Systematic revision of Brachypelma, new genus described.

Blonc

Arachnoknight
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Yes, both would now be Tliltocatl albopilosum in the pet trade. But can we stop calling the white one "Nicaraguan form" and the brown one "Honduran form"? The white one is T. albopilosum and matches the original description of the tarantula from Costa Rica which would mean T. albopilosum occurs in both Costa Rica and Nicaragua. The brown one is yet to be confirmed to be a variant or a different species and should be referred to as Tliltocatl sp. "Honduran Curly Hair" or something similar. I just made up "Honduran Curly Hair". :) The full extent of their range has yet to be published.
Thanks for clearing that up:) I think I'll follow suit in ditching the H/N form naming scheme and go with Tliltocatl sp. for the former Hondoran curlies and T.albopilosum for the former Nicaraguans.
 

Thekla

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If you mean it should be an A sound as in "cat", instead of the A sound in "cock"... It depends how you pronounce "cat". It depends on how round or flat the A is said in your own language/accent... Like, I'm from the American Midwest and most people here have As so flat they're Z sharps. So thier pronunciation of cat is very different than others, as an example. But Americans/Canadians/Brits all say the A sounds in "father", "caught", and "cock" pretty much the same. But yeah, the Nahuatl A sound is definitely "ah" as in cock. The guy who did the video above verifies this in his video I posted earlier in the thread on Nahuatl letter pronunciation.
Okay, I'm confused now. I only lived in Britain for about 5 years, but I would never pronounce the vowels in father, caught, and cock the same way. :confused: The A in father is - at least to me - a completely different sound as caught and cock.
And as far as I understood, the A sound in -catl is similar to the A sound in "father", "hug" or the British "can't", or the German A actually. So, "Klee-toe-cock" doesn't make sense to me.
Also, I'd definitely put some kind of T sound in the end.
 

Feral

Arachnobaron
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I'm not a linguist. The best thing I can probably say is to listen to the recordings. But I' can try to explain more, if it helps.

For one thing, having non-English accents put onto to English words from various dialects gets double confusing. For those like @Thekla, I'm not familiar enough with how Germans/whoever pronounce British English words or all the various British accents. But I'll try.

I'm also not super familiar with IPA usage, it'd sure be helpful if I were. But I think what we need to say is the IPA English diaphoneme /ɑː/.

I believe this page is what we're looking for in the vowel sound of the last syllable, the A in Tliltocatl:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_central_unrounded_vowel
Especially check out the Occurance chart on that page, it lists how that sound appears in your mothertongue.

Or maybe it would help to think of how the A sound is in the Spanish language, because I think there's only one pronunciation of A in that language and it's always "ah" (again I think The IPA English diaphoneme is /ɑː/).

Like a dentist says "Open up and say 'AH'!" :D

[edit- I've noticed that many Brits say "taco" and "pasty" (the food) with a flat A, but say "bath" with an open A that has the "ah" sound. If that helps give a practical British example of flat and open As.]

As for the previous vowel sound confusion...
I did a superquick scan on the variances of the phonology things like the Caught-Cot Merger and Unrounded Lot and Father-Bother Merger. I don't know if these pages will help you or make confusion worse:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonological_history_of_English_open_back_vowels#
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regional_accents_of_English
That second link has a nice chart showing which countries utilize the which vowel variances, who uses the Caught-Cot Merger might be particularly pertinent.

I can tell you definitely that in most all America and Canada accents, caught/cot are homonyms and the first vowel sound in father sounds like the vowel of "fought" and is the same as in lot and caught/cot and cock. And cock and rock rhyme. All with the "ah" sound. If this is true for your dialect and accent, then my other posts will make sense to you. If not, I hope maybe what I said above in this post helps.
 
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Vanessa

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Dr. Mendoza has posted a video with the pronunciation in it...
"We saw many questions asking how to pronounce the new genus name Tliltocatl. In this video you can hear the pronunciation. Hope this can help some of you."
 

The Grym Reaper

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I only lived in Britain for about 5 years, but I would never pronounce the vowels in father, caught, and cock the same way.
Yeah, the vowels all sound different.

