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PRONOUNCING OMICRON
05/12/2021
The BBC, the UK government spokespeople and many others seem to be having serious trouble with pronouncing the ancient Greek letter όμικρον, or omicron as written in English. Biologists are using the ancient Greek alphabet to denote variants of the respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) that most of us refer to as covid or just “the pandemic”.
I spent several years studying classics before I moved into biology and I can assure you that my learned teachers were unanimous in their pronunciation of the “little o”. It is oh-my-kron with the emphasis on the “my”. It is true that modern Greek has adopted a short i but we are not talking about modern Greek in this context.
Look up dictionaries on-line such as Merriam-Webster or Cambridge and you will see that the correct English pronunciation is as above. The Cambridge Dictionary even has a sound file of it. The Americans, as so often, don’t agree, and say it with a short i rather like the BBC, our journalists and our politicians who say ommikron but that is wrong in the UK. Perhaps this explains it as we seem to be adopting more and more American these days.
Anyway, this is just an excuse to say that my study of classics has always been a boon to me in biology – so many words and phrases are derived from the ancient Latin and Greek languages, and knowing a little of the vocabularies helps enormously in both revealing features about the species or reference in question and in remembering the nomenclature. For example, a lovely night-blooming cactus that I have (pictured) goes by the name of Echinopsis subdenudata so I know that the genus is likely to contain spiny plants, in appearance like a sea urchin or hedgehog (ἐχῖνος and ὄψις in ancient Greek). Then the specific name tells me the plant in question is almost bare (sub and denudata) which, unlike some others in its genus, it is, as you can see. We should encourage our children to learn classics, at least for a year or two, and it is a pity it has fallen out of fashion.
Betts Ecology employ biological terms and the scientific names of species and other biological phenomena as a matter of routine. We usually state the vernacular names as well but I would encourage everyone to learn a little ancient Greek and Latin vocabulary – it is both useful and fascinating.
© Betts Ecology
