final E as silent as we would in English, it should be pronounced.
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Like Megachile (mega-ki-lee) bees? litho-fan-ay or litho-fan-ee?
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I thought Mega-chile was the really hot chile peppers we enjoy here in NM. ;-)
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This is how I’ve heard/pronounce it.
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Exactly! There will always be dissent. There will always be sticklers. I live in the United States and there’s so many regional dialects nationwide. I believe, when we try, we will make ourselves understood.
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Perfect! @fffffffff that’s the pronunciation! I don’t use it when I think about the Genus. A word like yours is what I think.
The reason why scientific names are either Latin (modern species) or Ancient Greek (prehistoric species) is because they’re dead languages, so they’re more universal and it prevents objections from other nationalities. For example, what if scientific names were in Russian or Swedish and we were expected to use those names. Suddenly, science becomes a geopolitical outrage. But by using a language we no longer use; we avoid most cultural confrontations.
So, when you ask how to pronounce these names, all I think about is a scene from the movie “Iron Man 2”.
Tony Stark: She’s fluent in French, Italian, Russian, Latin. Who speaks Latin?
Pepper Potts: No one speaks Latin, it’s a dead language.
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I hope the original poster has learned from this thread that they’re going to have a tough time butchering scientific name pronunciations.
The only rule that I’ve ever heard that made any sense is “you pronounce the names as your major professor pronounces them”.
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We have goldilocks.
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/129068-Chrysocoma-coma-aurea
That is twice golden, chrys in Greek, and aurea in Latin.
When Linnaeus used Latin it was still the language of science across Europe. And it was ivory tower for the scholars. Barrier to entry for the rabble.
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That would be fun actually, my keyboard’s Alt is broken, so I’d be happy to stop changing language to write something in Latin when there’s no common name.
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When scientific nomenclature began, Latin was the language of educated people. It was a common language written, read, and yes even spoken by educated people (mostly men) from all the European and nearby countries. Local languages were mostly not written until the late 1400’s and they didn’t allow communication across large areas until much later than that. (Have you read English novels with a character or two who speaks the English of Corwall??) To communicate across borders, Latin was the only good option.
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45 years ago my dendrology professor said to pronounce it however it works for you to remember it and to remember how to spell it. I haven’t worried about pronunciation since.
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Well, maybe that’s because all the C’s in that sentense are hard C’s.
Mega-Kyle.
I would never have gotten “meez” as a pronuciation for “mys.” It’s a “meez-tery” to me why anyone would.
When did they rename Big Jim? 
I planted some of those tasty cap-sick-ums last week.
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