In Latin every vowel is pronounced...but here is the catch. The language has more vowels than English. One of them is the diphthong merged -ae. We print the letters separately but they should be merged. the -ae is pronounced as the ai in aisle. Consequently the AOS pronunciation is technically correct. Read Botanical Latin by Wllian Stearn $29.95 retail but a little less on Amazon.

Too funny missmolly! Having studied Latin for 6 years, I always pronounce it like ai in aisle!!!! LOL....

You say tomato and I say tomawto

And over here ae is prononced totally differently, like a french 'è'! (see my post about Finet for the prunounciation). Personally I would never say it the 'aisle' way. I think it may depend on the type of Latin you learned. The basics I learned are from Roman latin I think. I just dug into this a bit deeper on internet, and like I said earlier, each language has adapted their pronunciation of latin. So the AOS prunounciation is technically correct...in English! ;)

"Tomayto, tomahto, let's call the whole thing off!" (this discussion could go on for ages, lol)

True, and there are no more true Latin speakers around to answer it! LOL... That's the beauty of a dead language, everyone has their own ideas and thoughts. I say, call stanhopea whatever you want!

As long as you know what you're saying, who really cares?!!!

I agree. There are numerous garden plants that aren't pronounced correctly as well. Or maybe there really is no correct way.

"Or maybe there really is no correct way."

I don't know. I certainly am not a Latin scholar. They still say "ain't" where I'm from and most of them actually think it's correct.

My only objection to your statement is that it's a frequent excuse for not bothering to learn the correct way. I am not the language police, nor do I want to become them.

As to whether there is "French" Latin and "English" Latin, I find that a curious position even if it's correct. Latin is Latin. What if I reversed the situation and said there is "Latin" French and "Latin" English. A language is a language. It stands on its own. If other languages butcher it, that's their problem. I don't agree with your reasoning here. How do you actually pronounce some of these Latin terms? I'm just going by a scholarly book on the subject that seems to be peer accepted.

Maybe we just speak "Orchid Board" Latin here.

I'm no latin scholar either, but to say Latin is Latin isn't entirely correct. I'm curious about all this and did some digging on the topic on wikipedia and other places. There are different types of Latin and each language has their approximation of the sounds and there are several accepted prunounciations (also because no one knows with absolute certainty the original prunounciation). Yes, a language is a language, but latin is a dead one, with no 'native' speakers to tell us the right way.
One thing that I'm certain about is that in France latin is taught with the ae = [ɛ] sound. So as far as I'm concerned, it as one of several correct prunounciations. ;)

Missmolly, I was actually more joking than being serious. But I am glad you stated that just so people wouldn't think I was serious. There are accepted was to pronounce certain words. They can be regional and country specific, just as much as accent and slang. To me, it's a wonderful quirk of a living language, and I find it interesting that this comes into play even with the use of a dead language.