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Latin’s a dead language and was not certainly created to be universal. Pronounce it however you want; if people know what you mean then the goal is achieved.

• pvaldes 5y ago
  > Latin was not certainly created to be universal. I'm talking about the binomial system of classification that definitely was created to be universal > Pronounce however you want. And then it stops being universally understood and we can't use anymore to communicate except as a written language. Can you see the problem? Spongiforma is a straightforward name to pronounce in fact.
  • filoeleven 5y ago
    > I'm talking about the binomial system of classification that definitely was created to be universal Fair point, I misunderstood. This is quite salient when talking about fungi and plants, where different species can share common names but which have different chemical properties, perhaps including edibility. Yes, the taxonomic identifiers are important. > Can you see the problem? No. The variations in how people speak these names do not tend to diverge much more significantly than word pronunciations with different regional accents. “Funj-eye” vs “fun-guy” vs “fun-jee” vs “fun-geeh” are all readily understood as the same thing. The same goes for “seye-loss-eye-bee” and “sill-o-sibe”. > Spongiforma is a straightforward name to pronounce in fact. I was more focused on learning the proper Latin pronunciation of “squarepantsii”. Should it not be “squa-ray-“ instead of the cognate “square-”? Doesn’t adding cognates throw the whole thing off? I have never heard “Cordyceps” pronounced with a hard C in the second position, nor any hard Cs pronounced in “Cetacea”, even though Latin rules have no soft C. So the Latin pronunciation rules are already not strictly followed by most in the field and have not been for many decades, and the quest to keep the Kæsar’s Latin is quixotic.
    • pvaldes 5y ago
      > I have never heard “Cordyceps” pronounced with a hard C in the second position, nor any hard Cs pronounced in “Cetacea You just need to travel more then. Millions of people pronounce it exactly like that, including me. Cetacea, Cordiceps; one character, one sound. The easy, old and reliable way to do it that worked really, really well for 200 years. Scientific language uses basically Greek and Latin, but also other languages and names of famous people. There are specific exceptions for this cases. Believe it or not, Squarepantsii is a latin name. Is a collage of english names of course, BUT the final ii is not english; It cames directly from latin, so is a "neolatinism". A new name latinised (Built using latin grammar rules). Therefore should be pronounced as any other latin word. It has 13 sounds. If we think about it, Latin is a dead language that is "so dead" that is still growing and including new words. And of course there is still people alive that speak it routinely (In the Vatican, for example). I'm aware that this is not a popular opinion, but the anglosphere is just doing simple things much more difficult for everybody (including them), and shooting themselves in the foot. To remember the scientific names [1] is much more difficult for them than for us. [1] (i.e Metasequoia glyptostroboides, yep, easy. Just a couple of traps here. Everything else is clear and obvious)