Quote:
Originally Posted by AOII Angel
Our written out spelling of Greek letters are english not Greek. A is called alpha but not spelled out as alpha, etc.
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This is why I'm always amused when someone tries to spell out the names of the Greek letters using Greek letters and spells Alpha
ALPHA. Ummmm, that spells "Alpea."
Alpha would just be
ALFA. (Whenever one sees "ph" in an English word, one can pretty safely bet that the word comes from Greek and that the "ph" was originally
F).
Quote:
Originally Posted by AOII Angel
By the way, MysticCat...did you study classical Greek in school? I'm very interested in your background!  |
No, I didn't -- just one of the things I've made general, informal study of on my own. Probably didn't hurt that there are quite a few ministers in my family, so I grew up in an environment that valued some understanding of the New Testament in Greek -- that plus an education that stressed an understanding of Greek and Latin roots of words. (Yes, I'm that all old.
) In addition, with a music background, singers have to learn rules of pronunciation for foreign languages even if they don't have a clue what the words mean -- I can sing or "speak" Italian like a pro, even if I can only guess at what I'm talking about. That's probably given me a facility for paying attention to how foreign words are pronounced.
All of that means that I can be pretty good at figuring out the meanings of lots of Greek and Latin words, and I can be pretty good at figuring out how to pronounce those words, but I'd be lost trying to put a Greek or Latin sentence together. The rules of grammar and syntax I know not at all.
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