Why is the phi in alpha phi pronounced fee and not fye

[AlwaysSAI]

Originally Posted by MysticCat

You called? Just when I was headed to bed, too, so I'll stick to the short explanation.

Which is, basically, rufio and honeychile are right. It has nothing to do with coming after a vowel, (or technically, after the name of a vowel) -- that's a Greek Urban legend. The name of F is spelled Fi in Greek, and the Iota, like "i" in most European languages other than English, represents an "ee" sound, not an "eye" sound. So, "FEE" is the Greek pronunciation. Always. "FYE" is an anglicized, mainly American, pronunciation. The Alpha Phis chose to use the Greek pronunciations, while most of the rest of us use anglicized pronunciations.

And in case anyone is wondering, the correct pronuncitions of the names of the letters X, P, C and Y are "KSEE" (pronoucing both the K and the S), "PEE," "CHEE" (with the "ch" like in Scottish "loch") and "PSEE" (pronouncing both the P and the S).

Now, that really was short for me.

See, I knew about I(ee)ota, but I didn't know about X, P, C and Y. So, it's really, Chee Omega. And Kappa Kappa Ksee. And Phee Sigma Pee. You know a friend of mine told me that P but I thought he was just making a joke cuz he's a little anti greek.