Quote:
Originally Posted by rufio
it is pronounced OOP-silon by its self. but when a delta preceeds it, its YOOP-silon. like phi is Fie, but its Alpha Fee.
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O good lord. That Fie/fee thing is a bad enough Greek Urban Legend, and now we have Oopsilon/Yoopsilon added to it.
Think about it logically. Certainly the sounds letters represent change based on what other letters are around them --
c is pronounced like
s after
i or
e and otherwise like
k. But the name of the letter? When it's used for initials? That's like saying "T" is called "tee," unless it comes after a vowel, and then it's "Tay." So its F-"Tee"-D but U-"Tay"-Knoxville.
F is pronounced "fee" in Greek. Always. The anglicized pronounciation, particularly in America, is "Fie." That's because the sound represented by
Iota in Greek is "ee" (the Greek pronunciation is "ee-ota)," while the sound typically represented by
I in English is "eye." Some orgs, such as Alpha Phi, use the Greek pronunciation, others use the anglicized pronunction.
Upsilon is pronounced
Ü-psi-lon in classical Greek -- there's no
Y at the beginning, and the
u is an umlaut, like one might find in German. In modern Greek, it's more like "ee-psilon." It's not surprising that "YOOP-si-lon" is a standard English pronunciation, since we usually put a
y sound at the beginning of words that start with a long
u -- use, utility, ubiquitous.
To the degree that what comes before the
u has any influence, that
Y you hear after
delta is merely an epenthesis -- an insertion to ease pronunction going from the "ah" in
delta to the "oo" in
upsilon -- part of why we usually put a
y sound at the beginning of words that start with a long
u to start with.