David FG said:
I would pronounce it the way you do: but I never have occasion to. Surely the only time you would ever need to use Scientific names is when talking to people unfamiliar with the English names or in scientific papers.
David makes a point here which hasn't been picked up on; they are not not latin names - there is often latin in 'em, they are written in a latin style but there's also greek in there, individual's names, etc, etc..
For interest, we normally call them the 'scientific name' instead, but this is actually wrong as we usually only use the first half of it - the full scientific name actually has four parts:
1) The Genus - the first word, capitalised - the 'family' the bird is in e.g.
Passer
2) The specific (or trivial) name, uncapitalised - this distinguishes the species within the genus e.g.
domesticus
then (3) The author of the specific name
and (4) The year when it was first officially published.
So true scientific name for a House Sparrow is "
Passer domesticus (Linnaeus) 1758".
That first part we birders use a lot of the time is actually called the 'binomen' - but I've never yet heard anyone call it that!
Contrary to David, I find I do have to use the scientific names from time to time, but that's because I often have to work with birders from overseas. This year in the UK I worked with birders from Asia, South America, the Middle East and the Pacific Islands, and they have many problems with English names. However, they get their heads around these scientific names quite well, because they use them at home, they have often come upon derivations of the specific names in their own back yards - like
ruber for red, as in your Robin's
rubecula and will know what it means. Also, for us Brits when birding abroad the Genus is often used in common name as well (don't you just hate South America!?! Birds called 'Xenops' make more sense when you know it means 'strange face', referring to the upturned bills on these tiny passerines..).
Sometimes overseas visitors will know the Genus already from their own country (my visitors from the Middle east and Asia for example, very happy with
Phylloscopus), which really gives them much more confidence with 'our' birds.
I've never found any problems with pronunciation, either. Latin/Greek derivations or latinisations come easy to most tongues - just break down the words into as many harsh syllables as you can, and you'll be there a lot of the time, people will understand you ;-) Remember we can't agree on how to pronounce English names sometimes 'Plue-ver' for 'Pluv-ver' drives me bonkers..
A really good book on the meanings was published by the OUP in '91 if you can trace it; 'A Dictionary of Scientific Bird Names' by James Jobling. Unfortunately it didn't have pronunciations!
Finally, I've just remembered we birders do use the Scientific quite often - think of when that odd warbler pops out in the autumn and you go "Ooo I've got an interesting acro" (or Sylvia, or Phyllosc..)