[B-Greek] pee or pie

frjsilver at optonline.net frjsilver at optonline.net
Fri Jul 7 21:12:55 EDT 2006


Dear Friends --

In spite of the best efforts of the British educational system in the past, and of college fraternities and sororities in the present, the standard is to regard _iota_ as a long vowel AS IN GREEK, not as in English.  

We all know that _nice_ has a 'long i' in English, but _Nice_ has a 'long i' in French.  The same is true of Latin and Greek, in spite of people who would say 'vy-vat ree-jy-na'.

So, 'the sweetheart of Sigma Ky' might be rethought....

Learning Modern Greek, children are taught such rhyming things as ALFA VHTA, FAGEI PITA, or -- in our parlance -- 'alpha, beta, eats a sandwich'.  It suffers in translation, I know....

Peace and blessings to all.

Father James Silver

Monk James
Orthodox Church in America

----- Original Message -----
From: Mark House 
Date: Friday, July 7, 2006 7:23 pm
Subject: [B-Greek] pee or pie
To: b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org

> 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 
> 
> 
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