Pronunciations of dinosaur/prehistoric animal names

[andrewsaurus rex]

well after this plethora of pronunciations, i'm sticking with De-PLOD-uh-cus.   And i'm glad i never bothered to study latin or greek.  Really glad.

[Nehalennia]

Dee-ploh-DOH-cuss

[Libraraptor]

Not Trabemduplex. Trabem is accusative case of a feminine noun, duplex cannot be in agreement with it. The nominative is trabs.

I always thought Di-PLOD-ocus is correct, academic Latin, but Diplo-DOH-cus is tweedy, academic English. And I prefer the latter.

It´s not Latin, its ancient Greek. "Double beam" translated into Latin would mean "Trabemduplex". Imagine a dinosaur with a name like that. 

Would it be "Trabsdupliciter" then? "Duplicitrabs"?

Reminds me of the scene in "Life Of Brian", by the way

Would it be "Trabsdupliciter" then? "Duplicitrabs"?

Reminds me of the scene in "Life Of Brian", by the way

[ceratopsian]

Latin does not favour compound words in the way Greek did. They occur only in archaic or archaising poetry really.  So it's much more artificial to construct one. I'll have a think about possibilities !!  Off now to Latin reading club.

   

Not Trabemduplex. Trabem is accusative case of a feminine noun, duplex cannot be in agreement with it. The nominative is trabs.

I always thought Di-PLOD-ocus is correct, academic Latin, but Diplo-DOH-cus is tweedy, academic English. And I prefer the latter.

It´s not Latin, its ancient Greek. "Double beam" translated into Latin would mean "Trabemduplex". Imagine a dinosaur with a name like that. 

Would it be "Trabsdupliciter" then? "Duplicitrabs"?

Reminds me of the scene in "Life Of Brian", by the way

Would it be "Trabsdupliciter" then? "Duplicitrabs"?

Reminds me of the scene in "Life Of Brian", by the way

[Newt]

Pretty sure Diplodocus is pronounced "double deuces".

Velociraptor in classical Latin pronunciation would be something like "well oak ee rop tore", and nobody is going to say that. 

Latin has no soft C and Greek has no C at all, so it's "TriKeratops" and "Keratosaurus" and "Koelophysis". Try those out the next time you're chatting with your fellow dino enthusiasts.

I used to be precious about pronunciation, but I'm increasingly of the mindset that if other people understand what you're talking about, you're good. In the English-speaking world at least, the "correct" pronunciations that are standard among academics are a mishmash of Classical and Neo-Latin, English, and Spanish pronunciation that makes no real sense, so don't look for consistency where it doesn't exist.

 

[Spinokaprogorgon]

for the longest time I thought suchus (as in saurcosuchus, deinosuchus, etc. ) was pronounced Sue-chess and not soo-kess

Also here in Iran, we call it dee-plo-doe-koos

[Spinokaprogorgon]

Speaking of pronunciations, what's the deal with parasauralophus? Is it PERA-sauro-lofus or pera-saur-UH-lofus?

[andrewsaurus rex]

i pronounce it PARA-saur-all-uh-fuss

i still pronounce suchus as sue-chess.  oops.  I shall correct that.

i have problems with any word that has 'ceph' in it, like cephalopod.  I still pronounce it seff-a-lo-pod instead of keff-a-lo-pod.  Soft 'c' instead of hard 'c'.   

i'm functionally illiterate.

[Halichoeres]

You might find this old thread on name pronunciation entertaining!
 https://dinotoyblog.com/forum/index.php?topic=3376.msg96581#msg96581

[Libraraptor]

I think it is okay, then, to merge these topics. I understand that one mostly doesn´t want to scroll the archives to find the thread their issue fits well, yet I find it fascinating to "revive" old threads when it seems to be a good match

[Protopatch]

Thank you for reviving this instructive thread.
I guess there are tons of threads like this one that are currently sleeping in the abyss of the forum.

Anyway, I have to confess that it's sometimes difficult for me to find the correct pronunciation of a dinosaur's name in English, especially for the ones including an "I" or "Y".
A basic example would be "Tyrannosaurus" : in French you say "TI-ra no zo rUs" whereas I've already heard the "TIE" and the "TI" versions in English, and the suffix "-saurus" is pronounced differently.

Generally the rule is, however Americans pronounce it is correct. 

Therefore, in case of doubt, I immediately check the phonetic transcription in Japanese katakana which is always based on the US most common way of pronouncing lol
So Tyrannosaurus will give "ティラノサウルス" = "TI-ra no saou rou sou"

[GojiraGuy1954]

I say Dih-ploh*-doe-kus

*like "blow"

[Papi-Anon]

Alright, someone give it to me straight, have I been pronouncing Deinonychus incorrectly? I always pronounced it as "dī-no-NĪ-cuss".

[SBell]

i pronounce it PARA-saur-all-uh-fuss

i still pronounce suchus as sue-chess.  oops.  I shall correct that.

i have problems with any word that has 'ceph' in it, like cephalopod.  I still pronounce it seff-a-lo-pod instead of keff-a-lo-pod.  Soft 'c' instead of hard 'c'. 

i'm functionally illiterate.

If you really want to be pedantic, we all say Triceratops (try-SAYR-atops) wrong because 'cerato' comes from the Greek 'keratos'(κέρατο) so we should say try-KARAT-ops.

But by now it sounds way too wrong. And would mess up The Land Before Time

[bmathison1972]

Try carrot tops? 

Yes in Latin, the letter 'c' is always a hard 'k'

[SBell]

Try carrot tops? 

Yes in Latin, the letter 'c' is always a hard 'k'

Right? It's funny to think about how many names are said 'wrong' because of that.

There's a lot of Carrot Top dinos! It's like a comedy club of nightmares!

[andrewsaurus rex]

i guess it's not that big of a deal or unusual when you think about it, as english speaking people anglicize foreign words and names all the time eg porsh instead of porsha (for porsche).  So dino names are just another example of that.

[Crackington]

I vaguely remember people pronouncing "porsche" as "porsh-a" when I was a child, but that seemed to go by 1980s and the emergence of the yuppies. It could be we were pronouncing it more correctly due to North East England's linguistic links with Scandinavia/Denmark?

Back to pre-history, I always think Mary Poopins was a gloriously missed opportunity for the "Dip-low-doh-cuss" pronunciation. It would have fitted right in with "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious"!

[andrewsaurus rex]

Porsh-a became 'trendy' during the 80's as yuppies tried to show how sophisticated they were by pronouncing it correctly.  But it was totally obnoxious, for some reason.  Maybe i just found it obnoxious because my ex brother in law used to do it all the time, and he was one of the most obnoxious people i ever met....lol.

Back to dino name pronunciations, if a person is going to stick with the pronunciation in the native language of the words that make up the dino name, they are going to have their work cut out for them, since not all dino names are greek or latin words.  Like Ugrunaaluk for example, which is a word from the Inupiaq language spoken in Alaska.  And if they manage that then they have to hurdle the species name kuukpikensis. 

So might as well just stick to anglicizing all dino names (if you speak english) and be happy.  Although i guess saying the names properly does have benefits across language barriers.

[DinoToyForum]

Pleh-see-oh-saw or Plee-zee-oh-saw. Even plesiosaur researchers pronounce it differently.