Father = Barber
Caught = Port
Cock = Rock

Compilation of James May saying "Oh cock" because, why not? :rofl:

 

Feral

Arachnobaron
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Dr. Mendoza has posted a video with the pronunciation in it...
"We saw many questions asking how to pronounce the new genus name Tliltocatl. In this video you can hear the pronunciation. Hope this can help some of you."
Thank you! Good to know one of the founders of this genus has finally come around and is passing along good information. Excellent! That's the video I posted earlier in this thread and it's made by J. Adrián Pérez, who is a brilliant Nahuatl speaker and teacher. I contacted him about just making a short clip of the word being spoken, but he really went above and beyond with this video. Its amazing!

And again- Everyone PLEASE go to the youtube page, like, and comment a thank you. And share! Mr. Pérez isn't even in our hobby but he did us all a wonderful service, bless him.
 

Thekla

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For one thing, having non-English accents put onto to English words from various dialects gets double confusing. For those like @Thekla, I'm not familiar enough with how Germans/whoever pronounce British English words or all the various British accents. But I'll try.
You must have misunderstood me. I wasn't talking about how Germans or other non-English speakers would pronounce British words, instead, I was trying to explain that - after having lived in the UK for 5 years - I definitely know how British people (and myself) would pronounce those words. And as @The Grym Reaper so wonderfully demonstrated :rofl:, their pronunciation of "cock" is nothing like Dr Mendoza pronounce the ending of Tliltocatl in his video. And that's why the phonetic spelling "Klee-toe-cock" makes no sense to me. ;)
 

Feral

Arachnobaron
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You must have misunderstood me. I wasn't talking about how Germans or other non-English speakers would pronounce British words, instead, I was trying to explain that - after having lived in the UK for 5 years - I definitely know how British people (and myself) would pronounce those words. And as @The Grym Reaper so wonderfully demonstrated , their pronunciation of "cock" is nothing like Dr Mendoza pronounce the ending of Tliltocatl in his video. And that's why the phonetic spelling "Klee-toe-cock" makes no sense to me.
Yes, I understood that you speak lovely English, I have no doubt. I certainly never intended any negative judgement on your skills, or anything else negative! I did assume that you didn't, at least not entirely, lose your German accent when you speak English. The Germans I have known all have kept their accents over their American English, so I assumed you did over your British English, too. I was trying to note that the German accent might be a problem on top of the American to Britsh conversion problems we were already looking at. But if I unclearly phrased it, or if you lost traces of your accent so my assumption was incorrect, or I otherwise misunderstood, then I am sorry.



As to the A making the "ah" sound...
If you're not hearing it, I don't know what else to say. Maybe it's like a subtle version of Yanny-Laurel Auditory Illusion. Or like a reverse McGurk Effect illusion, where the lack of visual speech perception input warps the auditory speech perception. Or maybe it's a Semantic Congruency Effect, where you hear what you think you hear. I don't know.

If you're listening to that video, and the audio recording, and the Forvo clip that have been posted and you still don't hear it, then maybe go back to the previously posted pronunciation guide here:
http://www.native-languages.org/nahuatl_guide.htm
Or this new one:
https://pages.ucsd.edu/~dkjordan/resources/PronouncingNahuatl.html
Or this new one:
https://www.omniglot.com/writing/nahuatl.htm
They show how the A sound is pronounced like "ah".

Or you can watch the new (to this thread) video I have at the bottom of this post... It mainly talks about how to pronounce the "tl" (notice the click sound it has when he does it, and you'll hear what I was saying before about the click of the English K vs T) but in it, he pronounces several words that have As in them: Nahuatl, axolotl, and atlatl. You can hear how the A is "ah".
I don't know. I hope you find something that works for you and does this lovely language and culture justice. Thank you for trying so hard to get it right, I love your respectfulness! Good luck!

(Oh, almost forgot, just so proper credit is given- it's not Dr. Mendoza's video, it's J. Adrián Pérez's video. Dr. Mendoza just shared it. Mr. Pérez was so very kind to do it, and it's so lovely, I'd hate that he not get the proper credit.)

