[B-Greek] PEI, FEI, XEI, KSI, PSI (was pee or pie)
Randall Buth
ybitan at mscc.huji.ac.il
Sat Jul 8 13:41:44 EDT 2006
The question on the names of Greek letters was raised and the answers
have been provided, if people were paying attention.
James egrapsen:
>I don't believe at any time in history have native speakers
pronounced it 'pie'
As suggested in
http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/b-greek/2005-October/035850.html
I believe the 'pie' pronunciation is due to the *English* Great Vowel
Shift.
James Tauber>
James is correct. It was the English vowel shift that created the
"pie are squared".
that means that the name (english)"pie" for PI and PEI is non-Greek.
It was never that way in Greek, ever.
this same result can be reached simply from another direction.
One of the ancient spelling traditions of the names of Greek letters was
PEI, FEI, XEI, KSEI, PSEI
these were pronounced, and should be pronounced today, exactly the
same as when spelled
PI, FI, XI, KSI, PSI.
This was in accord with the same ancient Greek system that produced
spellings like PEILATOS in some of our old unical NT manuscripts.
Westcott and Hort spelled names this way, like with SAMAREITHS
(samarites).
From preChristian times (post Alexander the great) EI was equal in
sound to I.
My advice: this is a no-brainer.
pronounce PI and PEI like a mexican saying piiter ... piicked ...
piickled,
that is, like the vowel sound in the english words
"pea" "pee" "feel" "fee"
the rest of the (non-english) world uses the Latin symbol [i] for
that vowel sound. (I used the Mexican example because the ancient
Greek PI/PEI was un-aspirated, the way that spanish speakers
naturally pronounce english "Peter".
If a Greek teacher uses "pie" [that is, pronounces -pai- ], then he
is speaking English. that is his choice but would be no excuse for a
publisher to reproduce it and call it Greek.
That also means that in Greek, the first syllable in Pilate's name
does not rhyme with either the english word "pay" or "pie" but with
"pee" as in "peel".
this is true whether you spell his name
PILATOS
or
PEILATOS,
SAMAREITHS or SAMARITHS
those are variant spellings of the same name and same pronunciation.
And those spellings are found in ALL stages of the NT manuscript
tradition, from the 2nd century on. They represent the ancient Koine
pronunciation (and happily are the same as modern Greek for these
particular vowel symbols, too.)
With the advent of CDs our field is actually poised to clean itself
up. It would be unfortunate if it missed the opportunity and
reinforced errors.
(In line with Curtis' comment, the Greeks would be happy, too, to
hear their language pronounced more in line with real Greek. I know
this is not a concern for most NT people, but why should NT-folk
insist on being both wrong and offensive? [NB: I am not including
Homer and pure-classicists in this. Their case is not clear-cut,
though it is not pretty to Greek ears.])
ERRWSO // ERRWSQE
pronounced [ eroso // erosthe] as with spanish vowels.
Randall Buth
Randall Buth, PhD
randallbuth at gmail.com
www.biblicalulpan.org
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