Re: Greek Letter Upsilon
 

"Alpha" is a vowel, and in the Greek language, when "Phi" follows a vowel and nothing follows the "Phi", it is pronounced FEE not FIE.

Alpha Phi = Alpha FEE
Alpha Phi Alpha = Alpha FIE Alpha

Hope that clears that up. :)

SATX*APhi! you cleared up alot there for me.. one of my best friends from back home joined alpha phi at Hofstra in NY and i just couldn't understand that.. thanks so much!

Really? So, do they use something that looks like an actual Y like in my sig?

No problem! :)

re: fee/feye
 

Hmm... so my chapter's name is Omicron Phi... does that mean we should be pronouncing it Omicron Fee? damn... that would mean we've been saying it wrong for 37 years..ouch.

Ginger, I think you're ok.

Alpha Phi = FEE
Alpha Epsilon Phi = FIE

I'm not sure what the logic is, but if it's pronounced FIE when it follows Epsilon, it's probably pronounced FIE when it follows Omicron.

Well, SATX*APhi stated that because Phi is the last letter, the rule stays. So it would be Omicron Fee..?

btw, does anyone know all the other vowels in the greek alphabet?

yes, serenity they do.. which is rather stupid,i think... we recently a place that uses the real upsilon though, which is great. :) unfortunately the letter upsilon in the symbol font is just a Y which is rather ridiculous if you ask me...

there are also letters in the greek alphabet which have been forgotten...

i think alpha and epsilon are vowels, not sure what else...

The Greek vowels are: A, E, H, I, O, U, and W.

BTW, I stand to be corrected, and an AF probably knows more about this than I do, but here goes anyway. I don't think the pronunciation of the letter F has anything to do with what letter it comes after. I mean, that's like saying you pronounce the letter "P" "pee" unless it comes after a vowel, when it is "pie." Everything else aside, when would this come up except when one is spelling a word.

My understanding, and again I may be way off, is that in Greek, the letter F is pronounced "phee." Similarly, in Greek, X is pronounced "ksee," P is pronounced "pee," C is pronounced "kee," and Y is pronounced "psee." This makes since I is pronounced "yota" or "eeota" in Greek -- "eye" as the sound for I is pretty unique to English.

In Britain F is still pronounced "fee" (can't say about the other letters), but in the US, we have anglicized most if not all of the Greek letters -- we say "al-fa," "kap-pa" and "gam-ma" (where the "a" sounds like the "a" in "cap") rather than "ahl-fa," kah-pa" and "gah-ma," for example. Seems to me that AF just prefers to use the correct Greek pronunciation of F.

FWIW.

There are words in English that change pronunciation depending on the words around them - example: "the" is pronounced "thee" if it precedes a word that starts with a vowel, and "thuh" (short e) if it precedes a word that starts with a consonant. So the idea of Phi having 2 different pronunciations isn't too shocking.

I always thought AEPhi pronounces it FIE because, although Epsilon is itself a vowel, it ends in an N (nu) which is a consonant, while Alpha Phi pronounces it FEE because Alpha ends in a vowel... but then, I studied Latin, not Greek :)

In any case, if we did change to FEE, we'd have to rewrite a *lot* of songs... :D

I know a Delta Upsilon and they pronounce it that way as well.

hey,

I don't understand the squiggly letter you guys are talking about...I took Greek (ancient not modern) and the lowercase for Upsilon is a u, just a itsy bit wavier and no stem, but no squiggles.
anyway, i say more oo- than u- but not quite..

My first Greek teacher pronounced them U-psilon and Fee (phi) but other profs have diff pronunciations

My greek book basically agrees with this - gives the supposed ancient greek pronunciation, then an anglicized or americanized pronunciation.

the squiggly upsilon is basically a Y with the ends hanging down so it looks like they used to be longer but droop down now.. kinda like an m with the middle stem longer. :)

i drew what we commonly freehand an upsilon as.. i *tried* to make a real upsilon in photoshop, but that was disasterous.. its basically this with a little dangly longer and it hangs out in like a half circle...

http://www.translucent-love.com/upsilon.jpg