James Tauber wrote:
>
> > I know this is a little spurious, but it's lunchtime and it's been
> > bugging me for a while now:
> >
> > How do I say "Xerces" ?
> >
> > I'd gone with Zir-chay for now, but a colleague reckons it comes from
> > the Greek "Xerxes" (a type of butterfly, apparently), which would be
> > pronounced Zirk-sees. Maybe we could put this in the FAQ on the website.
>
> Xerxes (xi epsilon rho xi eta sigma) would be pronounced Ksir-ksay-ss by
> most accounts of Ancient Greek pronunciation.
> Judging from the way in which Greek words get transliterated into English
> via Latin, my guess would be that Xerces would be xi epsilon rho kappa eta
> sigma and hence Ksir-kay-ss.
> Although you can't tell for sure from the
> transliteration as both epsilon and eta went to E when Greek words were
> transliterated in Latin.
Well, if we stick to the lating letters "x-e-r-c-e-s" and the latin
rules of pronounciation, you get
Ksir-say-ss
which is different from "x-e-r-x-e-s" because 'c' is much more sibilant
than 'x' (thus the "say-ss" instead of harder "ksay-ss")
This is how I've been pronouncing it. (gee, speaking of which: next time
we have a face2face or phone conference we won't probably be able to
understand each other. Gee, thanks for bringing it up: my latin-centric
view of the world blinded me)
--
Stefano Mazzocchi One must still have chaos in oneself to be
able to give birth to a dancing star.
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Friedrich Nietzsche
