Re: Pronounciation of Giganotosaurus

[Amado Narvaez <anarvaez@umd5.umd.edu>]

On Thu, 11 Jan 1996 Adgonia@aol.com wrote:

> With due respect to everybody in this list.
> Since there is so many doubts and opinions about pronounciation and meaning
> of" Giganotosaurus Carolinii" why don't we ask the people at the University
> of Neuquen (Arg.) to explain it.

A reliable source who knows Dr. Coria informed me that he (Dr. Coria) 
pronounces Giganotosaurus as "Hee-gah-no-to-sour-us" which is consistent 
with a Spanish pronunciation. (Compare: gila monster).  As someone else 
pointed out, the correct pronunciation of the species name "carolinii" is 
"kare-oh-lee-nee-eye" with both "i's" at the end as separate syllables.
Teachers who plan to use the Giganotosaurus song I posted should make 
that adjustment.

Norman King pointed out in a separate post that there is a lot of 
uncertainty about how Latin is pronounced, and that there had been a 
brief thread on the list about whether dinosaur names are pronounced 
uniformly around the world. Adrianna points out that Germans don't 
pronounce "Washington" as "Vashington," although I would qualify that 
with "most Germans" since the sound of our "w" is a difficult one for 
many Germans. We could ask Klaus Richter about that. The German word for 
dinosaur is "Dinosaurier" and is (correct me if I'm wrong, Klaus) 
pronounced "Dee-no-sour-ee-er," and I would expect that the German 
pronunciation of the first syllable of "Tyrannosaurus" would reflect an 
umlauted "u" almost like the German word for "door."

If "dinosaur" means "terrible reptile" and "Deinonychus" means "terrible 
claw," and if both come from the Greek, why aren't they spelled and 
pronounced similarly? We also have "Deinocheirus" and "Deinodon" so 
maybe we should have "deinosaur" instead of "dinosaur." :-)

(To answer part of my own question above, I know that the Greek word for 
claw is "onux" and that's why the "o" in this animal is not pronounced 
the same way as the "o" in "dinosaur.")

I've often wondered, too, about the pronunciation of the first two 
syllables of "Stegosaurus" and "Stegoceras." In this case, the "o" is 
inherent in the Greek word for "roof."

A year or two ago I started a long thread about dinosaur pronunciation 
among amateurs and professionals, and the general feeling was that 
variances in pronunciation exist in the professional ranks and that the 
pros don't grind their teeth when a lay person mispronounces a 
dinosaur's name. (They tend to grind their teeth most when glaring errors 
of information occur--like lay people calling "Dimetrodon" a dinosaur.)

So I think we can accept a couple of different pronunciations of 
Giganotosaurus, as long as it doesn't sound like "Gigantosaurus." I will 
be teaching the kids at my school "Hee-gah-no-to-sour-us" because it 
meets the goal of making the study of dinosaurs multicultural and 
multicurricular, because there is a large Hispanic population at my 
school, and because Dr. Coria uses it.

----- Amado Narvaez (der kein Spanisch kann, der aber gut Deutsch kann?!:-)
      anarvaez@umd5.umd.edu