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Latest IOC Diary Updates
Do we really have the bitching about eponyms everywhere? :)- opisska
- Post #2,532
- Forum: Bird Taxonomy and Nomenclature
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Latest IOC Diary Updates
I hope I'll remember Non-Tahiti Swallow for the next time in Indonesia :)- opisska
- Post #2,512
- Forum: Bird Taxonomy and Nomenclature
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Latest IOC Diary Updates
I mean this is really a tangent but I find this is an interesting disadvantage of the English language - your pronunciation is so out there that it's almost weird that you write English down using the Latin alphabet. This I think is mainly due to your written record being so old - for example...- opisska
- Post #2,468
- Forum: Bird Taxonomy and Nomenclature
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Latest IOC Diary Updates
Maybe we will get there eventually :)- opisska
- Post #2,453
- Forum: Bird Taxonomy and Nomenclature
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Latest IOC Diary Updates
But these are geographical names. When you go to a travel agent in England, do you demand tickets to Good Winds, The Angels or Smoky Bay? You know I am in favor of more indigenous names in general, but even if I temporarily assumed your position that the names should be English, surely...- opisska
- Post #2,449
- Forum: Bird Taxonomy and Nomenclature
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Latest IOC Diary Updates
Well these are just the names of the islands. Should we translate all local names to English? Also, "Bahasa" means "language" in Bahasa Indonesia. Calling it "Bahasa" is the no. 1 joke about foreigners in Indonesia :)- opisska
- Post #2,443
- Forum: Bird Taxonomy and Nomenclature
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Latest IOC Diary Updates
And when you run out of superlatives, there will be no more splits :)- opisska
- Post #2,411
- Forum: Bird Taxonomy and Nomenclature
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Latest IOC Diary Updates
To be fair it's kinda expected, when talking about a language that developed at the very western end of a huge landmass that there will be a word for "things in the far east" as opposed to "normal things".- opisska
- Post #2,408
- Forum: Bird Taxonomy and Nomenclature
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Latest IOC Diary Updates
Aha! so that's a given now, that's cool.- opisska
- Post #2,387
- Forum: Bird Taxonomy and Nomenclature
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Latest IOC Diary Updates
Does the thread accept birds like this, where the split is not yet accepted?- opisska
- Post #2,381
- Forum: Bird Taxonomy and Nomenclature
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Latest IOC Diary Updates
I actually have the goldfinch! Absolutely terrible photos taken on a random stop on the way from Murghab to Osh. We had to stop because our driver was following Ramadan and was falling asleep behind the wheel as a result ...- opisska
- Post #2,374
- Forum: Bird Taxonomy and Nomenclature
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Latest IOC Diary Updates
Great Knot and Not-so-Great Knot, clearly- opisska
- Post #2,187
- Forum: Bird Taxonomy and Nomenclature
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Latest IOC Diary Updates
And they use these "official" sequences? Because my feeling from fieldguides so far has been that there is no order :)- opisska
- Post #2,160
- Forum: Bird Taxonomy and Nomenclature
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Latest IOC Diary Updates
What is the linear sequence anyway, is that simply how the species are ordered in the table? Who cares about that?- opisska
- Post #2,158
- Forum: Bird Taxonomy and Nomenclature
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Latest IOC Diary Updates
Thanks! I finally cleaned up all the updates for the last half year hopefully, gaining two species overall.- opisska
- Post #2,148
- Forum: Bird Taxonomy and Nomenclature
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Latest IOC Diary Updates
Does anybody know where the Malay Pen. dolichorhynchum ends up??- opisska
- Post #2,146
- Forum: Bird Taxonomy and Nomenclature
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Latest IOC Diary Updates
Well, the people of IOC? They do decide on how the birds are written - and they do pretty darn good job in that, seeing how little the endlessly pedantic people here criticize that, so they could do a similarly good job on the sound front?- opisska
- Post #2,109
- Forum: Bird Taxonomy and Nomenclature
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Latest IOC Diary Updates
But grammar and ease of learning is completely irrelevant to the discussion at hand - ambiguity of pronunciation is. Most European languages (German and relatives, Spanish etc.. ) have strict pronunciation rules: in many of them, you even have letter-by-letter rules and each letter either always...- opisska
- Post #2,106
- Forum: Bird Taxonomy and Nomenclature
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Latest IOC Diary Updates
So if you write "ough" in a word, how is that pronounced exactly? Maybe you are blind to it because it feels so normal to you as native speaker, but English is the most ambiguous widely known language when it comes to pronunciation.- opisska
- Post #2,098
- Forum: Bird Taxonomy and Nomenclature
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Latest IOC Diary Updates
Do you speak here about the same English that I know, in which the same cluster of letters can be read in half a dozen different ways even in words that are completely common? I am a bit confused :) There is no "phonetic" spelling in a language where there are no rules of pronunciation ... When...- opisska
- Post #2,094
- Forum: Bird Taxonomy and Nomenclature
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Latest IOC Diary Updates
I usually read ,"cacik" as if it was written like that in Czech. It's fun to say and slightly dirty. I butcher a lot of bird names like that, because I only ever communicate about them on writing so it doesn't matter :)- opisska
- Post #2,082
- Forum: Bird Taxonomy and Nomenclature
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Latest IOC Diary Updates
Černý, not Černaý :)- opisska
- Post #2,051
- Forum: Bird Taxonomy and Nomenclature
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Latest IOC Diary Updates
What a split then - I saw it in four places, thousands of kms apart, all the same species :)- opisska
- Post #1,980
- Forum: Bird Taxonomy and Nomenclature
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Latest IOC Diary Updates
So Yellow-billed ranges in Africa, Intermediate in Eurasia, right? That gains us a species! More importantly - are they readily IDed? What goes for WP records? Yellow-billed on Cape Verde and Canaries - but what about middle east? Looks halfway between ranges ...- opisska
- Post #1,895
- Forum: Bird Taxonomy and Nomenclature
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Latest IOC Diary Updates
Btw. someone is making up Czech names for every new species and sometimes they end up quite funny, such as the "pancanarian chaffinch".- opisska
- Post #1,880
- Forum: Bird Taxonomy and Nomenclature