FAQ - Botanical Latin - Lesson One

Botanical Latin and the Average Enthusiast
A Practical Guide

In the years of my involvement with hobbyist groups of various types, it has become obvious to me that most people are completely confused about the use of Latin in the naming of organisms. Questions such as, “Why Latin?”, or “How can a person remember all of those names?”, or “How do you know how to pronounce the words?”, and the often laughingly dismissed, nearly torturous mis-pronunciations that I have heard have led me to this conclusion. I have mentioned the possibility of devising a pronunciation guide to help people answer those and other questions and have been encouraged to do so. What follows is the result, an attempt to clarify some of the rules and to dispel many of the myths associated with Botanical Latin, also called Scientific Latin.

Brief prehistory-
In the early days of discovery, people all over the world observed the natural phenomena around them and gave names to the various organisms and objects that they saw. Each group had its own language and all went well as long as groups didn’t try to interact with other, unrelated groups. Of course, over time, groups converged for one reason or another and the issue of the names of things became a matter of who was numerically or politically dominant in the society. Even so, while one name might have been favored over another by a dominant group in a society, and the other group(s) of people within that society might have been forced to use that name, the words from the subservient languages, which might even have been banned, lingered. Also, names that were carried from one geographical area to another as the name of one organism, were assigned to a similar plant or animal in a new location. The result was that over time many different names came to be used for the same object by people who had been mixed together for one reason or another. These so-called “common names” led to confusion in the naming of plants and animals. For instance, even today there are several plants called “Black-Eyed Susan”, and there are several fish that are commonly referred to as “Mosquito Fish”. Something had to be done to standardize the naming of things so that everybody could know what everybody else was talking about. This became even more critical with the dawning of the age of discovery, when hundreds of newly discovered species were introduced to the world.

Many of the early discoverers were Romans and so wrote in classical Latin, primarily about plants. Pliny the Elder (A.D. 23-79) wrote extensively about plants, and it is because some of his writings have managed to survive into the modern era that Latin became predominant. Latin was considered to be the best language for the purpose because it was the only language extant at the time that was sufficiently developed to describe organisms in any detail. Also, most educated people were familiar with Latin, making it possible for a scientist in Sweden to converse with one in Italy. Latin remained a conversational language among the scientific community well into the 18th Century.

Enter Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778), a Swedish botanist and physician with a predilection for systematics. With the increase in world-wide travel and the increase in voyages of exploration, so many new organisms were becoming known to Europeans that most of them were going completely unclassified because there were too many things to describe, too few people to describe them, and most importantly, no system or accepted language to describe them in. None of the languages of the day could accommodate all of the new and different forms that were to be described. Linnaeus’ part in the process, with his numerous publications, included deformalizing classical Latin, expanding the vocabulary of taxonomy by using words that had never been used in plant descriptions, and probably most significantly, allowing the use of words from other languages. Greek words, colloquialisms (words of local usage), and eponyms (names derived from the names of people or places), and others were all brought into the lexicon. Thus, with its “Latinized” foreign words the newly expanded, and expandable “language”, Scientific Latin, was then able to describe anything that might be discovered.

The first step in establishing a system of nomenclature was to establish a taxonomical hierarchy. Each division in the hierarchy represents a group of organisms that are different enough from everything that has come before to warrant a separate classification. Each level within the hierarchy is indicated by suffixes (word endings). Many of the names are based on root words derived from the name of some prominent member of the group. For instance, the water lilies are in the genus Nymphea, family Nympheaceae, Order, Nympheales, etc. Each successive level uses the same root word, Nymphea, and the suffixes are added to show relative positioning. This is true of both conversational and all levels of Scientific Latin, from names of individual organisms to formal plant descriptions.

The use of endings to indicate a word’s position within a sentence is just as it was in conversational Latin, and as it remains in the Romance languages of today (French, Spanish, Romanian, Italian, Portuguese). Prefixes and suffixes are used to modify the root word, i.e., bi-flora (two flowered), flori-bunda (many flowered), poly-sperma (many seeded), etc. For this reason, a relatively small vocabulary can go a long way if that vocabulary includes the basic prefixes denoting number, size, shape, and color. Of course, mastery of the language requires an extensive vocabulary, but a working vocabulary is easy to attain if one merely stops and thinks about each name as it is learned. Most of the names make perfect sense, being descriptive in nature. It is always a thrill to suddenly realize the familial relationship between two apparently quite different species of plants, as might be the case with two members of the family Euphorbiaceae.