 

Feral

Arachnobaron
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And here is another video by Kurly Tlapoyawa where he does an excellent job of explaining the "tl" sound, one way to Anglicize the "tl" sound, and the letter A having the "ah" sound.

 

Thekla

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I'm perfectly capable of hearing the A sound and I also know how to pronounce it. There's nothing wrong with my hearing. What I'm saying and trying to explain to you is that British people and myself pronounce "cock" differently, there's no A sound like you describe it in the word "cock". ;)

Maybe this makes it clear what I mean:
Cock_british vs american.png

And this is the reason the phonetic spelling "Klee-toe-cock" makes no sense to me. It's just not universal. ;)
 

Feral

Arachnobaron
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I listened to a full minute of British cock today. That was a treat! lol :D But if you say there's no "ah" in Britsh "cock", then okay. I don't speak British English. But the A in Tliltocatl is "ah". Watch the videos, please.
 

Thekla

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But the A in Tliltocatl is "ah". Watch the videos, please.
Yes, I know. And I never argued with that, in fact, I totally agree with you. The A sound in Tliltocatl was never the question. I questioned your phonetic spelling because I think a chosen phonetic spelling should make it clear to everyone how to pronounce a word, not only to American people. ;)
 

Feral

Arachnobaron
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Yes, I know. And I never argued with that, in fact, I totally agree with you. The A sound in Tliltocatl was never the question. I questioned your phonetic spelling because I think a chosen phonetic spelling should make it clear to everyone how to pronounce a word, not only to American people. ;)
But 13 hours ago I said, with added bold to highlight:

I'm also not super familiar with IPA usage, it'd sure be helpful if I were. But I think what we need to say is the IPA English diaphoneme /ɑː/.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_central_unrounded_vowel
Especially check out the Occurance chart on that page, it lists how that sound appears in your mothertongue.

As for the previous vowel sound confusion...
I did a superquick scan on the variances of the phonology things like the Caught-Cot Merger and Unrounded Lot and Father-Bother Merger.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonological_history_of_English_open_back_vowels#
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regional_accents_of_English
That second link has a nice chart showing which countries utilize the which vowel variances, who uses the Caught-Cot Merger might be particularly pertinent.

I can tell you definitely that in most all America and Canada accents, caught/cot are homonyms and the first vowel sound in father sounds like the vowel of "fought" and is the same as in lot and caught/cot and cock. And cock and rock rhyme. All with the "ah" sound. If this is true for your dialect and accent, then my other posts will make sense to you. If not, I hope maybe what I said above in this post helps.
:banghead:

Im sorry, Nahuatl. I'm tapping out.
 

Thekla

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But I think what we need to say is the IPA English diaphoneme /ɑː/.
And I totally agree.

But you also said this (which I was originally referring to):
But Americans/Canadians/Brits all say the A sounds in "father", "caught", and "cock" pretty much the same. But yeah, the Nahuatl A sound is definitely "ah" as in cock.
And this is simply not true, so, I disagreed with your phonetic spelling because I really want to honour the native pronunciation of the Nahuatl and wanted to make sure everyone outside the US would pronounce Tliltocatl the right way as well.

So, there's no need to apologise to the Nahuatl. We just have to find a phonetic spelling that applies to everyone, not only to Americans.

And that's it for me, too.
 

basin79

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I'll link to it below. In short, the genus has been split in two with the "red-legged" species and albiceps staying in Brachypelma and the "red rumped" species being moved to the newly created genus, Tliltocatl.

Brachypelma now consists of B. albiceps, B. auratum, B. baumgarteni, B. boehmei, B. emilia, B. hamorii, B. klaasi and B. smithi.

Tliltocatl consists of T. albopilosum, T. epicureanum, T. kahlenbergi, T. sabulosum, T. schroederi, T. vagans, and T. verdezi.

Brachypelma fossorium
is transferred to Stichoplastoris but, according to Mendoza, the Longhorn & Gabriel paper overrides this so it is still a junior synonym of Sandinista lanceolatum.

