[Q] How to pronounce greek letters?
Lo Kam Ming
Hello,
Would anybody please tell me how to pronounce the following greak
letters (The English transliterations are provided) ? Cause I have been
confused with their pronounciations. I can understand international
pheonetic symbols.
1. iota
2. xi
3. chi
4. psi
Thank you for your help in advance.
LO, Kam Ming
Department of Systems Engineering Email: km...@se.cuhk.hk
and Engineering Management Tel. : (852) 609 8334
The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Shatin, Hong Kong
Marg Burnfield
>
>Hello,
>
>Would anybody please tell me how to pronounce the following greak
>letters (The English transliterations are provided) ? Cause I have been
>confused with their pronounciations. I can understand international
>pheonetic symbols.
>
>1. iota
>2. xi
>3. chi
>4. psi
>
>Thank you for your help in advance.
>
Good question my professors can't agree on things like beta. Good luck.
Margaret Burnfield
George Baloglou
>
>Hello,
>
>Would anybody please tell me how to pronounce the following greak
>letters (The English transliterations are provided) ? Cause I have been
>confused with their pronounciations. I can understand international
>pheonetic symbols.
>
I cannot, but I can still answer your questions:
>1. iota real
^
>2. xi axiom
^
>3. chi height
^
>4. psi absolute
^^
>
>Thank you for your help in advance.
>
You are welcome, although I do not see why you need these pronounciations;
pronouncing Greek letters "right" can often make you less understandable :-)
>
>LO, Kam Ming
>Department of Systems Engineering Email: km...@se.cuhk.hk
> and Engineering Management Tel. : (852) 609 8334
>The Chinese University of Hong Kong
>Shatin, Hong Kong
>
George Baloglou -- (Tenured) Assistant Professor of Mathematics,
State University of New York, College at Oswego, NY 13126, USA
** sometimes my opinions contradict those of my employer **
Mark Davis
Although I don't exactly consider myself an authority, I did study Greek
briefly when I was in high school. Also, my father was a teacher of
languages, and we discussed the alphabet from time to time.
My understanding is as follows:
iota : eye OH tah
xi : zai (as in banzai):
chi : like xi but with a hard k
psi : sigh (as in psychology)
Hope this helps!
Mark Davis
Jan Cnops
: Hello,
: Would anybody please tell me how to pronounce the following greak
: letters (The English transliterations are provided) ? Cause I have been
: confused with their pronounciations. I can understand international
: pheonetic symbols.
: 1. iota
: 2. xi
: 3. chi
: 4. psi
I hope you mean how to pronounce the names of the letters, not how to
pronounce a Greek text containing those letters.
To be clear, you have to know of course which language you want to speak.
In English there are two tendencies: the `pronounce as it is written' is
most widespread, but I heard people using the `pronounce as the ancient
Greek would' philosophy. The worst language I know to try to explain in
writing how something sounds is English, but I'll give it a try, using the
letters as follows
a as in as
(er) between er in daughter and a in as
i as in I
e as in bed
ee as in weed
kh as something between g in girl and c in cab
o as in dog
oo as in door
ou as in you
y as in yuk
U: a sound which does not exist in English. You get it when you pronounce
ee as above and try to whistle at the same time. In phonetic symbols it's [y].
and give a short list. Anything ending in -eta is pronounced -eet(er) in `as
written' and -eta in `old Greek', so I only mention beta as an example.
Anything ending in -i is pronounced -i in `as written' and -ee in `old Greek'.
name as written old greek
beta beet(er) beta
epsilon epsilon epseelon
iota yoot(er) yoota
mu myou mU
nu nyou nU
xi kzi kzee
omicron omikron omeekron
upsilon (er)psilon Upseelon
chi khi khee
omega omeeg(er) omega
In almost all European languages, except for English and Greek(!), the
pronounciation is the one from the `old Greek' column.
If you ever meet a Greek, he'll pronounce the letters quite differently,
because Greek has changed considerably in the past few thousand years.
My pronunciation of modern Greek is rather atrocious (I haven't spoken it
for years), but still I can
give some examples: the sound U has disappeared from Greek, the beta is
pronounced as a rather soft `v' and as a result in modern Greek beta
is pronounced veeta and the upsilon is pronounced eepseelon.
