Den Wilson wrote, >Jane's excellent posting prompts me to ask if it is wise to attempt to >absorb (or borrow) botanical Latin names into native language - where >pronunciation problems begin to arise and ambiguities re-emerge - or is my >question naive? Well, yes, it is naive, because language progresses and changes as users borrow and naturalize words whether it's "wise" or not. Some countries (such as France) have language "academies" that rule (typically, quite conservatively) on what is permissible in the written language, but humans being what they are, the spoken language is usually way out ahead of the written one. You can't freeze language, and like Heraclitus's river, a language is never the same from day to day or speaker to speaker. And, sadly, sometimes you can't preserve one, either. The extinction of languages is progressing at a rate similar to the extinction of plants, and just as some plants now exist only in herbaria, some languages exist only on audio tape or written transcriptions. Jane McGary NW Oregon, USA