Pronouncing 'pachanoi'

[Halcyon Daze]

My Botany professor once told me that pronunciation of plant names is rather subjective but I'd love to hear people's thoughts on the pronunciation of everyone's favourite tongue-twister 'pachanoi'.

 

It seems there are 2 main schools of thought, Pack-annoy  and Patch-annoy, but after looking a bit deeper into it I'm wondering if there's a third, more appropriate pronunciation that may be worth considering, and I'll offer some points for and against.

To begin with, it's fairly common knowledge that the Latin binomial stems from the surname of a prominent Ecuadorian botanist Prof. Abelardo Pachano who assisted Britton and Rose in their famous Andean cacti expedition. 

https://troutsnotes.com/pachano/

  

So I guess from there it's important to consider how the surname 'Pachano' is pronounced to begin with, or more specifically how HE may have pronounced his own surname.

 

I could be wrong here but from my 'research'    it would seem that in South American Hispanic the surname is most often pronounced  more like either:

 

 'Puh-CHAN-no'  or  'Pa-SHANNO'  which would turn out a bit like pa'CHAN-noy  when latinised. (not Patcha-noy/pat'char-noy)

 

https://www.howtopronounce.com/spanish/pachano

https://www.pronouncekiwi.com/Anibal Pachano -look for the Spanish versions near the bottom of the page.

 

 

 

Here's some examples of spanish pronunciation I came across online. The Spanish examples are a bit of a surprise, but somehow sound kinda 'right' at the same time, well at least to my ears.

https://www.pronouncekiwi.com/Echinopsis pachanoi

https://www.howtopronounce.com/spanish/pachanoi

 

Anyway, love to hear other people's takes on this, is it all just subjective to our own personal preferences or have we been saying pa'CHAN-noy wrong all this time? 

 

 

Seems like there are plenty of options for the pronunciation of the word pachanoi anyway...

https://davesgarden.com/guides/botanary/search.php?search_text=pachanoi

 

https://www.shaman-australis.com/forum/index.php?/topic/36947-how-do-you-pronounce-this-plant-name-properly/&

 

Edited May 25, 2022 by Halcyon Daze

[fyzygy]

Pa-SHA-no is what I have read, for the surname pronunciation. 

[Halcyon Daze]

Yeah, say it with a Spanish accent and it all makes sense.

[Lucifuge]

I've always pronounced it Pack-annoy.

[QuantumReality]

I used to say 'patch-annoy' and then someone told me "no, its actually pronounced 'pack-annoy'.

Then years later an older Chilean cactiphile said to me "no, its pronounced 'pack-a-know-y".

So that's how I now pronounce it.

[fyzygy]

Botanical Latin is essentially a written language, but the scientific names of plants often occur in speech. How they are pronounced really matters little provided they sound pleasant and are understood by all concerned. This is most likely to be attained by pronouncing them in accordance with the rules of classical Latin pronunciation. There are, however, several systems, since people tend to pronounce Latin words by analogy with words of their own language. ...

 

In English-speaking countries there exist two main systems, the traditional English pronunciation generally used by gardeners and botanists and the 'reformed' or 'restored' academic pronunciation adapted by classical scholars as presenting 'a reasonably close approximation to the actual songs of the language as spoken by educated Romans.' ...

 

The ending -ii or iae of most epithets commemorating persons ... creates difficulty if the rules of Latin accentuation are applied strictly, since the accent will then fall on the syllable before the -ii or iae, which is not its usual place in most personal names. 

 

-- W. Stearn, Botanical Latin. 

 

pash-a-NO-eye, then? 

 

 

[withdrawl clinic]

i had only 2 years of latin in school and forgot most.

 

latin and english clash a lot, and german does'nt. the way you pronounce in german works for latin. 

i can get quite upset with the latin used by most of the gardening australia people, because it's very wrong.

 

oo gets spelled oh in latin, and most english speakers don't know that oo pronouced u is a english thing only.

the problem with pachanoi is the ch which should be pronounced something like huch, like in german.

 

i use and try to learn 2 ways of latin names one for the english speakers and one for latin speakers, but i get upset, if people claim the english is the right way.

another thing is, that there is even a norm how to writte latin terms,  but i can't show you because i don't know how to change the font.