And a last anomaly: the French call our `y' `Greek i' (i grec), which is
iota, or `upsilon', while we (Flemish and Dutch) call it ypsilon
(pronounced eepseelon).
: Thank you for your help in advance.
You're welcome.
Jan Cnops , Universiteit Gent.
Gerhard Niklasch
In article <D01w2...@Newbridge.COM>, mda...@Newbridge.COM (Mark Davis)
writes:|> wrote: [...]
|> >Would anybody please tell me how to pronounce the following greak
|> >letters (The English transliterations are provided) ? Cause I have been
|> >confused with their pronounciations. I can understand international
|> >pheonetic symbols.
|> >
|> >1. iota
|> >2. xi
|> >3. chi
|> >4. psi
|> [...]
|> My understanding is as follows:
|>
|> iota : eye OH tah
|> xi : zai (as in banzai):
|> chi : like xi but with a hard k
|> psi : sigh (as in psychology)
|>
For the record, the above is true in the English-speaking world. It is
different for native speakers of French, German, Italian, Spanish,...,
not to mention Greek.
Or to vary a quip by Goethe (another name that tends to be funnily
pronounced ;-), originally aimed at us mathematicians:
``English-speaking people are a kind of Frenchmen; whenever you say
something to them, they immediately translate it into their own
language, and it becomes something entirely different.''
Wow, now I seem to have offended almost half the world...;-)
flame >/dev/null
Gerhard
--
+------------------------------------+----------------------------------------+
| Gerhard Niklasch | All opinions are mine --- I even doubt |
| <ni...@mathematik.tu-muenchen.de> | whether this Institute HAS opinions:-] |
+------------------------------------+----------------------------------------+
George Baloglou
>In article <D01w2...@Newbridge.COM>, mda...@Newbridge.COM (Mark Davis) wrote:
>
>[original posting deleted]
>>
>> My understanding is as follows:
>>
>> iota : eye OH tah
>> xi : zai (as in banzai):
>> chi : like xi but with a hard k
>> psi : sigh (as in psychology)
>>
>
>to pronounce the 'i' as 'ee' (like in 'wheel'). This makes the four above
>sound like
>
>iota : ee OH tah
>xi : ksee
>chi : khee (guttural kh)
>psi : psee (we *do* sound the 'p')
>
>Is there a greek mathematician listening ?
>
Yeah, right here :-) I do not remember my French well enough to
have realized on my own that you guys agree 100% with the (modern)
Greek way of pronouncing the letters listed above, but I am glad
to hear that this is the case ... Here are a few more comments:
The way Greeks pronounce "khee" (chi) is somewhere between the
English sound in "chronic" and the deep, throat-clearing sound
you hear in Arabic or Hebrew when it comes to the corresponding
letter.
English "x" is the direct analogue of Greek "ksee" (xi), except
when at the beginning of a word; as an important example of this
rather rare situation, let me briefly analyse a word that is very
dear to most members of this group, "xerox": yes, it comes from
Greek "kseeros" = "dry" and "xerography" = "dry writing", while
the corresponding "newborn" Greek term is "kseerotypia" = "dry
typing" :-)
Along the same lines, "ps" is never pronounced as Greek "psee"
(psi) when at the beginnining of a word, even though all such
words are Greek ("psalm", "psoriasis") or born out of Greek words
("psychology", "pseudometric"); the pronounciaton becomes Greek
when "ps" (or even "bs") is not at the beginning of the word.
:-) Now try to pronounce "psipsina"( children's "cat") the
English way or "kseksaspros" ("bleached") the Greek way ...
(Those are not "official" Greek words, by the way.)
>--
>GFR (Gilles F. ROBERT - UMPA - E.N.S Lyon - FRANCE)
Noam Elkies
>English "x" is the direct analogue of Greek "ksee" (xi), except
A much more common exception is the gz pronunciation
as in example and exhaust. Then there are the words
borrowed from French where the x does not sound at all...
(e.g. Bordeaux)
--Noam D. Elkies (elk...@zariski.harvard.edu)
Dept. of Mathematics, Harvard University
justin struby
pronounce the Greek letters one way, but the Greeks (fraternities
and sororities) on campus pronounced them another. Even more
confusing was the way the organizations pronounced them differently
depending on position.
