pronunciation
John C. MacGregor (Mon, 26 Jul 2010 22:02:22 PDT)

On Jul 26, 2010, at 9:07 PM, Adam Fikso wrote:

Adam,

The "Gates" part of the name is not Latin. It's English. You
pronounce the original name in the original language and then add the
latinized ending! Pronouncing the whole botanical name as in Latin
would entirely loose the name of the man, which negates the purpose
of naming the plant in honor of the man to preserve his memory.

One point that seems to be lost here is that Botanical Latin is a
separate, somewhat artificially created language composed mainly of
Latin and Greek with snatches of many other languages. The syntax is
mainly dictated by classical Latin, but the vocabulary has been built
gradually over almost three centuries since Linnaeus and codified by
nomenclatural committees of the International Botanical Congresses.
It is not classical Latin. Even if you choose to pronounce most of
it according to the Revised Academic Pronunciation (which is what we
were taught in U.S. high schools and colleges), there are words in
Botanical Latin that are not of Latin origin and thus are pronounced
as in their original languages. Botanical Latin is also quite a
different artificial language from and follows different rules than
those of the Scientific Latin nomenclature used by zoologists.

John C. MacGregor
South Pasadena, CA 91030
USDA zone 9 Sunset zones 21/23