 

Homo neanderthalensis, second term allways small letter.

https://www.britannica.com/science/taxonomy/The-Linnaean-system

 

[fyzygy]

These rules [of pronunciation] cannot satisfactorily be applied to all generic names and specific epithets commemorating persons. About 80 per cent of generic names and 30 per cent of specific epithets come from languages other than Latin and Greek. A simple and consistent method of pronouncing them does not exist, because different peoples use the same letters for different sounds and different letters for the same sounds. ... The ideal method with most names commemorating persons is to pronounce them as nearly as possible like the original name but with a Latin ending. 

 

--W. Stearn, Botanical Latin

 

[fyzygy]

19 minutes ago, withdrawl clinic said:

the way you pronounce in german works for latin. 

 

[Halcyon Daze]

So the consensus is there IS no consensus. LOL

Tomato, tomato I guess...

 

I feel like I'm learning a lot here though. And it seems like there's always exceptions to the rules too.  The Hispanic surname Pachano may just be one of those words that doesn't fit neatly into convention.

 

Personally  Im starting to like somewhere between pash-a-no-eye and pa-chan-o-ee

 

 

[Strontium Dawg]

I've always been on the pack-annoy side. But at the end of the day, that's a relatively recent imposition of nomenclature. We should probably stop labelling our plants with species at all. Genus Trichocereus "name/clone/locality" is enough, but opinions are like arseholes, everyone has one...

[withdrawl clinic]

no, no we are getting nowhere with this.

your conclusion, try your best with your own native ling as quide is totaly wrong.

the pc i am using doesent have a speaker, so i cant go this avenue, but i try a different approach.

 

LOOK ther is a big difference in how scots and welsh, pronounce the ch featured in pachanoi, compared to the rest of english speakers.

that goes back to the galic language....

pachanoi gets pronouced in latin like a scott pronouces the ch, in loch ness.

my family name has a ch in the middle, and ozzy and english, turn it into a ck, but scotts and many asians pronouce my name correctly, like a galic english speaker.

that is an observation i made when called, from a waiting room, those people having never heard my name before.

english speakers don't have this ch sound in there lingo, so fair enough if you pronounce it packanoi.

BUT TO CLAIM IT'S THE CORRECT PRONOUNCIATION, IS WRONG!!

THIS IS A VERY TOUCHY SUBJECT FOR ME, AS I SPEAK english with an accent, and uneducated people at times correct me, but on the same tokken, they don't speak any foreign language, and all the german you hear at the big bang theory or at dokus are totaly inaudible. but used as a means to create the illusion, they can speak german and how good they are. pisses me off totaly. ther are exceptions though, like stephan fry, whos german words are pretty well spoken.

 

if i use the term vorfreude, i have to say it incorrectly so englis people understand me. telling me how to say panzer and jugendstil, i can only scratch my head...

[fyzygy]

There is some dispute within my own family as to the "correct" pronunciation of our inherited surname. 

 

According to Cactus Kate: Derivation of the name pachanoi This page from The Cactaceae documents the pronunciation of "pachanoi" - because San Pedro was named after Abelardo Pachano, a surname pronounced "Pah-CHAN-oh" - and not "pack-a-not, or pack-ANNOY" as some believe. https://www.trichocereus.com/growing-forum.html

 

But there is little real-world consensus: 

 

[withdrawl clinic]

many names of "all the kingdoms" originate from non latin backrounds. and the rule is they get "latinised".

so for example, in latin words end with an double ii, most people, forget that and use only one i.

 

let me sidetrack a bit, because the ch is a very interresting thing overall. 

think of the finace advisor from channel 7, he's name is koch. for obvious reasons, he doesn't want to be called kock.

so if you have watched tv and he get's mentioned, thats what you have to use as a ch in pachanoi.

 

the issue is that, one has to learn as a child, how to make all those different sounds, of your language,

and it's quite a challange to learn new sounds later in life. (this fact often triggers racism in under educated people)

so one has to go easy, latin plant names are though a 100% necassary, becaus they are unique and colloquial terms are not.

 

i cop it at times twice, from some uneducated people, once for my accent, and second for using latin terms for trees for example....