Pronunciation, orthography, and syntax

Basic medical terminology 2

© Karel Černý 2008

Content

• Orthography, diacritic

• Pronunciation

• Word classes in BMT

• Relations of word classes in BMT

Orthography• Classic Latin had different orthography and

pronunciation.

• For example: originally only capital letters were used, “u” was expressed using “v” (IANVARIUS instead of JANUARIUS) etc.

• Classic Latin also used diacritic signs namely macron (vēna). Today macron is used only in textbooks and dictionaries. Do not use it in praxis.

Phoenician alphabet

An early Greek inscription from Egyptian Abu Simbel 7th - 6th century BC.(Source: Johanna Druckner, The Alphabetic Labyrinth, London 1995, p. 53.)

Alphabet• Roman alphabet (Latin alphabet) is based on Greek which was

created from Phoenician alphabet.

• Following words were used in the beginning: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, V.

• Non native letters: “Z” is not native Latin consonant. It was used for Greek loanwords containing zeta ζ. “PH”, “TH” and “CH” were used for Greek loanwords with Φ (phi), Θ (theta) and Χ (chi). “Y” is another letter influenced by Greek. It is pronounced as [i] in Latin.

• “J” was originally expressed by “I” and in central-European pronunciation often both could be used: iustitia x justitia.

• A distinction between “U” (vowel) and “V” (consonant) was introduced later to avoid confusion.

• There was no “K” in the classic Latin, on the other hand “C” was always pronounced as [k]. Later “K” was adopted for Greek loanwords

Pronunciation

• See textbook p. 26.

• Latin orthography is “phonetic” i. e. “what you see is what you pronounce”.

• List of the most distinct differences follows on the next slide:

Letter Example IPA phonetic pronunciation

Czech equivalent English regional pronunciation

ae (æ) saepe, bonae [e:] é /eɪ/ or /iː/

c followed by [e,i] cista, caeruleus [ts] c /s/

ch pulcher [x] ch /k/

ē (and other vowels with macrons)

vēna [e:] é /ɛ/, /eɪ/ or /iː/

g followed by [e,i] agimus [g] g /dʒ/

h homo [h] h /h/ or /-/

oe (œ) foetus [e:] é /iː/

qu questio [kv] kv /kw/

sc followed by [e,i] ascites [sts] sc /s/

ti followed by vowel and not precedented by s,x

fractio [tsi] ci /ʃɪ/ (in Czech ši)

Examples

ruptura musculi bicipitis[ruptu:ra muskuli bitsipitis]

lagoena aquae[lage:na akve:]

caput hominis[kaput h(!)ominis]

intestinum caecum[intestinum ce:kum]

fractura carpi[fraktura karpi]

philosophia, thesis, menorhea[filozofia, t(h)esis, menorhea]

vagina, fascia, staphylococus aureus[vagina (not -dʒ-), fastsia, stafilokokus aureus]

Word classes in Basic Medical Terminology

• Various languages have various sets of word classes.

• English recognises following w.c.: nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs, prepositions, conjunctions, adverbs, interjections, articles (a/the).

• Medical terminology uses only nouns, adjectives, verbs, prepositions and as a semi-independent category also numerals (they behave like adjectives).

Relation types

• Noun - noun relation (if a noun becomes an attribute of other dominant noun) Ex.: fracture of bone - fractura ossis. (Dominant is bold.)

• Noun - adjective relation (an adjective is attribute of the noun). complicated fracture - fractura complicata.

• Preposition - noun relation (i.e. a preposition can not be connected to the noun in nominative grammatical case, it requires using of accusative or ablative).

• Verb - noun relation in medical prescriptions (requires combination of imperative and accusative of unit or portion).

Noun - noun relation

• The rule is (roughly): the second noun (i.e. the attribute) must be given in genitive case. Or you could say: the word after the “of” in English will be in genitive.

• Both grammatical numbers could be used (sg. or pl.).

• This relation says nothing about the dominant member of the link. It could be in nominative, if unaffected by the context, but if there is for example a preposition, then the leading component of the link will be either in accusative or ablative depending on the preposition.

Noun - adjective• The dominant component is always the noun.

• You must extract following information from the noun: its grammatical gender, its grammatical case, and its grammatical number.

• Then you have to apply it to the adjective. Sometimes this process results in the same ending (example: vena saphena), but usually not (vena lateralis)

Preposition - noun relation

• Prepositions in Latin are divided into three groups.

• Majority of preps. is associated with accusative.

• Minority requires ablative.

• Three prepositions in medical terminology (in, sub, super) could be followed either by acc. or abl.

Verb - noun relation

• This case will be explained during the summer term.