Wall. — I'loiiuiicittI ion of Scicnfific 7'r/'///.s- /// y ( ir Zidland. 409 



Art. XXXV. — The Pronimciati<))i of Scientific Terms in Netr Zealand, 

 with Special Reference to the Terms of Botanif. 



By Professor A. Wall. 



[Read before the New Zealand Institute, at Christcliurch, 4t/i-StJi February, 1919: 

 received by Editor, 11th Nareh. 1919 ; issued sejMtratcly, 19th August, 1919.] 



The fact that the pronunciation of scientific terms in general and of 

 botanical terms in particular is very variable, not to say chaotic, in New 

 Zealand needs, unfortunately, no demonstration. An attempt is here made 

 to show how this state of affaii's might possibly be remedied. The cjuestion 

 of the pronunciation of Greek and Latin among modern nations is not here 

 dealt with. Although it would not be easy to draw up in detail a scheme 

 for a '' modern " pronunciation which should be satisfactory to all, yet it 

 would not he impossible, and the mode already adopted in the schools of 

 New Zealand comes near enough to the ideal for the purposes of this paper. 

 It would be beyond its scope to deal with the pronunciation of Latin and 

 Greek as it varies in England, Scotland, France, Italy, and Germanv, oi 

 to go back over the sixteenth-century controversies of Erasmus, Eeuchlin, 

 and Sir Thomas Smith. It is assumed throughout that a '' modern " mode 

 can be found— approximately such as used in the schools of New Zealand — 

 and that such a system stands opposed to the [)urely " insular " or " English " 

 system, in which all the foreign words are sounded simply as if thev were 

 English, as is recommended in Field's Feriif; of New Zealand. The details 

 of any such modern mode would be settled, if the proposals here outlined 

 came to anything, by the special committee set up for the purpose. The 

 |)honetic system here used is that of the Oxford Dictionary, but it has 

 been found necessary to modify it a little. The sound of s in measare (z) 

 is represented here by zh. The symbol sh is retained. The symbol o may 

 represent either open or close o. Thus in Australia our rendering gives 

 o as the first sound, and this is an open o. The stress or accent is indicated 

 here by an acute accent following the stressv^d syllable. 



The writer hopes to be pardoned for the rather hopeless tone of some of 

 his conclusions. The fact is that the question is the most complicated and 

 difficult with which he has ever been faced, involving as it does the historv 

 of the ])ronunciation of Greek and Latin among the different nations of 

 Europe during the last thousand and especially during the last four hun- 

 dred years (since the Reformation) ; the variant " modern " or " reformed " 

 systems, and the degree of success which has attended the attempt to intro 

 duce them, or any of them, into the schools of England ; the purelv 

 scientific question of phonetics ; the more practical question of phonetic 

 script ; the psychological question of inherited or acquired speech-instincts, 

 and especially the instincts which govern accentuation or stressing of 

 syllables and baffle all scientific inquiry ; the partly practical consideration 

 of the exchange of ideas and knowledge between students of New Zealand 

 themselves, and between those students and teachers and those of other 

 countries — e.g., of England, Germany, Japan ; the political question — New 

 Zealand's position within the British Empire, and her state of intellectual 

 tutelage ; the purely practical question of the vocabulary of the farmer 

 and the gardener, &c., wdaich largely coincides with that of the university 

 and technical instructor ; and, lastly, tlie purely philological or linguistic 



