Re: pronunciation of saurus by a spanish speaker who also knowssome greek

[Neal Romanek <nromanek@earthlink.net>]

I've sometimes wondered about the pronunciation issues, and the more  
I wondered, the farther down the rabbit hole I descended. Why, if you  
were going to pronounce "Triceratops" according to the (traditionally  
accepted) original ancient Latin, it would be "Tree-KAIR-ah-topes",  
which would of course be silly. But absolutely correct. Then again,  
you could use the Church's Latin, which may have been closer to  
scholarly Medieval and Renaissance Latin, which would be "Tree-CHAIR- 
ah-topes", and then when you bring the Greek into it...well...forget it.

And should Walkeri - as in Baryonyx walkeri - be spelled Valkeri,  
since there really is no use of the "W" in Latin, only V and U?

And what about those Chinese names?

Yep, a fellow could go bananas.

The most important question is how did the dinosaurs themselves  
pronounce?


On Jun 8, 2006, at 1:10 AM, David Marjanovic wrote:

> > The words that had <au> in Latin that have come into Spanish,  
> > Italian,
> > etc., through "natural" historical processes have simply been  
> > respelled
> > to match their contemporary pronunciation (e.g. Spanish and Italian
> > *oro* 'gold', from Latin *aurum*).
>
> Gah! Of course. I had spent the weekend in Venice and been to the  
> "quarter" (i. e. "sixth") called Sestier de San Polo, which would  
> be Sestiere di San Paolo in Standard Italian. I only thought of  
> this one example.