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Pronouncing fish names

farm41

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5 Year Member
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monroe, or
I'm really trying to learn the scientific names, and I know we have to have them to keep things sorted out. I just want to know how to pronounce them properly. I am sure there are a few others out there just as baffled as I am about sounding these names out. I would like to get a thread going here to help some of us to sound these out.

How about it?

For starters I'd like to know how to pronounce:

Bitaeniata

Viejita

Laetacara

So who's good at phonetics?
 

Z Man

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5 Year Member
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247
Location
Western New York
Well, I'll try but there are a lot of different ways I've heard them all. This is how I pronounce them.

Bitaeniata = by- TAIN- e- atta

Viejita = Vie- HE- ta

Laetacara = late- ACARA

Hope you can make them out.
 

Cichlids1

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Central Ohio
Farm, check out the ACA site (www.cichlid.org). There is a link there with *.wav files of a person actually saying some of the names. Most of them are genus names, not species, but it will give you an idea how it goes...

I read an artical in CAFE (My local fish club bulletin) once about pronounciation and the sort. He started the artical with the line: "My wife yelled up from the basement; Dear, it looks like the Latinus unpronounciatus have spawned again" :lol:
 

mordor

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San Jose, CA
Z Man with all respect you 'English-iced' Latin prenounciation. It's acceptable in USA but nobody would understand it if you go to abroad :D Since we are using other language for scientific names I think we should use prenounciation from this language, in this case Latin.

For example bitaeniata would be prenouced - BE-TAH-EH-NIA-TAH (AH = sound of 'a' in calm, balm, EH = sound of 'e' in words met, pet)
But in case of Viejita I am confused. It's Spanish name, so most people use this prenounciation but should not we use Latin???? Technically there is no j in Latin. If it occures it's prenounced like Spanish y. In result it would be VIE-YEE-TAH which sound strange. Laetacara seems to be simple - LAH-EHTAH-CARA
 

mordor

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I am not very good with phonetic transcription I got better description for bitaeniata = BE-TAH-ENYA-TAH :lol:
 

mummymonkey

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5 Year Member
Messages
185
Location
Blairgowrie (UK)
Just bumping this old thread.
Anybody help me out with some, I've included my best guess.

borellii - Bor-ELL-ee-eye
cacatuoides - ka-ka-too-OI-deez
hongsloi - HONGS-low-eye
nijsseni - nEYE-zen-eye

I've chosen these because they are reasonably commonly available
 

cootwarm

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Burlington, Vermont
I took a year of latin in high school. If I remember correctly, in general, latin is pronounced the same as english. Unfortunately, even with that in mind I'm still not very good at it! :?

Michael
 

Mike Wise

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Allow me to throw some confusion into the question. According to the ICZN binomial names based on foreign names or words (other than Latin & Greek) should be pronounced as a native would. The next problem is how Americans pronounce vowels is different from how they are pronounced in most other places in the world. It seems that when the US gained its independence from Great Britain it decided to change its language to the local pronuncations (American dialect) and Noah Webster helped seal the differences in his first American dictionary. Next Latin pronunciation has changed over the millenia. What is spoken today in the Vatican is not the same as was spoken in ancient Rome. Some examples: all 'g' sounds were hard in Rome, as were all 'c' sounds. Greek is pronounced different from Latin so you have to know your word's origin. This said I feel that as long as we can understand the name, then it works.

For the record I believe that A. nijsseni should be pronounce NĪ'-szĕn-ē', although I don't usually say it that way. :(
 

Rolo

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Location
Bremen, Germany
Hi,

this is a pretty funny and interesting thread. Never thought, that there are so many diffenrences ;)
...so, I could tell you, how it is pronounced without "english-izing" in german.

I try to write it in a form, that you can read it in english pronounciation... hope, it works *g*:

bitaeniata = BEE-TAIN-IATAH
Laetacara = LAY-TA-CARAH
And viejita is a bit special, as mordor said, because it comes from a spanish word. So normally, people also in german say VEE-YEE-TAH, but if you pronounce it spanish, you should say "VEE-.... *thinking* ...I don't know, how to write it, you don't have such a sound in your language :confused: How do you pronounce "pulchra"? it's a similar sound as the "chr" in there.

nijsseni = as Mike wrote NĪ'-szĕn-ē', and in our special phonetic-language I would say NAI-SZE-NI

So, how do you pronounce eremnopyge, gephyra or Abacaxis? *ggg*

Many greetings,
Rolo
 

Mike Wise

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So, how do you pronounce eremnopyge, gephyra or Abacaxis?

Here is my best guess:

ermenopyge - eh'-rehm-no'-pee-geh(with hard g)
gephyra - geh'(with hard g)-fee-rah
abacaxis ('pineapple' in Portuguese) - ah'-bah-cah'-shees

I could be wrong, however.
 

Psilocybin

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5 Year Member
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25
Location
Corvallis, Or
"viejita = vee-a-hee-ta"

I'm certain this is how you pronounce viejita in spanish. I know because when I bought my viejitas I thought it was pronounced like ve-gee-ta (like Vegeta the bada$$ from the cartoon Dragon Ball Z), and then I found out from spanish speaking friends you have to emphasize the "ie" in "vie" as "ee-a".... oh and the j comes out as an h in spanish (and js sound like ys in German).

Some of these fish names are ridiculously hard to even try and attempt to pronounce properly.
 

boyohboy

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5 Year Member
Messages
47
Location
Ontario Canada
I just pronounce all these funny names like a Japanese reading englsih.... take each 1 or each 2 alphabet(s) (occasionally 3) and make that a sound lol..... eg bitaeniata = bi-ta-e-ni-a-ta .... yeah it's not correct but it's easy .. and if you read it fast enough most ppl won't notice anyway heh :)
 

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