Floral tongue twisters

Common flowers that are commonly mispronounced

From Latin tongue twisters to misleading spellings – we’ve compiled a list of some of the most commonly mispronounced flower names. But remember there are no definitive rules. Not even the experts can agree on how to say some of these names.

Find out how your own pronunciations compare with ours and join the debate…

Floral tongue twister
Copyright: hairworldmag

  • Anemone [an-EH-mon-ee]

If this striking flower with the vibrant petals and dramatic black centre didn’t share a moniker with a well-known sea-creature, many of us would probably be stumped by its pronunciation. The usual English rules suggest it should probably end in a ‘y’.

  • Asteracaea [ass-ter-AY-see-ee] or [ass-ter-AY-see-aye]

This large family of flowering plants has no less than 23,600 species to its name. But how to pronounce that name remains a mystery to many. In fact, even the experts can’t agree – hence the two accepted alternatives for that triple-vowel ending.

The general consensus is that this elegant trumpet-like lily is pronounced with a hard ‘l’ – and the Oxford dictionary agrees. But it’s still hotly debated on forums and many still argue that it should be pronounced the Spanish way as a soft ‘ll’ like ‘y’.

  • Campanula [Cam-PAN-you-luh]

These pretty violet cottage-garden blooms have a seemingly straightforward name: the tricky part is knowing which part to emphasise. According to the OED, it’s the second syllable ‘pan’.

The Latin name for the striking looking cockscomb, celosia is open to lots of dialectal variance. Some US versions suggest the first syllable should be the slightly longer ‘see’ while some shorten ‘see-uh’ to ‘shuh’ at the end.

This is a bit like the US/UK tom-ay-to/tom-ah-to debate but in this instance the UK pronunciation is ‘ay’ and the US is ‘a’ or ‘ah’. This perhaps explains why British gardeners would say black day-lee-uh, while the US film of the same name is pronounced Black ‘Dal-yuh’.

Despite the popularity of these classic decorative flowers, many still get caught out by their pronunciation. Inserting an imaginary ‘i’ after the ‘l’ is a common mistake. Also, note the emphasis on the second, not third syllable.

Our flower of the month, the beautiful lisianthus, can be a bit of a mouthful – and it’s not immediately clear how to pronounce it from the spelling. Note the short ‘li’ (not ‘lye’) in the first syllable and ‘lizzie’ as opposed to ‘lissy’.

Have you been saying them right? Are there any other flowers you're in a debate about how to pronounce? Tweet us yours. 

 

 

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