[B-Greek] Koine Greek pronunciation
James Tauber
jtauber at jtauber.com
Sat Apr 12 18:41:55 EDT 2008
To make matters worse, most (all?) American English dialects make no
qualitative distinction between "o" and an open "a" and so I've found
it quite difficult to teach the pronunciation of alpha versus omicron.
As far as I know, Greek speakers never conflated omicron/omega with
alpha.
James Tauber
On Apr 12, 2008, at 2:51 PM, Eric S. Weiss wrote:
>
>> Cory Taylor wrote:
>>
>> Pronouncing omicron with the same length as omega is a
>> feature of modern Greek. Some argue (e.g. Caragounis)
>> that Koine Greek should be pronounced like Modern Greek.
>>
>> Classical Greek pronunciation had omicron as a short "o"
>> sound, and omega as a long "o." This comes out in the
>> names of the letters - "omicron" is actually "o micron,"
>> which means "little o;" likewise, "o mega" is "big o."
>> In other words, "omicron" is a "short o" and "omega is
>> a "long o."
>>
>> Hope this helps!
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