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  #28  
Old 06-04-2010, 01:37 PM
naraht naraht is offline
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Join Date: Apr 2001
Location: Rockville,MD,USA
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Quote:
Originally Posted by DrPhil View Post
I'm not talking about you. Other than historical inaccuracies, how could an outsider correct a pledge manual?
The text in question describes pronounciation of Greek Letters by various groups and indicates that the reason that the Phi and the Xi in Alpha Phi and Alpha Xi Delta are pronounced so as to rhyme with "bee" is that they follow vowels. This is not a correct understanding of Greek Pronounciation.

This is of course complicated by the fact that the fact that the names of the greek letters are different now than they were 2000 years ago. For example, the second letter of the greek alphabet is now pronounced as closer to an english v than a english b and the pronounciation of the name of the letter is has a shortish i like in fit (but a little bit of long e) rather than a long a like bay.

For Phi and Xi, the pronounciations where they rhyme with bee are what is in modern greek, the pronounciations where they rhyme with fly are what is in ancient greek. However for Xi, the modern greek is closer to ksee in pronounciation than zee.

The Wikipedia page for Alpha Phi says
"However, the pronunciation of Phi as "Fee" rather than "Fi" actually results from the fact that the organization adopted the Greek rather than anglicized, mainly American, pronunciation of the letter because it sounded more feminine." There isn't anything I can find on Alpha Phi's National page, but a lot of Alpha Phi chapter websites have the "after a vowel" explanation.

I can't find anything either on wikipedia or on the Alpha Xi Delta national website on why it rhymes with bee.

The text from the original pledge manual the GCer found gets it wrong, the one from Kappa Sigma is similar but basically says that not all GLOs pronounce them the same and these two are exceptions...

I'm not sure if that counts as a historical inaccuracy though.

For further information, just search greekchat for topics on greek pronounciation.

I'm not saying that anyone is pronouncing their own greek letters wrong, it's such a mess of Current Greek, British pronounciation of Ancient Greek and American pronounciation that just about everyone is right.
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