SPECIES IRIS GROUP OF NORTH AMERICA

PRONUNCIATION

 Weber, William A., COLORADO FLORA, WESTERN SLOPE. Boulder 1987

In the pronunciation argument, I take the position that the most important question is whether one is being understood. Particularly, the English and American pronunciations of scientific names, whether 'purist' Latin or not, seem to be utterly unintelligible to people from other parts of the world. . . I feel we should make an attempt to meet them halfway with pronunciation, because otherwise when we pronounce words like 'nuttallii' with four syllables ending with a long 'i' they simply close their ears. I find that Americans and Britons are much more likely to try to understand a European's pronunciation than vice versa. Since this is the case, I think we should try to reach them with something like their language, which in many ways is really more intelligible than ours. . .

The letter 'a' should always be pronounced 'ah'.

The letter 'e' should always be pronounced 'eh'.

The letter ‘i’ should always be pronounced ‘ee’. This goes for the double ‘ii’ which may be given as either one or two syllables.

 The letter 'c' can always be given the hard sound although circumstances may dictate a soft sound; Germans often give it a 'ts' sound.

 In pronouncing a name based on a person's surname, try not to change its sound. Nuttallii should be accented on the first, not the second syllable…

 Pronouncing according to the simple rules given above will at least make our words intelligible to foreigners, and quite possibly more so to our students who were not brought up on Latin.

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