[pbs] Botanical Latin
Jane McGary
janemcgary at earthlink.net
Thu Dec 11 19:03:20 EST 2008
Jim SHields noted,
At 06:42 AM 12/11/2008, you wrote:
>I always enjoy these discussion of Botanical Latin. Has anyone noticed
>that some botanists transliterate the (English) "V" sound from Russian as
>"w" in names? Other times as "v" of course.
The spelling of botanical names derived from Russian depends on
whether the names were transmitted via German speakers. Some of the
most active botanists attached to early Russian exploration were in
fact German in origin, and applied their own often unwieldy phonemic
spelling to Russian names.
Jane McGary
(B.A., Classics; M.A. Comparative Lit.)
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