Thread:User talk:Rua/Completely unreadable

First time I hear such a thing. The abbreviations gen. et spp. are standard in botany and so used now in thousands of Wiktionary entries. The purpose is in particular to signify whether an organism name names just some species in the genus (which may be varying and not always certain), when one would use only “spp.”, or also the whole genus and various species in the genus; sometimes (in recent languages) it is only a technical term for the genus while species are always denoted with specific names or circumlocutions “X genus plants”. Due to the distribution of Pimpinella saxifraga, means this particular species, and also, because there are a few other less important Pimpinella species in Eastern Europe, the term surely was extended to other species (back then already; because there is no specific reason either why it would have been restricted to a current understanding of a particular species), to denote a broader concept corresponding to what we now understand as botanical genus, as well as a concept of analogically denoting other species, therefore “genus and species” “and especially …”. But the genus Pimpinella does not have an English name, except ambiguous and now rare in this sense pimpernel – I searched in various fashions to find one, and Wikipedia at Pimpinella does not know a name either –, only individual species under it, which I gave for Pimpinella saxifraga, it is burnet saxifrage. What is there to clarify anyway if taxonomical names are given?

It is bewildering that you even expect that every plant name has an English name. This is not the case, the more you remove yourself geographically from English-speaking countries, and even in English-speaking countries at some level of detail – for even at the genus level, taxonomy may have been and still be controverted and not manifest to the unequipped observer, this especially true for the Apiaceae family. the also means has a lot of synonyms, as you see on Wikispecies, and it took me some time to find the English vernacular name I have for it on the Ukrainian page, which is obscure and not understood by anyone, so actually any taxonomical name is understood better than English. Where you come from, in Indo-European studies, one often contents oneself with vernacular names, but this is bad practice, this is in more particular fields scolded in reviews: “As a general note I would like to mention that it is recommendable to add the Latin nomenclature to English plant names”. But not the reverse, where an English term often may not exist. I have quite a mass of Arabic entries now where an English vernacular does not exist, obviously some local desert plants, and as I have amplified to you it is principally possible for every vernacular name of an organism that an English name does not exist, and additionally often that any existing translation would need translation itself. It is just unlikely to occur that you can reconstruct something specific as far back as Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Semitic that does not well translate to a vernacular name. For anything in the Common Era it is easy to encounter that one discerns quite distinctly a concept a word which has no vernacular correspondence – well-known but far away enough to lack reflection in our working language.