Journal of Applied Phycology 12: 597–603, 2000. © 2000 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands. 597 A guide to the pronunciation of the scientific names for harmful algae Anne Algieri, Robert Pattison & Sandra E. Shumway 1* Humanities Division and 1 Natural Science Division, Southampton College of Long Island University, 239 Montauk Highway, Southampton, New York 11968, USA ( * Author for correspondence; fax +1-631-287-8419; e-mail sshumway@southampton.liunet.edu) Received 25 April 2000; revised 25 May 2000; accepted 25 May 2000 Key words: harmful algae, pronunciation, terminology Abstract A historical review of scientific nomenclature and of the pronunciation of classical languages suggests that there is no objectively correct way to enunciate the technical terms applied to harmful algae. Any guide to pronunciation is always relative to some group of speakers; scientific nomenclature is an artificial construct without a population of normative speakers, living or dead, to whom the bewildered enunciator can have reference. Thus a key to the pronunciation of the Latin and Greek scientific terms in all disciplines, and a fortiori to the pronunciation of those terms applied to harmful algae, must be based on rules of common sense, mutual forbearance, and general intelligibility. This article includes a guide to pronouncing the names of harmful algae based on these principles. Introduction Dictionary systems of phonetic transcription must choose some arbitrary reference group from the actual population of language speakers as a point of depar- ture. This simple truth is the key to understanding the pronunciation of the scientific terms applied to harm- ful algae, as well as the pronunciation of all scientific nomenclature. This article has chosen what, from a linguist’s point of view, is a deplorable system of phonetic nota- tion, but one that is familiar to newspaper readers across America. The key in Table 1 is based on the United Press International broadcasting style as given in the third edition of the UPI Stylebook (1992), with some modifications to eliminate the handbook’s most egregious phonetic omissions and errors. Each sym- bol is accompanied by a key word representative of the sound symbolized. However, not every speaker will pronounce every key word alike. The words mis- sile disaster will be represented by one transcription for educated speakers of American English (MIHS- uhl dih-ZAS-tuhr) and by a somewhat dissimilar one (MIHS-eyel dih-ZAH-stuh) for British speakers of what is formally called the Received Standard and informally known as BBC English. The UPI is an American news syndicate and, in making up its pronunciation key, it assumes that its broadcasters and the readers of its style book will be speaking the dialect of American English shared by the educated middle-class from Boston to Los Angeles. In other words, the point of reference for the UPI phonetic symbols used here is what might be called PBS English, the sort heard on Public Broad- casting’s National Public Radio shows. A Glaswegian dockworker unfamiliar with this American dialect and confronted with the task of broadcasting using the same system employed by the UPI would continue to sound like a Glaswegian dockworker, because his pronunciation of the key words would differ from that employed by speakers of PBS English. Any good dic- tionary is well aware of this. The greatest of them, the Oxford English Dictionary (1989), clearly states at the head of its key to pronunciation that its phonetics are relative to ‘the educated speech of southern England (the so-called “Received Standard”)’. The pronunci- ation of any language varies in relation to the social and linguistic conditions of its speakers.