If you do try to pronounce them, which one(s) do you find most difficult and what do you end up calling them instead? Bonus points if it’s something you encounter regularly but still struggle with:
I had a terrible time with Sphenosciadium capitellatum. Finally learned to pronounce it and liked to use it just because of the success I felt each time. Now it’s been transferred to Angelica. :-(
Araucaria short circuits my brain. It’s not not even that long, but there’s too many A’s and I can never remember which A has the U after and I can’t decide how the syllables should go (A-rau-CAR-i-a? Is that right?)
Anaxyrus is the fairly recent name for many New World toads. I still have trouble with it although I recently learned the most accurate pronunciation is something like AN-ax-EE-rus. My preferred pronunciation is BOO-fo (Bufo), the now-replaced name.
Our white arum lily is a plague in California. Not an arum. Or a lily. But the Italian botanist Zantedeschia is so much harder to remember than ‘arum lily’ (and the aethiopica only means South of the Sahara, beyond the edge of the ‘known’ world with Here Be Dragons!)
I hate taxa with no common names, like Schiffermuelleria schaefferella which I don’t even try to remember, but from school times I hate Oenanthe oenanthe and any Phylloscopus, I can say the latter easily now, but it took some time, in first I always loose a letter or two, like, never remember there’s a second “n” in the middle, on the opposite side stuff like Chroicocephalus ridibundus or mallard name aren’t hard. @DianaStuder it’s in Araceae, called Arum family or even Arum lily family, so it’s actually a fine name.
I struggled with Polymixis argillaceago, and it’s a really nice moth so I wanted to remember it. Polymixis is ok, but the species part… So I made an “Eselsbrücke” (“donkey bridge” is the German word if you make something that helps you remember.) Agile, nearly blind squirrel. It is in Spanish, so needs a bit of explanation. Ardilla is squirrel in Spanish, together with agile it turns to argilla; ciego means blind, but it’s only nearly blind, so ceago. For me it works. :-)
I Pronounce Pseudeuophrys as Pseudo-freeze (I pronounce the o as in omelet though)
The hardest species name I can think of (as a USA jumping spider identifier) is Poultonella alboimmaculata Pole-tone-Ella albo-ima-cue-lah-tuh is how I pronounce it.
I got so many mixed answers when I asked how to pronounce scientific names, that I just decided to pronounce them whichever way helps me remember the spelling best.
There is a name that I have no idea how to even remember how to spell though Chalcoscirtus diminitus Cal-co-skirt-is dim-min-ih-t-us???