B. alvarezi, B. andrewi and B. aureoceps would have been transferred to the new genus but should be considered nomina dubia.

https://academic.oup.com/zoolinnean/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/zoolinnean/zlz046/5611858
Ahhhhhhhhhhh so this is what all the "Tliltocatl" shenanigans are. I've only seen memes so thought it was some weird new phrase/Japanese pop band or some other crap.

Need to look at this section more often.
 

Patherophis

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I am, have been, and will continue to be, perfectly calm.



See, it doesn't matter if you think people should or should not get offended. The ethnic majority and/or people not affected by the offense don't get to decide what is or isn't offensive and harmful to a marginalized minority!

This is absolutely not a hypothetical discussion. A sizable portion of this thread has been about how to practically, meaning in practice, pronounce and use a Nahautl word. We're talking about some very concrete, real-world applications for anyone reading this thread, now or in the future.

You noted yourself how easy it is to phonetically sound out Latin pronunciations, that's especially true for most all speakers of Romance languages and its relatives. And another bilingual member, @pps (I'm so sorry, pps!) noted how easy it is to intuite Latin pronunciations. It's certainly a snap for any of us Americans who remember even a smidgen of our high school Spanish, but even just a monolingual English speaker can figure out how to say most Latin fairly easily. So, when the average person is given a choice between two equally "correct" options: either A.) by saying a foreign word in a way that's familiar and easy for them to both sound out and physically produce the correct sounds, or B.) by saying a foreign word in a way that's difficult and confusing (quite likely impossible) to sound out because it's so alien to them and requires productions of sounds that even don't exist in thier own language... which pronunciation do you think most people will chose, the easier or the harder?

Anyone who reads this thread, now or in the future, may use this to determine how to pronounce that beautiful word, Tliltocatl. Let's be responsible about what we promote here.
I hope people would chose the most autentic pronciation they are capable of, but considering how bad is situation with "normal" latin names, I kinda get where is Your scepticisim coming from.
I apreciate Your effort to bring as correct prononciatin and many thanks for recording and video. :)
I would transcribe what I hear on both recording and video as "kliltokat". So same as Thekla I was quite confused by cock example :D
I wonder if that's the last change of their names in the near future. There are these unanswered questions on Arachnida FB post:

"As Tliltocatl is stated to be masculine, shouldn’t new combinations be T. albopilosus, T. epicureanus and T. sabulosus?"
"Why didn't you change the gender of the names from neutral (as they were in Brachypelma) to masculine (as in Tliltocatl)?"

Do we have some experts here? Is it likely that paper on Tliltocatl species will provide corrections to these names?
@Patherophis is one of the scientific name experts here :D.
Thanks,
Arthroverts
@Arthroverts :shy: :D
@pps World is small, that first fb question is mine :D

My current opinion based on information I have availible:
According to The Code, there are several ways to determine gender of genus. Two of them come to consideration in this case - gender stated by author in description, and gender identified based on way name was used by author. Tliltocatl is stated to be masculine, but used as neutrum. According to The Code, explicitly stated gender has priority over gender derived based on usage. Therefore Tliltocatl is to be considered masculine indeed.
Once we are clear on gender of genus, rules are very clear - species name that is latin adjective must be always used in gender form matching genus name it is combined with. So we have to use these three adjective in correct masculine form.
 

Feral

Arachnobaron
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And I totally agree.

But you also said this (which I was originally referring to):

And this is simply not true, so, I disagreed with your phonetic spelling because I really want to honour the native pronunciation of the Nahuatl and wanted to make sure everyone outside the US would pronounce Tliltocatl the right way as well.

So, there's no need to apologise to the Nahuatl. We just have to find a phonetic spelling that applies to everyone, not only to Americans.

And that's it for me, too.
Yes, I said that. I said it in this post, made at 4:34am yesterday:

Are you talking about the A or the T in "cat"?

If you're saying it sounds to you like T instead of K sound, I could totally see that. There's a fine line between how our ears hear T and K sounds, and it's only a very slight difference in how the mouth forms it. And the breath behind it is exactly the same. So I totally get it. I think it could be totally accurate to say "kleel toh cot" as long as that T in "cot" is very crisp. But that's why I went with K, because Ks are always crisp but our Ts in the middle to ends of words are often dulled. (Like how many people pronounce little as "liddul".) But yes, I think you have a very valid point about the ending T/K sound.

