RE: Bistahieversor sealeyi, NM tyrannosaurid

[Jaime Headden <qi_leong@hotmail.com>]

  While the idea has merit that we attach preferred pronounciations or sound 
files to papers for the sake of guides, Mikes Keesey and Taylor and Nick 
Pharris have all made points on this topic that are relevant.

  Specifically, that different people pronounce things differently. More 
specifically, Mike indicated that accent and background can lead to what is 
potentially "correct" pronounciation of a word that differs from another's 
"correct" pronounciation. Arguing that the form of the language as it was 
spoken that originates the word you speak is fine and dandy for languages in 
current use, but it is very difficult to determine what an older, or dead 
language, actually sounded like without hearing a speaker who was not himself a 
regional variant of the population.

  Because of this, one can easily argue that there is _NO_ correct 
pronounciation.

  I'd like to note that the sound bit or even prefered spelling of the authors 
may be incorrect due to flawed information, or the inability of one language to 
gague the qualities of the language they are attempting to approximate, 
especially in relation to languages that must be transcribed into romantic 
letters (for us English anyways -- to say nothing of the orthographic 
differences in spanish, italian, Hungarian, Polish, or the al-phabetic 
variations in Russian, or the entirely different representational systems in 
Japanese, Chinese, etc). In papers written in a foreign language, or soud files 
pronounced with accents, how are we who do not speak this language supposed to 
pronounce it?

  I would also like to share the feeling of disphoria Mike Taylor felt when I 
first heard someone else pronounce "calcaneum" at SVP 1999. Not at all what I 
expected. This is an issue of broadening one's understanding of the differences 
in prnouncability, not canalizing them, and this will be true as long as there 
is not one language, one pronounciation in a language, etc.

Cheers,

Jaime A. Headden

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