NOVEMBER 2024

[Carlos]

Hi, I don't know why I could not open a new topic from my phone, this was the third attempt, now from the PC
 
Narcissus elegans ex Mallorca, a population probably no more extant. I have a contact there who is a biologist and I will send him some bulbs so he can try to reintroduce them. (note: I've been discussing a bit on how English speakers pronounce Latin and Greek based names, I don't want to be a pain but in this case it should be read  ēlegans with the stress on the first e, and both E are like in pet, not like in Pete).



Crocus aff salzmannii KPW.9425, Mischliffen 1780m, Morocco. Distributed with the note 'Striped/Feathered' by Antoine Hoog.  I can't go in the morning so could only take a closed flower. 



A few wild ones 

Arisarum vulgare, spotted form. 



Prospero obtusifolium and Drimia purpurascens (right)



And one of the last Narcissus deficiens of the season (dēficiens)

[Arnold]

Two miniature Lachenalia.  Not sure of the ID, labels long gone along with taxonomic reshuffle


Any ideas as to name would be appreciated.

Was Polyxena

[CG100]

I've been discussing a bit on how English speakers pronounce Latin and Greek based names,

I was always told that Latin is very long dead, so pronounciation is now essentially totally unknown in terms of when it was in everyday use. Pronounciation is just down to convention, so, so long as people know what you are talking about................

I remember one illustration of this in particular - (Cleistocactus) strausii. Conventionally this is straus E I, but I was told it should be straus E E.

Besides - in just a very few hundred years the US has Lieutenant, the UK has Left-tenant, the US has lever, the UK has leaver (both, in terms of pronounciation) etc. etc. etc.

[Carlos]

Hi, CG, there are botanists, who know about plants, and philologists, who know about languages. 

We are not supposed to know all but general rules. Yes, final i sounds always like in 'fit', even if it's a double i, but English has trouble handling that, just as Spanish has trouble handling an S at the beginning of a word and not pronouncing "eSpain".

I found a site showing that many things are known about pronunciaton of classical and post-classical Latin, as well as rules for stressing. Some Latin authors did write about that and Latin survived well into 19th century for scientific and religious use, so not all was lost. And it did not evolve anymore after the 5th century, in official use I mean, not in 'street use', where it derived into several languages etc. etc.

I reckon that there surely are conventions of how to pronounce botanical names and they maybe don't follow 100% what philologists say, but it is known that polysyllabous words were never stressed on the last vowel. 

Well, we could go on forever, let's show plants...

[David Pilling]

the US has Lieutenant, the UK has Left-tenant,

Not that it matters but the US pronunciation is the original. Whenever there is a US/UK difference the way to bet is that the US version is the original.

What a pity we don't have video of the ancient Romans - I wonder if there were differences in pronunciation in the ancient world. Regional accents, did no one write about them.

[CG100]

Not that it matters but the US pronunciation is the original. Whenever there is a US/UK difference the way to bet is that the US version is the original.

Indeed so. Most differences in pronounciation are ones that exist between English English of 16-1700's and English English of 19-2000's.

That was really my point - it is difficult to believe that Latin did not undergo the same sort of changes over far longer - 2000 years, roughly, compared to just 200 or so UK v. USA. No doubt Latin will have had numerous dialects and local words as for the great majority of people speaking it, will have had it as a second language.
Maybe consider English-based pidgins and patois too - many of similar age to US English, or younger.

The Romans within the empire spoke a hodgepodge of Latin and Greek, but -

Latin – Digital Maps of the Ancient World

I used to work with a Spanish lady from Majorca - she dismissed Portugeuse as being Spanish and said that if she travelled in Italy, she had no problem understanding Italian.

[David Pilling]

Latin – Digital Maps of the Ancient World

Good reference.

[CG100]

Wae'aye man. Cani.

