FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

I don't know if I'm pronouncing the names of different plants correctly. One genus that I don't know how to pronounce is Sarracenia. Do you guys know how to pronounce the names, or do you just guess?

How about these species:
collinsiae
aliciae
burmannii
tokaiensis
(there's probably more I can't pronounce properly)

I don't pronounce them, they're in Latin, I speak 'Merican. I just spell them, they're fine with it.

Who makes up these names?

ChefDean wrote:I don't pronounce them, they're in Latin, I speak 'Merican. I just spell them, they're fine with it.

Do you also write it down when you're talking to people?

Panman wrote: ↑Tue Dec 07, 2021 7:37 pm sarah sin ee ah

Huh... and all this time I've been pronouncing "Saa rah sen ee ah"

MaxVft wrote: ↑Tue Dec 07, 2021 10:14 pm Huh... and all this time I've been pronouncing "Saa rah sen ee ah"

Same here.

TrapsAndDews wrote:How about these species:
collinsiae
aliciae
burmannii
tokaiensis
(there's probably more I can't pronounce properly)

Double I's at the end of something make the hard E and I sounds. So, Bur Man E I. Its the same for Ridleyi, even though its a Y and I... You still say E I. I think?

Bur Man E I? Bur Manny I?

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Botanical Latin isn't quite the same as regular Latin, so there aren't really many hard pronunciation rules. It's generally fine to pronounce it how you think it would read as an English word. There are plenty of exceptions though - such as plants named after people (ends in -ii, -iana, -ae) or places (ends in -ensis) or named after another taxon it resembles (ends in -oides), which you should generally pronounce the same way as the original name. The -ii suffix particularly should be pronounced as ee-eye.

Also of note, if you look up a Wikipedia article for a particular plant, there will often be a pronunciation guide at the very beginning of the article. You can even use a website like this to have it roughly read aloud for you: https://itinerarium.github.io/phoneme-synthesis/

The way I would pronounce all the mentioned names so far:
Sarracenia - Sara (like the name) sin-ee-ah
collinsiae - Collins (like the name) ee-ay
aliciae - Alice (like the name) ee-ay
burmannii - Burr-man (long n) ee-eye
tokaiensis - Toe-kai-en-sis (like sister)

I felt like an idiot watching a video live meeting for my local carnivorous plant society. In my head- because I had never actually had to say it out loud to anyone- I would pronounce drosera as DRO SER AH. Listening to them talk it's actually DRAH SUR AH. if my phonetics make sense. It was slightly embarassing but I'm glad I didnt make too big of a fool out of myself

Lots of people say Drosera like, DRAW SER A . Whenever I watch different youtube videos, everyone pronounces thing differently.

The DRO and DRAH pronunciations are both quite common. I wouldn't really worry about which one you use though I think more experienced growers tend towards DRAH.