[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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