Re: pronunciation of Camarasaurus

["Kent A. Stevens" <kent@cs.uoregon.edu>]

First of all, thanks to the respondents thus far.

I've no delusions that there is a single universally "correct"  
pronunciation of any scientific term derived from Latin, or Greek, or  
Inuit for that matter.  And as for the noted English accent that  
pervades the pronunciations, the first few times I heard "sir-VI- 
kuhl" (cervical) or "ska-LEE-tul" (skeletal) it took me a moment of   
simultaneous translation.  It's charming, at least, to hear such  
regional variations.

Going back to the on-line Greek resources,  such as  looking up the  
root word "vault" at

http://www.kypros.org/cgi-bin/lexicon

and finding the second word "kamara", then looking up the Greek  
pronunciation at, e.g.,

http://www.cogsci.indiana.edu/farg/harry/lan/grkphon.htm

it seems indeed to be kahm-ARE-a

The first and second "a" (Greek alpha) are pronounced the same, as  
"ah" as in the letter "a" in father, but with the stress on the  
second alpha. Note further that the second alpha is stressed in the  
Greek root word, not the first, hence kahm-ARE-a rather than KAHM-are-a.

Note that the often heard kahm-MARE-a (with MARE as in female horse)  
is not consistent with the Greek pronunciation of this root.

And as for the ending, others have addressed that end of the word  
(e.g., sau-roose as in cow-roose, per our colleague Sebastian.)

kahm-ARE-a-sau-roose
kahm-ARE-a-sau-roose, oh, that's too hard.  Maybe just
kahm-ARE-a-sore-us.

Thanks to all for helping,

Kentrosaurus (KENT-tro-sau-roose, or KENT-tro-sore-us, but definitely  
not Kent-TROS-er-us.  Which reminds me, how about Parasaurolophus,  
which is often heard pronounced para-sore-ALL-OF-fus :)