Re: pronunciation of Camarasaurus (last one, I promise!)

[Nick Pharris <npharris@umich.edu>]

Quoting "Kent A. Stevens" <kent@cs.uoregon.edu>:

> Going back to the on-line Greek resources,  such as  looking up the  
> root word "vault" at
>
> http://www.kypros.org/cgi-bin/lexicon

Ack, you're right.  It is originally Greek.  I stand corrected.


> 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 one would expect in a well-designed spelling system, since they're 
written with the same symbol :-)


> as  "ah" as in the letter "a" in father,

Probably just a bit farther front in the mouth than that, but that's a 
very minor phonetic detail.


> 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.

Yes; this is because Greek stress placement is sensitive to the length 
of the vowel in the *last* syllable (long, in this case, which pulls 
the stress onto the second-to-last syllable: ka-MA-ra:).

Latin stress placement cares about the length of the vowel in the 
*second-to-last* (or penultimate) syllable (in this instance, to 
simplify slightly, the vowel in the second-to-last syllable is short, 
so the stress goes on the third-to-last syllable: KA-ma-ra).


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

Or any other language's, since the English reading of <a> as IPA /e/ or 
/eI/ is pretty darn near unique.


> Kentrosaurus (KENT-tro-sau-roose, or KENT-tro-sore-us, but definitely 
>  not Kent-TROS-er-us.

In Greek, it actually would be ken-TRO-sau-ros.  In Latin, ken-tro-SAU-rus.


> Which reminds me, how about Parasaurolophus,  which is often heard 
> pronounced para-sore-ALL-OF-fus :)

In terms of stress placement, the stress would go on the third-to-last 
syllable in both Greek and Latin: pa-ra-sau-RO-lo-phos.  I use 
PEAR-uh-SORE-uh-LOAF-us, though I can offer no justification for it :-)

--
Nick Pharris
Department of Linguistics
University of Michigan

"Creativity is the sudden cessation of stupidity."
    --Edwin H. Land