Suffixes are useful for more than that, though. Because all of the species that are being named are things, their names are nouns. There are several types of nouns, each of them expressed by some sort of accompanying words, or prepositions (of, by, with, for, etc.). I think of them as words that pre-position your mind to think of the noun in a certain way. In the sentence, “The fish swam by the rock.”, the fish is one kind of noun, the direct object of the sentence, or the thing doing the action, while the other noun, the rock, is the indirect object, or the thing that is being acted upon. These differences are called cases. There are 6 cases in classical Latin. They are called the Nominative (nom.), Vocative (voc.), Accusative (acc.), Genitive (gen.), Dative (dat.), and the Ablative (abl.). All but the vocative are used in Botanical Latin. An explanation of each will be found in the chart below.

There are endings that denote certain facts about an organism. The suffixes -ensis or -icus, for instance, means that the organism is from a place that is mentioned in the beginning of the word, ex. Scirpus californicus, Sagittaria montevidensis. Another example is -oides, which means, “in the form of”. This suffix is seen in the names of at least two popular aquatic plants, the Water Poppy (Hydrocleis nymphaeoides), and the genus Nymphoides, which includes several lovely species. You may have noted that there is a difference in the two words, Nymphoides and nymphaeoides. This is because Nymphoides is a genus, which puts its name into the nominative case, while nymphaeoides is in the genitive case. “In the form of” can also be expressed with the suffixes -formis, or -formes.

Unfortunately for those of us who try to keep up with this sort of thing, names can change. Through new discoveries and on-going research, previously unknown characteristics are being parsed out of the animals and plants under study, allowing them to be more and more intricately and, we hope, more accurately classified. In the world of Taxonomy there are what are called “Lumpers” and “Splitters”, those who want to relax the criteria for being considered unique, and those who want to split hairs and use increasingly smaller structures to determine ‘specieshood’, respectively. Of course, all of this leads to the confusion that inevitably develops among members of the various enthusiast groups. Mastery of all of the nuances of nomenclature will come with time. For now, we will focus on pronouncing the words properly.

In the final analysis, the way these words, or any words, are pronounced is governed by what sounds good to the majority of ears. While certain rules apply and should be followed as closely as possible, and purists might insist that we follow all rules to the letter, colloquial pronunciations, inflections, and other customs will determine, to a large extent, how any individual person might pronounce any given word. Even Roman citizens, across that vast empire, spoke Latin with regional accents. Also, strict adherence to the rules of pronunciation can lead to uncomfortable or impossible pronunciations. Words such as Equisetum, E-QUI-se-tum, would not be easily recognized if they were pronounced the way that the rules demand, while the common mispronunciation, E-qui-SE-tum, is far more familiar. Another prime example is the word algae. This word is so frequently mispronounced that the genuine pronunciation is virtually unrecognizable to the average American. In Latin, the letter g is always hard, as in go. Americans have for a long time pronounced it with a soft g, as in genuine. The mistake is compounded by the fact that the word most often used, algae, with the soft g, is used as a singular noun, when it is actually the plural form of the word alga, spoken with a hard g. Other examples of this sort of thing abound in hobbyist circles.

Referring to the chart below, one can see that the vowels are pronounced in much the same way as they are in Spanish. While it is impossible to do so entirely, one should avoid the Anglicized pronunciations of the vowels, unless of course, the plant was named after a person or a place, in which case the name is always pronounced as its owner pronounced it. One other sticking point for most people is the use of combinations such as ii and iae at the end of names honoring people. The suffixes present problems if the rules are to be strictly adhered to. If the rules are applied, the emphasis falls on the syllable before the suffix, xxx’-i-i, or xxx’-i-ae, which is not where it is expected to be, making the word difficult to pronounce. In most of these cases it is best to pronounce the honored person’s name, then to add a double long i sound, for example, wendtii would be pronounced wendt’-ee-ee, or willisii, wil’ lis-ee-ee. Most people use a single long i sound as used in English (see pronunciation guide below), ex. wil’ lis-eye. This is and will probably become increasingly acceptable.
There are only a few differences in the way we pronounce our consonants. For instance, we do not insist that all R’s be trilled. It is the rare American, indeed, that trills his R’s at all, especially when using Botanical Latin. And we pronounce ph as f instead of the way it is in so-called Reformed Academic Latin. This is not a lapse, but rather a carry-over from Greek. What is not allowed is the rearrangement of letter (Cynolebias being spoken Cynoblias) or the addition or omission of letters (Anacharius instead of Anacharis).

