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