names of people and plants
Kelly Irvin (Fri, 11 Apr 2003 07:41:37 PDT)

Diana:

My opinion would match yours among others. No criticism here for anybody
that pronounces things differently, but these names are "Latin-ized",
which, at least, can provide universal guidelines. I pronounce Clivia
with a short "i", because it would follow those guidelines. When someone
runs across a description of the genus Clivia, they cannot expect to see
along with it all historical references to why or how it received that name.

It may be that pronunciation is not nearly as important an issue as
spelling. Let's face it. The word Clivia may be Latin-ized, but it did
not exist in the Latin language when that language was still living.
Just like today, we could find that, when it came to family names in old
Rome, they may have broken the rules of Latin pronunciation, since a
family name is someone's own to pronounce however they please. I would
guess that, as long as the listener understands to what the speaker is
referring, pronunciation may not be so important.

I will NEVER understand why the Australians pronounce "aluminum" as
"aaliuminium", but it sure is a heck of a lot more fun to say it their
way than the American way - imho.

diana chapman wrote:

--
Mr. Kelly M. Irvin
The Bulbmeister
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