It should be noted that most people are actually more familiar with the vocabulary than they realize. The words in Botanical Latin are mostly derived from the same Greek and Latin roots as many of the words that we use in English. Words like Sagittaria should pose no challenge to the person who will stop and think for a moment that this is the same word as Sagittarius, the constellation. Similarly, colors (rubra, purpurea, alba) are easily recognizable, as are numbers (uni, mono, bi, tri, etc.), size (grandis, minima), and growth habit (reclinata, erecta), etc.
As mentioned above, by simply paying attention to the names of the plants and animals that you keep and by associating them with names that you encounter, you can learn a lot about what you have and feel confident about how you pronounce their names. Dissecting the word into its parts makes it easier to pronounce the entire word properly and to learn what it means.

What follows is a set of charts showing first, a set of general rules of pronunciation, followed by a chart showing the pronunciations of the various letters and letter combinations. This is followed by a list of the noun cases and what they mean. Finally, a chart showing some of the divisions of the taxonomical system, as well as some of the endings most often associated with each division. This last list is not comprehensive.

GENERAL RULES

1. In Botanical Latin all vowels are pronounced, so -oides is pronounced o-i-des, not oi-des, as in Oy vay!.
2. Emphasis is placed on the antepenultimate (third from the end) syllable when the penultimate (second from the end) syllable is short, i.e., flo’-ri-dus, la-ti -fo’-li-us, syl-va’-ti -cus.
   
• Definition: Antepenultimate. Third from last. The ultimate is the last syllable, the pen-ultimate is the second from the last (pen = almost, as in pen-insula, almost
  an island). The ante-pen-ultimate is the one before the second from the end (ante, as in Ante Meridian, A.M., before the meridian or noon).
3. Emphasis is placed on the penultimate (second from the end) syllable when it is long, i.e., for-mo’-sus, or when the last two vowels are separated by two consonants, i.s., cru-en’-tus.
4. In the case of an eponym, always pronounce the honored person’s name as they would have and add the Latin ending when that is done, i.e., Clivea, is pronounced with a long i, not a short one as many people do. His name was not Clivv, it was Clive.
5. Names ending in -ensis are there to honor a place. Always pronounce the name of the place as you would normally, then add the ending. Ex. ne-va-den’-sis, from Nevada; cal-i-for-ni-en’-sis, from California, mon-tev-i-den’-sis, from Montevideo.
6. When two vowels are found together, the first one is short. Ex. car’-ne-a, gi-gan’-te-a
   

PRONUNCIATION GUIDE
Indicating main differences between Latin and traditional English
Reformed Academic Latin Traditional English
Individual vowels:
a as a in hall as a in fate
a as a in apart as a in fat

e as e in they as e in me
e ae e in pet as e in pet

i as i in machine as i in ice
i as i in pit as i in pit
ii
iae

o as o in note as o in note
o as o on not as o in not

u as u in brute as u in brute
u as u putt as u in putt

y as u in French pur as y in cypher
y as u in French du as y in cynical

Combinations of vowels
ae as ai in aisle as ea in meat
au as aw in bawl as aw in bawl
ei as ei in rein as ei in height
oe as oi in toil as ee in bee
ui as oui (French), we as ui in ruin

Common Diphthongs
(combinations of two vowels, treated as one, long vowel)
ae as ee in feel
oe as ee in feel

Consonants

c always as c in cat before a, o, u as c in cat
before e, i, y as c in center
cc always as cc in succinct always as cc in succinct
ch of Greek words as k or ch as ch in chemical or as ch
or k-h, if possible in cheat
g always as g in go before a, o, u, as g in gap
before e, i, y as g in gypsy
ng as ng in finger as ng in finger
ph as p or, preferably, p-h as ph in telephone
r always trilled
v (consonant u) as we as v in van
b, d, f, h, l, m, n, p, s, t, qu, z always as in English

NOUN CASES

TAXONOMICAL DIVISIONS