December 16, 2010You say impatiens
I say em-pat-ee-uns - this pronunciation being stuck in my brain for at least 25 years, so there is no changing it now. What are the chances of starting a new pronunciation trend?
After all, Gertrude Jeeeekyll has been going around for quite some time, even though I think Jekyll (rhymes with heckle) is more correct. At least Jekyll is the way David Austin says her name, and I’ve heard him do it.
whatever
PSFK—Only in the 21st Century - garden dating agencies.
Ron says:
Oh Cindy, reminds me when I was just starting my career fresh out of college at Monrovia Nursery. I had grown up in a little farming town in southern Idaho and went to college in Logan, Utah, a huge city compared to where I grew up! Most of the plants growing in So. Cal. were new to me and so I was very un-familiar with all the new names. I was working at the nursery as the assistant advertising manager and every year in the Fall, my boss and I met with all the upper management people to determine the new prices for all the plants for the new catalog. We were in the room with the Chairman of the Board, President, V.P., Sales Manager, Production Manager, and few others that I can’t remember anymore and they were going through the current catalog and discussing the inventory of plants on hand, what the demand might be in the coming year, and what the price for each plant would be the next year. They were going fairly fast and they got ahead of me so I asked them to go back to the ManDARin Oranges. They stopped and there was complete silence in the room and then the Chairman snorted out a laugh and soon all the room exploded in laughter and my pronunciation of the word Mandarin! Cindy, I had never even seen a Mandarin Orange before let alone know how the word was pronounced! They enjoyed the moment and then soon got back to business, but my nickname at the nursery from that day on was…..yes you guessed it…ManDARin. Six years later when I left to go to work at the L. A. Arboretum, upper management still called me by that name. Fortunately, my boss, the advertising manager was kind enough to not call me by that name except whenever I mispronounced another plant name! Believe me, I learned the proper pronunciations very quickly…except for Kalanchoe, to me it’s still KaLANcho, but Monrovia wasn’t growing them at the time so the word didn’t come up very often!
Posted on December 17, 2010 at 1:00 pm.
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Barbara Wallace says:
While we’re talking about pronunciations let’s talk about kalanchoe. I hear ka lan cho all the time. Sounds so funny to me - it’s really supposed to be kal an ko ee. Sounds so much prettier- just as the plants are.
Posted on December 17, 2010 at 12:43 pm.