[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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