Talk:Scalesia

Pronunciation

I first learned about this genus from the "Adaptation" program of David Attenborough's 2013 TV series "Galapagos". He pronounced it in such a way I first searched for it here under "Scolasia", and naturally enough got no hits. Clearly, he's using a Latinate pronunciation for the vowel "e". Does anybody know the correct pronunciation? Who decides on what's correct pronunciation for scientific names, anyway? Is there a guideline somewhere on Wikipedia?

It would be good to have the correct pronunciation given in the article, preferably in IPA, a sound file, or both. yoyo (talk) 00:39, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

There are IPA pronunciations on some plant articles. There isn't a firm consensus on correct pronunciation though. More Latinate pronunciations are generally regarded as better, but US botanists tend to use less Latinate pronunciation then European botanists. It gets really tricky when dealing with letters where the classical Latin pronunciation diverges from modern pronunciation. English and Spanish speaking botanists usually pronounce "c" as "s" when followed by "e" or "i" (as is typical in English/Spanish, but in Latin, all "c"s are hard); continental European botanists tend towards hard "c"s. Plants named for people are another thorny area; do we give a plant named for Scales a Latinate pronunciation, or say Scales name as it would usually be pronounced in English? I think most English speaking botanists would pronounce the genus Vonroemeria with a "v", which doesn't follow Latin ("w") or the orginal German pronunciation ("f"). Pronunciation of scientific names can be tricky. Plantdrew (talk) 19:39, 31 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]