(Very much also English English, for the non-Brit. 😉 )

[Carlos]

Hi, yes, there is evidence that pronunciation changed between the beginning of the empire and the end of it in the the century..For instance, C was first always pronounced like K.One piece of evidence is that Euskera (Basque) which came into contact with Latin language at around 200 BC, incorporated Pacem as Bakea (I know almost nothing of Euskera but it lacks the sound F and it tends to transform B into P at the beginning of a word). Anyway, they must have heard "Pakem' and not 'Pachem' like it was pronounced some centuries later. The vowels surely evolved but I don't have really time to look into that.I am now certain that a T between vowels was pronounced close to 'sh', like in Initial, which has strangely been kept by English. French has kept the same letter T but sounding like an S/sh  (initiale),  Italian changed it for a Z (iniziale), Catalonian into a C sounding S (Inicial), Spanish and Galician into a C sounding like th in think (Inicial), Portuguese also a C soundindg like S. So my home city, initially called Valentia (braveness), was pronounced somewhat like Valenshia....And also yes, each region adapted to some extent the pronounciation to how the native tongue pronounced... Italian and Romanian have kept more original sounds than French, Portuguese or Spanish. Italian, Spanish, Catalonian and Portuguese kept the rolling R, but French and other related tongues didn't, and so on.Oh, well, this i Crocus clusii from near Lisbon, Portugal.



And Narcissus broussonetii from Casablanca, Morocco

[janemcgary]

Can I check in here? Degrees in Classics and Linguistics. Difference 1: loanwords tend to be stressed on the penultimate (next to last) syllable by American English speakers, and on the antepenultimate (third from last) by British English speakers. Difference  2: Most English speakers without other fluent languages pronounce vowels differently from speakers of other European languages. Difference 3: sequences of "c" + vowel are treated variously by speakers of various languages. Difference 4: American English has a tendency to preserve the pronunciation of a loanword from the source language, while British tends to "naturalize" loanwords more readily (compare Am. vs. Br. "garage," and we won't even talk about what the Br. do to "taco" or "Nicaragua") Botanical names are loanwords. You can say "no one knows how a Classical Lat. or Cl. Greek word was pronounced," but the truth is that there were different varieties of Lat., and the known dialects of Cl. Gk. were nearly different languages. Historical linguistics can get us close to a good approximation, but taxonomic names were not made up in the Classical era. They originated at a time when these languages were mainly written and also used as auxiliary languages by clerics and scholars. World Englishes (a real term) are constantly changing. "Nothing is real, everything is permitted," -- as long as your interlocutor can understand you. Or see the word written on your phone.

[CG100]

It is some years ago now, but there was a short interview on the radio with someone in the Vatican, either English of American, who was responsible for translating official communications into Latin.
A great deal of the content has no equivalent at all in real Latin - taking an obvious example - "television", but it includes lots more very mundane words in everyday use today.

He was given a short piece of English to translate and in little more than moments he had picked out the words that did not exist in Latin and provided an explanation of how he used real Latin to produce pseudo-Latin words that everyone with good Latin should understand.

[Carlos]

Brunsvigia namaquana, far from flowering but really cute.

[CG100]

Brunsvigia namaquana, far from flowering but really cute.

Extremely attractive foliage, for the lovers of the weird!!  

There are various forms, two very different ones perhaps still shown on Lifestyle Seeds website?

[Carlos]

Hi, CG, thanks. I have not checked about different forms, but that's what is available here in the northern hemisphere. One of mine has longer hairs than the other one... 

 I had started asking Lifestyle seeds about ordering as they have some rare Brunsvigia, Crinum and Cyrtanthus (and many more), but there is only one price / size available and then the big order to SA Bulb company  bumped into me... 

[CG100]

I had seed of B. n. from Lifestyle last year - I can't remember why they failed but they did, as I only have one seedling, which was bought as a seedling at the same time.


The seedling is a long way behind yours - maybe 5mm of leaf showing at the moment, but this will be its first time properly in sync' with N hemisphere seasons.

Life so many Brunsvigia/SA Amaryllids, the seed arrived here with small roots and shoots, but this is the only Amaryllid to totally fail for me, although it is mostly a question of timing - they need to be listed by the seller as soon as harvested, or possibly before, and bought by you/me as soon as possible afterwards.