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Re: Use of abbr for the scientific equivalent of a vernacularname

for

From: Jukka K. Korpela
Date: Apr 30, 2008 4:30PM

Andy Mabbett wrote:

> In message <01e001c8aae3$48901780$0500000a@DOCENDO>, Jukka K. Korpela
> < <EMAIL REMOVED> > writes
>
>> (the Latin name for the house sparrow is just "passer", not /Passer
>> domesticus/, the proper spelling and presentation of the binomial
>> scientific name)
>
> It's not often I get to tell you you're talking complete rubbish; but
> this is one such occasion.

It isn't. You're making the common mistake of confusing scientific names
with Latin names. Oddly enough, you seem to recognize the difference but
fail to draw the conclusions.

> And this is another, since /Scientific names/ (*not* Latin names) are
> not true Latin at all (per alvestrand URL, below).

Alvestrand URLs are irrelevant. The point is that to the extent that
scientific names are in a human language at all, and I claim they are,
they consist of Latin words. About half of them are Latin, almost half
of them are Latinized Greek (and what _do_ you mark them up as if not
Latin - English?), and the rest is Latinized something-else.

> The lack of such is one of the things that lead me to propose the
> "species" microformat:

That's irrelevant to accessibility. The point is that you inevitably
declare "Passer domesticus" as Latin, English, something else, or you
don't declare it as being in any human language. Only of these choices
is correct.

Jukka K. Korpela ("Yucca")
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/