Which Name is Hardest?

That doesn’t affect number of letters though, you don’t need to have it written the exact same way as it was in source language.

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There is a bird Pyrrhocorax pyrrhocorax - no problem with this name. But in English it’s the red-billed chough. How is that pronounced? like tough or like though?

Wikipedia says sounds like Chuff, rhymes with tough.

I agree English is crazy. The following words are similar in spelling but all have very different pronunciations: Tough, Though, Through, Thorough, Trough.

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RSPB says pronounced ‘chuff’
and they should know

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Or like koff or choff, or kow or chow, or kuff or chuff, or kog or chog, or koo or choo?

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A method fraught with misunderstandings and confusion

For me, Ephippitytha trigintiduoguttata was always the hardest name to wrap my head around. Now it just rolls off the tongue though! :joy:

Another good contender is Hoshihananomia quattuordecimmaculata and the short-but-unpronouncable Oecophylla (my ant experts say ee-ko-fai-la).

The easiest and best name is of course Discomelon. :D

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But fewer egregious minspronunciations. And it is an approach fit for purpose, if your purpose is not extreme precision, or to sound smart, which mine isn’t. It’s good enough to get the point across. Horses for courses. Or equi, if you prefer, although that still allows for donkeys and zebras.

It’s always good to be open to the possibility of zebras. If you hear clop-clop-clop outside, do you just assume that it’s a horse, or do you go look and see?

For me some of the hardest names are Hawaiian native names – those 'okina still confuse me. As it was written in another thread:

…and to me those two names sound almost like the same bird, and then I have to remember that we’re not talking about the 'Amakihi, which also sounds almost the same.

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Indeed. Never look a gift-zebra in the mouth.

I had the fortune / misfortune of taking latin in high school. It is extremely useful for knowing the root words of various scientific names, but it also makes me want to pronounce every name with the latin pronunciation key, which is almost never how anyone actually says them. For example, C is always pronounced like the english K, U and V are pronounced like W, I is always pronounced like the english Y, etc… (speaking of which, et cetera should really be “et ketera”)

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I’m impressed, I managed to last less than a week in a latin class in first year uni, just long enough to learn a few simple pronunciation tips then realize I was not going to be able to keep up :laughing:

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But at the same time Caesar with ts is said to be correct and Kaesar is incorrect pronounciation.

Restionaceae are Cape reeds here (not jointed?)

Hermione from Harry Potter was however a dear!
As for hoof beats and horses… I always look! Yes, it could be a zebra, but what if it’s a(n) unicorn?!!

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Actually, I’m so used to our English vowels having both the “long” and “short” sounds, I was really confused by the Greek alphabet. I was like, “why do they need two e’s (epsilon and eta)? And why do they need two o’s (omicron and omega)?” It didn’t cross my mind that epsilon and eta correspond to what I think of as the two sounds of “e.”

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Actually there’s no rule that prohibits the use of any language as a source for binomials as long as they are Latinized. There’re specific epithets in Japanese for example and many made-up names, too. The problem is that they are not all completely Latinized - i.e. they are not written in the way of the Latin alphabet but instead the original spelling is retained.

“retouch” comes from the French “retouche” - you can see the spelling has changed. If you have a phonemic alphabet you can transcribe imported words into it, no matter how many source languages you use. But unfortunately English doesn’t use a phonetic alphabet.

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You are relating English phonology to Greek spelling? I don’t understand what you mean.
English can also represent nearly any of its sounds by different letters. It is thus much more confusing. The sound /i:/ can be represented by ⟨ee⟩ as in feet, ⟨ea⟩ as in sea, etc

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Simply that I didn’t understand why there were two different Greek letters that mean “e.”