Thanks & now I have a pronunciation question

Matthew Harris griechisch at hotmail.com
Tue Jul 3 09:15:53 EDT 2001


Thanks to Carl and others who cleared up my accent question.

Next question:
For those of you who actually go around speaking Greek, may I enquire how
you deal with chi (and please don't tell me it's pronounced like a kappa)?
The suggestion I've heard is that it's like the ch in the scottish word
"loch" but this seems very odd to me since in some places, it is very
awkward, i.e. when the chi comes before a vowel/diphthong. Perhaps it is
more like the German 'ch' which is "throaty" after vowels ("doCH"), but
"teefy" before vowels (CHinesisch). Any ideas? Who says "XRISTOS" like a
Spaniard coughing up phlegm?

What about rho? Like a rolling Italian 'r'? Or more like the French 'r'?

And upsilon. Some say it's like ü (German u umlaut) but that just sounds
stupid in something like AKROBUSTIA. The German u, with no umlaut, seems
much nicer.

Well, I know these questions may seem quite irrelevant to some of you, but
pronuniciation is important to me when learning any language, even dead
ones.

Cheers
Matt Harris



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