Quote:
Originally posted by 33girl
It doesn't have to do with whether it follows a vowel.
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Exactly. This is another urban Greek myth that just won't die.
Quote:
Originally posted by bethmousy
According to my significant other, who's a math doctoral student, there's New Greek and Old Greek. Old Greek is what they use in math- Phi is "fee," Chi is "key," Tau is pronounced "towel". Most places use New Greek for GLOs, thereby the pronounciation that most people use for their orgs.
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It's really more accurate to say there is
Greek Greek and
Anglicized Greek.
The Greek pronunciation of the name of the Greek letter
F is
always "Fee," whether one is talking about classical Greek or modern Greek. In Greek, the name of the letter is spelled
Fi (phi-iota). For it to be pronounced "Fie" it would be spelled
Fai (phi-alpha-iota).
F is never pronounced "Fie" in Greek -- that is a North American, anglicized pronunciation.
In the same fashion, all of the other letters with an "i" in them are pronounced "ee" in Greek: Iota = "EE-ota" (with the "EE" and the "o" often being elided into "Yota"); Xi = "KSee" (yes, both the K and S sounds are pronounced); Pi = "Pee"; Chi = "Chee" (with a German or Scottish shounding "ch" like "ach" or "loch"); and Psi = "PSee" (like "KSee").
Some GLOs use classical greek pronunciations for some letters, such as "Fee" or "EE-ota." But the bottom line is that no GLO I've ever heard of uses the Greek pronunciation for
all the Greek letters that form our names -- even the Alpha Phis use "al-fa" instead of "ahl-fah." We all used anglicized pronunciations to some degree or another.