[B-Greek] pee or pie

Mark House mark at thehousehouse.com
Fri Jul 7 19:23:16 EDT 2006


As Hendrickson Publishers' Greek editor I'm currently working on a book that 
will feature a CD with audio files to aid in learning the Greek alphabet and 
pronunciation. One of the issues that has arisen in reviewing the files is 
the pronunciation of the names of Greek letters ending in i (xi, pi, phi, 
chi, psi). When I studied New Testament Greek, I learned to pronounce these 
letters using the long iota sound (xee, pee, phee, chee, psee). This makes 
sense, since some NT Greek grammars, when naming the letters, spell them out 
in Greek using the letter in question plus an iota. However, it is 
apparently common in classical Greek circles to pronounce these letters the 
way they are pronounced in science (all rhyming with "pie"). I'm interested 
in finding out whether the latter pronunciation is also used commonly in NT 
Greek classes. Our classically trained author uses the latter pronunciation, 
but will opt for the former if it is more commonly used in NT contexts. 
Thanks in advance for your input.

Mark House
Hendrickson Publishers 





More information about the B-Greek mailing list