pronunciations. . .

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rickschabener

Aquarium Advice Apprentice
Joined
Sep 3, 2003
Messages
28
Location
Chester, VA
Is there a book, website, or forum that lists the phonic pronunciations to many of the words in the reef/saltwater hobby? There are a lot of new words to learn and I would like to know how to pronounce them correctly.

Thanks,
Rick
 
Hmmm, what are you having problems with? Most have issues with the latin names.

Invertabrates; A quick reference guide and Corals; A quick reference guide by Jullian Sprung and Aquarium Corals by Eric Borneman have phonetic spellings of the latin naes for the inverts and corals we keep. I did a quick search and couldn't find an online reference for phonetic spellings of fish or inverts.
 
My suggestion would be to just ask here when you see a weird name. Like the Spirobedae worms....its Spy-ro-be-day. Its as easy as that. Save you mone and time I would think.
 
Okay. Here are a few:

Annelids: An-E-l-ids?

Nudibranch: NUDI-branch, NUDI-brank, NUDI-bronk, nudi-BRONK?

Copepods: cope-pods, cope-e-pods?

Detritus: de-TRI-tus, de-TRE-tus?

Polychaetes: POLY-cheets?

Zooxanthellae: zoo-AN-the-ly?
 
LOL, ever heard latin with a southern accent?? I should have some time tomorrow to look these up, if someone else doesn't get there first.
 
Well, it's all sorta further complicated by the fact that scientists can seldom agree on pronunciations for essential Latin and Greek phonemes... which is further complicated by the several different systems of Latin pronuniaction--e.g. academic vs. church Latin. For example: "Regina Coeli" (Queen on the Skies, or Queen of Heaven) is pronounced "Ray-ghee-na kay-lee" by academics, but "Ray-gina Chay-lee" by priests, singers etc.

So... pronouncing names like "zooplankton" can get tough... I've heard zoo-oh-plankton, but I know a lot of scientists where I work (at an Earth Science Research Facility) like to call it "zow (as in tow or throw)-o-plankton."

In other words, be ready to disgree with others on pronounciation :wink: Every time I go into my LFS I find myself pronouncing words like "plecostomus" "betta" and "anacharis" (I'm a FW guy) very differently than they do, but oh well...
 
looking to buy 30lbs.of LR & 20lbs of LS and am in need of a quote from Zack and the guys ASAP.thnx.guys
 
How about creating an "AquariumAdvice" library, in the vein of the calculators above. It would be a work in progress as items are added, but it would be a great repository of information. And yes, it should include how a word is pronounced.

Another advantage is that hyperlinks could be added to other sections of the library. Such as linking different species that have the same common name or multiple common names for a single species.

I hope I am not asking for too much... :oops:
 
Latin is a dead language. That's why it is used for scientific nomenclature. In fact, I have heard MANY Ph.D.'s (biologists and mariculturists) use two different pronunciations of the EXACT same genus and species in the same sentence. I personally don't think anyone REALLY knows how to pronounce the Latin names. FWIW at this point, I'll say that as long as you have the idea right and can get your point across effectively, there really isn't any right and wrong way to pronounce a genus and species.
 
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