Lynn,
I agree with you that there are many ways to pronounce scientific names.
You said:
>One more thing: Peter Edgerton says he'd say "ZEN-o-FOR-a" and that is
>probably as fine a way as any to say it. But there is a rule on that one
>that I always remember because of a wonderful word used to describe the
>syllable you always accent. It goes like this, "In words of three or
>more syllables, always place the accent on the antepenultimate syllable.
I've heard that, and you may be right, but I don't like the idea. In the
case of Xenophora, you would then place the emphasis on the "o". The
"o" has no meaning in the name; its only function is as a combining letter
to connect the other two syllables. That's the primary reason I don't
opt for the "antipenultimate" pronunciation. There are many such examples:
Terranosaurus, is a great one. I think that to understand and convey the
greatest meaning of a word, one should put the strongest emphasis on the
most important syllable and any secondary emphasis on the next important.
But then the idea of pronoucing the silent "p" in ptera when it's in a
compound name (the accepted way, and the way I even use) has alway slightly
annoyed me as well: silent in Pterapod, but pronounced in Megaptera...Humph!
Don't qoute me on this though, as I said earlier: there are many ways
to pronounce everything. (We here in Canada are certainly used to that
idea!)
Peter Egerton,
(Egerton has no "d", but is pronounced like it does...Oh my!)
Vancouver, Canada
At 09:04 PM 4/17/00 -0400, you wrote:
>Hi Ellen,
>
>Learning to pronounce is a gradual process, as everyone has said, and I
>think all that advice they are giving you about not worrying about it is
>great advice! Nobody has a lock on correct pronunciation, no matter how
>many latinists come on here now and tell me I am wrong. It is good, and
>satisfying, to learn to be intelligible. But not always socially
>acceptable.
>
>Example: For years our entire shell club (now defunct, probably from bad
>pronunciation) called those fragile purple pelagic snails, "jan THEEN'
>uh." Then somebody came back from a trip to a shell convention
>pronouncing it "JAN' thin uh." Yup, we all shifted to be au courant
>with the latest shelllatin. No questions asked. But then we had a
>visitor from a Florida shell club, down in the thick of the shells, a
>woman who was really lah di dah in her pronunciation. She went on and on
>about "ee ANTH in a" and, when we finally figured out what it was she
>was saying, and, of course, after she left, we rudely hooted at her
>airs. Even when we later learned she was "right," we were bratty about
>it. I mean the whole club was! We adopted the new pronunciation, yes,
>but we did it complete with her pretentious enunciation forever after!
>
>Another object lesson. When I first started collecting, Mr Seashell,
>Tucker Abbott, visited our club. I'd just gotten his book, the old green
>1st edition of American Seashells, and I could not believe my good
>fortune to be meeting the author! Even more exciting, the party for him
>was at my house! I hung on his malacological coattails all night, in
>between emptying ashtrays and refilling the chips and dips. And listened
>to his wonderful upeast accent (familiar to you, of course, exotic to
>us.) Another shelling great, Walter Sage, was in our shell club and he
>and I had been worrying over the pronunciation of "costata" for a while,
>so we put the question to Tucker. He said it depended on where we were
>from. "How do you pronounce t-o-m-a-t-o?" he asked? Walter and I,
>midwesterners both, replied "toe MAY' tuh" Tucker said, "Then you
>pronounce it 'coe STAY' tuh' while I, on the other hand, say 'toe MAH
>tuh" and "coe STAH tuh" Walter and I thought that a super analogy and
>quoted it at each other many times thereafter.
>
>One more thing: Peter Edgerton says he'd say "ZEN-o-FOR-a" and that is
>probably as fine a way as any to say it. But there is a rule on that one
>that I always remember because of a wonderful word used to describe the
>syllable you always accent. It goes like this, "In words of three or
>more syllables, always place the accent on the antepenultimate syllable.
>Try that one on your Scrabble board! (Ante=before pen=next to and
>ultimate=last.) It rolls around nicely in the mouth, trips off the
>tongue, and makes the accent easy to remember. Of course all bets are
>off on two syllable words. Anybody got a rule? However I don't know if
>one follows that rule when it makes gobbledygook of a person's name. (I
>don't.) For instance, one pronounces the person's name "CUN ning ham"
>but would the shell named after him be pronounced (according to the
>antepenultimate rule) cu NING ham i?
>
>Anyway, best advice? Relax and do your best. And start learning what
>some of the prefixes, suffixes and stems mean. Often they are very
>descriptive and that in itself helps you remember the Latin.
>
>Lynn Scheu
>Louisville KY
>
>
>
>
>Ellen Bulger wrote:
>>
>> I could use some general advice. I'm trying to bootstrap myself, advance
from
>> beginning shell collector to advanced beginner or even intermediate. I'm
>> okay at a casual level. I've read a mess of field guides If I find
>> something on a Caribbean beach, more often than not, I can identify it,
>> albeit with the common name. It's those scientific names that stump me.
>> I've tried to memorize them, but they just don't stick.
>>
>> It was bafflingly me. Years ago, when I gardened, I didn't have trouble
>> remembering the formal names of the plants in my perennial border. I think
>> that's because I talked to other gardeners. Hearing people pronounce the
>> names made them stick in my mind.
>>
>> A short while ago, as part of my self-improvement campaign, I ordered a
book
>> from a shell dealer.
>>
>> "I'd like," I said. "Recent Zee-noh-for-uh."
>>
>> "Oh, you mean Recent Zi-ni-fura."
>>
>> Oooooh. That's how you pronounce xenophora? The dealer was very polite.
She
>> didn't make me feel bad it all. But the exchange strengthened my
resolve to
>> learn.
>>
>> I've been reading these Conch-L messages on and off for couple of years. I
>> know the topic of pronunciation has come up before, but when it did, I was
>> still just absorbing general information and getting oriented. Now I'm
ready
>> to hunker down.
>>
>> Different people take in information in different ways. I've gotten a fair
>> amount from reading. But there's the isolation factor, I don't know
anyone
>> locally who is interested in shells. (Generally speaking, if people in
>> Connecticut are interested in the water at all it's as a place to sail
their
>> yachts. Marine life is simply a reason to buy anti-fouling paint.)
>>
>> I absorb some things more effectively when I hear them spoken. I don't
>> suppose anyone has made an audiotape or videotape about shells or mollusks?
>>
>> It's clear to me that hanging with people who talk about shells would do
me a
>> world of good. If I can get out of work on time tomorrow, I'm going to
drive
>> up to the Mystic Shell Club meeting and see if some of their smarts will
rub
>> off on me.
>>
>> Does anyone have any other suggestions?
>
>
-------------------------------------------------------
Peter Egerton, Vancouver, Canada
Collector of worldwide Mollusca,
student of zoology and computers for life.
Step into my website:
http://www.intergate.bc.ca/personal/seashell/index.html
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