Re: Language for taxonomic names, redux

On 22 February 2017 at 19:07, Michael Everson <[email protected]> wrote:
> On 22 Feb 2017, at 17:32, Andy Mabbett <[email protected]> wrote:

>> Taxonomic names /should/ be styled using italics. But an individual publisher (or an individual reader, using a local CSS) might choose to have them in, say red text on a yellow background.
>
> That sounds a little bit far-fetched. But see Peter Constable’s reply.

Far from it; see my reply to Peter.

>> My examples were intended to be illustrate, not quantitative.
>
> No, but if the problem to be avoided is automatic translation, something somewhat more quantitative would be more indicative that there is a problem. I see your 350 names with “minor” in them, fair enough, but that’s very far away from 1.4 million.

Where did "1.4 miliion" come from? I repeat:: I was addresisng a claim
that "so very few of these names would be found in an ordinary
dictionary".

>>> I doubt that English, French, German, or Japanese users pronounce “Eurema desjardinsii” in the same way.
>>
>> Perhaps not; but they arguably should.
>
> Um, no way. According to what standard?

http://capewest.ca/pron.html

>> I (a monolingual Englishman) have been able to indicate birds and plants to a monolingual German, and vice versa, using taxonomic names.
>
> Splendid, but this does not answer the question. There are surely different
> pronunciations common for these, differing from country to country and language
> to language. What prefix or prefixes would you intend this subtag to be used with?

I refer you to my earlier question to you - not yet answered - which
was: "Which language are taxonomic names "divisions or variations
within"? As I noted all those years ago, they're not Latin, and not
English."


-- 
Andy Mabbett
@pigsonthewing
http://pigsonthewing.org.uk
_______________________________________________
Ietf-languages mailing list
[email protected]
http://www.alvestrand.no/mailman/listinfo/ietf-languages