[B-Greek] Pronuncing PILATOS

Chet Creider creider at uwo.ca
Fri Aug 13 10:54:32 EDT 2004


There is not and never was any justification for pronouncing the "i"
in PILATOS as in English "pie".  This was doubtless simply an error by
Mounce due to interference from the English pronunciation of the name.
The correct vowel should be that of the initial vowel in "ecology" or
"economics" (the latter pronounced with so-called "long e" (= IPA [i]),
not the initial vowel of "indeed", the vowel of "pit", etc.

Chet Creider

(Note that there are still a few teachers and students of Greek,
including NT Greek, alive who were trained in the old English system of
pronunciation (now largely supplanted in England by a more historically 
accurate system of pronunciation) in which long iota _was_ pronounced
as English "pie".  The amusing story of how this happened is told in
Allen's _Vox Graeca_ and has to do with the Great Vowel Shift.  I am
assuming that Mounce is an American and was never part of this tradition.)
In this system, which should never be used, the name of the vowel BHTA is
pronounced "beet-ah" or "beet-uh".)




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