Wednesday 29 July 2020

a short conchological glossary

Though not presented as a tongue-twister nor with any other context or accompaniment that might appeal to anyone outside the academic community of cockles and mussels or shell-collectors, this odd exercise in splendid enunciation—via Weird Universe—has a soothing, dulcet quality that is only to be found I think in a subject this niche. Click through to download the recording as an MP3.
It makes me think about the admonishment of not being critical of others for mispronouncing a word as they might have only ever encountered that word in print beforehand—I know my head pronunciation of things can be sometimes a mismatch, and we probably ought to bring back the pronouncing album. The opening disclaimer that there no official—only customarily correct way of saying these Latin names does not dissuade us from listening to more from R. Tucker Abbott, PhD (*1919 – †1995), preeminent malacologist, who made up the names of many of the species himself.