I did Latin in first year high school. I deliberately failed the end of year
exams, so that I would not have to travel any further along that road to
madness. Took Geography instead, much more interesting.
Carl
> On 23 Jun 2015, at 10:56 am, Tony Russell <> wrote:
>
> Yeah, crazy how for instance in German everything has a gender. Bedroom,
> house, horse, car, train, ship ( which are der, which are die, and which are
> das?) -- makes it all much more difficult. At least we only have " she's
> alright mate" for everything. I learnt some German at school and it made
> everything so much harder having to remember the gender of inanimate objects.
> Apparently we have masculine trains while our hair is neuter. Totally
> illogical.
>
> Wallie.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Birding-Aus On Behalf Of
> Martin Butterfield
> Sent: Tuesday, 23 June 2015 9:15 AM
> To: Carl Clifford
> Cc: Birding-Aus
> Subject: Re: [Birding-Aus] White-cheeked Honeyeater
>
> According to "Australian Bird Names a complete guide" by Ian Fraser and
> Jeannie Gray the Philedon element comes from the Greek for "attractive", The
> Cinnyris bit does link back to sunbird .
>
> The business of gender of names all makes me glad we speak English, as with
> all the irrationalities in that language, at least we avoided daftness like
> having to decide what gender to apply to words such as the French
> "l'internet"!
>
> Martin
>
> Martin Butterfield
> http://franmart.blogspot.com.au/
>
>> On 22 June 2015 at 21:24, Carl Clifford <> wrote:
>>
>> Hi Clive,
>>
>> Bit of an update on the mystery. I have been doing a bit of a rummage
>> through the library, and it seems that Phylidoyris is a bit of a
>> manmade word. It comes from the French, Phylédon (Honeyeater), which
>> comes from the Latin Philedon (honeyeater), cobbled together with the
>> Latin Cynnyris (sunbird). No wonder the taxonomists couldn't decide
>> which sex the word was. Probably should have been called nigrum, the neuter
>> form.
>>
>> Carl Clifford
>>
>>
>>> On 22 Jun 2015, at 4:17 pm, Clive Nealon <> wrote:
>>>
>>> Greetings,
>>> Can someone explain, please, why HANZAB, Pizzey & Knight (8th Ed),
>>> and Morcombe field guides list White-cheeked Honeyeater as
>>> Phylidonyris
>> nigra,
>>> and
>>> IOC and Christidis & Boles list it as Phylidonyris niger?
>>> Thanks.
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