Named Iris pronunciations

HI all, This is my first post, though I read the board often! I am curious to know if there is anywhere to find the correct pronunciations of named iris? I don`t "speak" iris to anyone, so I have know way of noing if what "I" call an iris is even recognizable to anyone else. After browsing through the plant data base, a few examples are Rose Teall, Bal Masque............
Rose Teel or Rose Tee all, Ball Mask etc. It sounds kind of foolish as I write it out, but a sincere question. Thanks all.
amiblue

My Goodness amiblue...
Welcome to the World of Posting!
How Did You Resist(lol).

If I Could Help You I Would Better.
Maybe Laurie Can Help on this One.
I Have Seen a Few Iris Books that Give an Annunciation of the 'Named Variety' After the Name in (Parenthesis).

Quite Often I Don't See the Annunciation but...
See the Variety Mis-Spelled(lol).

Funny you should post this question because a similar topic has just been discussed on the iris talk mailing list. I'm afraid I can't help you, though. As I said on-list, when I come across an iris name that I can't pronounce with certainty, I just avoid it. If a visitor to my garden wanders past an iris with a problematic name, I conveniently overlook it so I don't have to make "introductions".

The only way to know for certain how the hybridizer intends for their irises' names to be pronounced is to ask him/her. Short of that, here are my best guesses for the irises in your query:

'Teall' : TEE-ul
'Bal Masque': b-ah-l m-ah-sk

No guarantees on correctness. ;-)

Laurie

Thanks for your replys. I`m smiling to myself, though. Just had a mental picture of going to a nursery, catalogs in hand, pointing to a picture asking if they have "this"? or here on page12, .......this one.......haha. Just my strange humor. Amiblue

For "real" words you can get a pronunciation at Merriam-Webster. For example masque is at http://m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=masque&x=0&y=0 just click on the red speaker to the right of the word and it will speak the word for you. I find it a handy tool.