Re: Language for taxonomic names, redux

On Wed, Mar 1, 2017 at 9:30 AM, Luc Pardon <[email protected]> wrote:

For example, there is more than one pronunciation for English, but we
> tag them all with "en". That is because we're tagging texts, i.e. the
> written form of the language. Where the writing differs (and matters),
> the tag can be made more specific (en-US vs. en-UK, or en-UK-oxendict),
> until it is precise enough for a spell checker to do its job - i.e.
> checking the written form.
>

We also do tag spoken-word artifacts like movies, and there are suitable
subtags for that.

If, on the other hand, it should turn out that these words are
>
pronounced in the same way by taxonomists all over the world


That is certainly not the case.


> For example, in "Camellia sinensis", the sound of the first -i- in
> "sinensis" may vary, but I'd expect the stress to be on the -e-  in any
> language.
>

Well, in languages that have phonemic stress.  In French I'd expect the
words to be pronounced as in French, with only utterance-final stress.


> In other words: the tagger can make do with a world-wide "la-taxon" tag
> to "push" the TTS engine in the right direction, and the user of the TTS
> can "pull" it towards him. This is the same as with regional accents,
> where the text writer (or tagger) and the listener also have to
> "cooperate" in telling the TTS what to do.
>

Thank you for explaining clearly what I have been striving to express.



> Secondly, you also suggest that "la-taxon" may be too vague:
>
> > if other taxonomies need to be supported
>
> That, I'd say, has more to do with the _meaning_ of the taxonomic name
> than with accessibility.
>

As far as I know, only the Linnaean system is Latin-based.  Other
taxonomies either use a single vernacular language or multiple equally
authentic languages.  The intent here is to tag Linnaean names, not just
any taxonomical names.

There would be a need to be more precise - although not for _web_
> accessibility purposes - if a single name would have different meanings
> in different taxonomies,


The same name may be and is applied to different taxa for animals and
plants, as a consequence of having different registration authorities.
However, this is generally not a problem and disambiguation is left to
context: when a botanist speaks of Proboscidea, devil's-claws are meant,
not elephants.

-- 
No saves, Antonio, loke es morirse en su lingua. Es komo kedarse soliko en
el
silensyo kada dya ke Dyo da, komoser sikileoso sin saver porke.
                        --Marcel Cohen, 1985

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