Sinornithosaurus and Latin accent rules

[bh480@scn.org]

To: dinosaur@usc.edu
From: Ben Creisler bh480@scn.org
Subject: Sinornithosaurus and Latin accent rules

Jaime A. Headden wrote: > Heh, just a bit of speculation, 
but with a very serious question behind it. Oh, to all 
interested in my site, I will be revising those feathered 
and colored page headers for the ovi taxa, given the more  
cassowary-type dinofuzz apparent on *Sinornithosaurus*  
(SIGN-or-nith-AH-sahr-us?). 
Is this pronunciation correct? I'm unaware of any dinosaur 
genus which ends in "-saurus" (from the Greek "sauros," 
lizard) wherein the suffix is pronounced as you propose. 
It seems to me that there is always an accent on 
the "saur" syllable, otherwise _Stegosaurus_ (STEG-uh-SORE-
us) would sound like _Stegoceros_ (ste-GOS-uh-rus), which 
would be very confusing. My guess for _Sinornithosaurus 
millenii_ would be (sye-NOR-ni-thuh-SORE-us mih-LEN-ee-
ie). Corrections graciously accepted. -- Ralph W. Miller 
III gbabcock@best.com 

LATIN ACCENT RULES
In principle all generic names are Latin words and should 
be pronounced according to Latin rules. In actual 
practice, this ideal approach is hard to follow, and 
modern English speakers generally apply the sounds used in 
English for Latin letters. The accent, though, is 
supposedly based on the old Latin rules--if the next-to-
last syllable (penult) is "long," it takes the main 
accent; if the next-to-last syllable is "short," the 
accent shifts one syllable forward to the before-next-to-
last syllable (antepenult), thus the contrast between 
Greek-via-Latin hyena (hie-EE-nuh) and hippopotamus (hip-
ut-POT-a-muhs) in English, ditto such modern creations as 
speedometer (spe-DOM-e-tuhr), accented on the antepenult 
as if it came from Latin. 
OK, you ask. how do you tell if a syllable is "long" 
or "short"? This is the tricky point--you have to know 
whether the vowel was long or short in Latin. Greek words 
borrowed into Latin and Greek words latinized for New 
Latin names keep the vowel length from Greek but not the 
Greek accent (which is different from the Latin accent).  
I could go into much gory detail about all the finer 
points, but suffice it to say that all diphthongs (two 
vowels pronounced together) make a syllable long. In Greek 
and Latin "au" was a diphthong (pronounced "ow" as in cow)-
-pronounced according to the Traditional English method, 
though, "au" comes out "aw," which is NOT a diphthong in 
English phonemics. Since "saurus" in Latin had a long next-
to-last syllable, this is the syllable that should take 
the main accent in the name Sinornithosaurus. 

A couple of complications need to be pointed out--the 
Greek diphthongs ei and ou were changed to the long 
vowels "i" and "u" in Latin, thus Greek oukhos "crocodile" 
is latinized as suchus and takes the main accent in a name 
such as Saurosuchus, and deinos can become "dino-" with a 
long "i" in English (actually pronounced as a diphthong in 
English!) in Dinosauria. 

There are MANY more complications about determining when a 
Latin syllable is long or short. More importantly, modern 
English speakers follow a number of conventions in 
pronouncing Latin and Greek word roots and endings used in 
New Latin generic names. If anybody is interested, I could 
work up a posting explaining some of these. 

The second tricky point is where the secondary accents 
goes in Sinornithosaurus. In principle, the secondary 
accent should be determined by reapplying the Latin rules 
to the next group of syllables working forward from the 
main accent. In Greek ornis, ornithos had a long "i," 
though the English convention is to pronounce the "i" 
short in ornithology, Ichthyornis, etc. Thus, according to 
Latin the next accent should go on "ornith" in 
Sinornithosaurus, even though the "i" is pronounced short 
in English. Yet another accent can be determined by moving 
forward again so that the theoretical accent pattern would 
be SIEN-or-NITH-o-SAWR-uhs.  Since English tends to prefer 
the stress on the initial syllable, a more conventional 
pronunciation would be SIEN-or-nith-o-SAWR-uhs. If  I've 
lost anybody, please let me know.