by apodman » Sun Dec 06, 2009 10:49 pm
Chris Peterson wrote:... a bit of pretentiousness in a community that once maintained Latin as its formal language. My solution is to eschew the usage: I simply say chi Perseus (or write chi Per). Purists don't like that, but it is clearer and simpler, and nothing is lost in the practice.
I'm with you in spirit on this one, but in implementation I take a dodge and make exceptions. The exceptions are well known genitives like Tau Ceti and Alpha Centauri which I will continue to use and others will continue to recognize no matter what. The dodge is that I generally try to use the abbreviation in print (whether text or graphical annotation) so that readers (myself included) have their choice of saying Gemini or Geminorum depending on how it might sound on a given occasion. I only use the Latin genitives I'm absolutely sure of, and without checking that might be as few as 25-50% of the 88 constellations - with five singular and five plural genitive forms to choose from, the odds aren't with me if I guess. If I ever give a speech or narrate a video, I guess I'll get all proper and pretentious and look them all up and talk proper Latin, though I've never seen anyone get strange looks when mixing and matching. Now that I'm thinking about it, I guess I'm not doing any favors for readers who don't know all the constellation names by using abbreviations in text; then again, looking up and using the Latin genitives in print doesn't let a newbie know the actual name of the constellation either, explaining why we often resort to long phrases like "the alpha star in the constellation of Canis Major."
[quote="Chris Peterson"]... a bit of pretentiousness in a community that once maintained Latin as its formal language. My solution is to eschew the usage: I simply say chi Perseus (or write chi Per). Purists don't like that, but it is clearer and simpler, and nothing is lost in the practice.[/quote]
I'm with you in spirit on this one, but in implementation I take a dodge and make exceptions. The exceptions are well known genitives like Tau Ceti and Alpha Centauri which I will continue to use and others will continue to recognize no matter what. The dodge is that I generally try to use the abbreviation in print (whether text or graphical annotation) so that readers (myself included) have their choice of saying Gemini or Geminorum depending on how it might sound on a given occasion. I only use the Latin genitives I'm absolutely sure of, and without checking that might be as few as 25-50% of the 88 constellations - with five singular and five plural genitive forms to choose from, the odds aren't with me if I guess. If I ever give a speech or narrate a video, I guess I'll get all proper and pretentious and look them all up and talk proper Latin, though I've never seen anyone get strange looks when mixing and matching. Now that I'm thinking about it, I guess I'm not doing any favors for readers who don't know all the constellation names by using abbreviations in text; then again, looking up and using the Latin genitives in print doesn't let a newbie know the actual name of the constellation either, explaining why we often resort to long phrases like "the alpha star in the constellation of Canis Major."