If you mean it should be an A sound as in "cat", instead of the A sound in "cock"... It depends how you pronounce "cat". It depends on how round or flat the A is said in your own language/accent... Like, I'm from the American Midwest and most people here have As so flat they're Z sharps. So thier pronunciation of cat is very different than others, as an example. But Americans/Canadians/Brits all say the A sounds in "father", "caught", and "cock" pretty much the same. But yeah, the Nahuatl A sound is definitely "ah" as in cock. The guy who did the video above verifies this in his video I posted earlier in the thread on Nahuatl letter pronunciation.

Thank you for being thoughtful enough to try to be correct!
People brought up the idea of differences between American and British English pronounciation of "cock" that I hadn't considered, so I addressed and resolved that issue in this post, made 9 hours later at 4:06pm yesterday:

I'm not a linguist. The best thing I can probably say is to listen to the recordings. But I' can try to explain more, if it helps.

For one thing, having non-English accents put onto to English words from various dialects gets double confusing. For those like @Thekla, I'm not familiar enough with how Germans/whoever pronounce British English words or all the various British accents. But I'll try.

I'm also not super familiar with IPA usage, it'd sure be helpful if I were. But I think what we need to say is the IPA English diaphoneme /ɑː/.

I believe this page is what we're looking for in the vowel sound of the last syllable, the A in Tliltocatl:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_central_unrounded_vowel
Especially check out the Occurance chart on that page, it lists how that sound appears in your mothertongue.

Or maybe it would help to think of how the A sound is in the Spanish language, because I think there's only one pronunciation of A in that language and it's always "ah" (again I think The IPA English diaphoneme is /ɑː/).

Like a dentist says "Open up and say 'AH'!" :D

[edit- I've noticed that many Brits say "taco" and "pasty" (the food) with a flat A, but say "bath" with an open A that has the "ah" sound. If that helps give a practical British example of flat and open As.]

As for the previous vowel sound confusion...
I did a superquick scan on the variances of the phonology things like the Caught-Cot Merger and Unrounded Lot and Father-Bother Merger. I don't know if these pages will help you or make confusion worse:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonological_history_of_English_open_back_vowels#
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regional_accents_of_English
That second link has a nice chart showing which countries utilize the which vowel variances, who uses the Caught-Cot Merger might be particularly pertinent.

I can tell you definitely that in most all America and Canada accents, caught/cot are homonyms and the first vowel sound in father sounds like the vowel of "fought" and is the same as in lot and caught/cot and cock. And cock and rock rhyme. All with the "ah" sound. If this is true for your dialect and accent, then my other posts will make sense to you. If not, I hope maybe what I said above in this post helps.
Which means you're harping on a point that has already been acknowledged, addressed, and resolved 17 hours ago.

If I should make a mistake, I wanted it to be brought to my attention. Absolutely. But that's not what that was. [e-It was brought to my attention, great, I resolved it, done... And then you spent four more additional messages beating into the ground something that had already been fixed.]

I really hate that I feel like I've been pushed into a position where I even have to bring this up, but:
I've worked my tail off for days to research the daylights out of this and make sure every bit of information on Nahuatl is absolutely correct and learn everything I can and reach out to experts and authenticate everything and provide vetted resources and answer questions and correct misconceptions, and all to honor a valuable and endangered language. I even put up with some low-key racism and pushed through a lot of ignorance and resistance. My only goal is the respect of the Nahuatl, I am not looking for any recognition at all or even a single thank you.
But I do, however, want to not continue to be harped on after I've already resolved a situation.
I've been trying to make sure everyone I can reach is able to correctly pronounce it (and maybe even learn something about it) so that the language, and its culture and people, can be honored and the hobby can be proud of our knowledge and diversity and history.
And maybe it's sleep dep, but I'm so frustrated right now I could pop.

You say you know how to pronounce it, right? Then I've done a good job.

As for everyone else- I'm sorry, everybody, I'm sorry. I'm NEVER like this! I apologize. I need to breathe. And sleep.
 
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