Less than Greek 101...

Chet Creider creider at csd.uwo.ca
Sun Aug 25 06:43:40 EDT 2002


Mike Peterson wrote:
> Additionally, my grammars suggest that omicron and omega be
>  pronounced as in 'obey and note' respectively. I can't
>  hear any difference between these two thus creating a
>  problem when they show up together - OW. Do I stutter? Ha
>  ha.

I suspect that the intended difference is _length_, and you
should be able to hear this: the 'o' in 'obey' is unstressed
(or at least does not bear the main stress in the word) whereas
that in 'note' is stressed and therefore longer (as well as louder
and higher in pitch, but it is the length difference that is
probably intended).

In modern Greek, omicron and omega are pronounced identically.  Since
the two vowels were provided with separate symbols in the Greek
alphabet, it is very likely that at that point in their history they
were pronounced with distinct qualities.  They also differed in that
omicron was a short vowel and omega was a long vowel.  At some point
the quality difference was lost and at some point the length
difference was lost.

Since it is difficult for English speakers to separate vowel length
and stress, there is probably some justification for pronouncing
these vowels with different qualities, at least while learning NT
Greek.
Chet Creider



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