[B-Greek] pee or pie

Jim West jwest at highland.net
Fri Jul 7 19:38:58 EDT 2006



Mark House wrote:
> 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.


I learned the "pie" pronunciation.


-- 
Jim West, ThD

http://web.infoave.net/~jwest  -- Biblical Studies Resources
http://petrosbaptistchurch.blogspot.com  -- Weblog

Je mehr Gnade, desto weniger Sünde -- Huldrych Zwingli



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