This weblog is no longer being maintained. All information here has been ported to EclecticEchoes.com. This site (heupel.com/eclectic) remains only for archival purposes.
Google and the web to the rescue! (Again)
My son is becoming an encyclopedia on dinosaurs and all animals. With most modern animals I have no problem reading all about the animal and it’s habits to him. With dinosaurs and other pre-historic animals though, pronunciation often becomes an issue. Neither my wife nor I have any Latin or Greek language training at all. We want to give him the proper pronunciation especially as he remembers that first pronunciation and can identify the animal by that name perfectly from then on. So how do you pronounce Icaronycteris ? Just for the record Icaronycteris (Icarus Bat) is a pre-historic bat that lived as early as the Eocene (53 –33.7 million years ago) and probably used sonar, had a longer tail than modern bats and had a claw on both the thumb and first finger unlike modern bats who only have claws on their thumbs.
Anyway googling “Icaronycteris pronunciation” yields two hits, both for the same site: Usborne Quicklinks - How to say dinosaur names. Look up the dinosaur (unfortunately not all the dinosaurs my son has memorized or is interested in are listed) and you can find an MP3 file of the pronunciation.
So here is how you say Icaronycteris.