[B-Greek] Pronouncing PILATOS

George F. Somsel gfsomsel at juno.com
Thu Aug 12 10:02:32 EDT 2004


On Thu, 12 Aug 2004 08:41:55 -0500 "Mitchell, John W"
<JWMitchell at midamerican.com> writes:
> I'm just starting Mounce's Basics of Biblical Greek.  On the provided 
> CD
> he pronounces the vocabulary words.  I understood why each word 
> sounded
> the way it did until I got to the word PILATOS.  He pronounced it 
> like
> "pie lah tes".  
>  
> 1.  Why does the iota make a sound like a long i?  According to 
> what
> I've read iota can only be short like lid or long like bee.
>  
> 2.  Why does he pronounce the ending three letters like "tes" and 
> not
> "tahs" like the omicron sound usually makes?
>  
> Thanks in advance!
> John Mitchell
> 
> ---

I would never attempt to explain why someone does something in a
particular manner unless I had information which would support my
conclusion.  Therefore, I won't attempt to speculate why Mounce
pronounces the name Pilate [PILATOS] as he does.  I can only give you the
way I think it should be pronounced which is

PEE - LAH' - TOS  [as in "toss"]

george
gfsomsel



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