For example, Alpha Phi: ('phi' rhymes with 'me')
Alpha Phi Omega: ('phi' rhymes with 'eye').
I never knew what anybody was talking about! =)
/-----------------------------------------------------------------
/ Justin B. Struby / Actuarial science is more than
/ jst...@unlinfo.unl.edu / just a matter of life and death!
/ University of Nebraska - USA / 85 SOA credits... hire me? :)
Lou Pecora
(Noam Elkies) wrote:
Hey, you're talkin' French. Nothin' at the end of the words sounds at
all...
--
Lou Pecora
Michael Weiss
Hey, you're talkin' French. Nothin' at the end of the words sounds at
all...
Or for you category fans, French pronunciation is a forgetful functor....
Wei-Hwa Huang
>Lo Kam Ming (kmlo@cuse96) wrote:
>: Would anybody please tell me how to pronounce the following greak
>: letters (The English transliterations are provided) ? Cause I have been
>: confused with their pronounciations. I can understand international
>: pheonetic symbols.
>: 1. iota
>: 2. xi
>: 3. chi
>: 4. psi
>I hope you mean how to pronounce the names of the letters, not how to
>pronounce a Greek text containing those letters.
>To be clear, you have to know of course which language you want to speak.
>In English there are two tendencies: the `pronounce as it is written' is
>most widespread, but I heard people using the `pronounce as the ancient
>Greek would' philosophy. The worst language I know to try to explain in
I was under the impression that we have absolutely no idea how the ancient
Greeks pronounced vowels; they might pronounce the last three letters
there "ksoo" "koo" and "soo" for all we know!
From experience, I doubt there really is a "correct" way to pronounce them.
Just do it consistently, and people won't mind that much. So, which one is
"phi" in the phrase "Fee fi fo fum"?
David Carlton
> I was under the impression that we have absolutely no idea how the
> ancient Greeks pronounced vowels; they might pronounce the last
> three letters there "ksoo" "koo" and "soo" for all we know!
We do have some idea; look at W.S. Allen's _Vox Graeca_.
> From experience, I doubt there really is a "correct" way to
> pronounce them. Just do it consistently, and people won't mind that
> much.
Yeah, really. If I'm reading a classical greek text, I might take
some care, but if I'm reading individual math symbols, what does it
matter? And it would really confuse people if I pronounced zeta the
'correct ancient way', which is something like sdeta, or if I
pronounced theta with an aspirated t at the start instead of a th, and
so forth.
david carlton
car...@math.mit.edu
Everybody gets free BORSCHT!
Dave Nadler
There is a great story about this. Back in the 1950's and 1960's there
was a very respected professor of mathematics from Texas who would
write psi on the blackboard, and with a prefectly straight face refer
to it as "pitchfork", and then he'd write a ksi on the blackboard and
refer to it as "fishin' worm".
Can anybody identify this person? I forget who it was.
dn
Benjamin J. Tilly
colu...@osf.org (Michael Weiss) writes:
What I remember of it is even more of a forgetful funtor though. :-)
Ben Tilly
Wei-Hwa Huang
>There is a great story about this. Back in the 1950's and 1960's there
>was a very respected professor of mathematics from Texas who would
>write psi on the blackboard, and with a prefectly straight face refer
>to it as "pitchfork", and then he'd write a ksi on the blackboard and
>refer to it as "fishin' worm".
One of my teachers was teaching complex analysis from Churchill and Brown.
There they use a capital theta that looks like a sideways I inside of
an O. My teacher always called it "Batman."
Gilles F. ROBERT
>
> Actually, they are _Canadian_ pronunciations, thank you very much!! ;)
>
Please accept my humble apologies.
> Of course transliterations vary from language to language, but for speakers
> of English, I think we can take our cues from the following words:
>
> xylophone, chiropractor, psychology.
>
> Do you have similar such words in French? From vague recollections of my
> high school French, I think you must.
Of course, for instance the above get translated to
xylophone, chiropracteur, psychologie.
^^ ^^
Not so strange since these are, after all, greek words (the spelling is
different, of course).
Cheers,
Dr. Richard Botting
One of my teachers pronounced \xi as squiggle-eetah
which was easier to say, and descriptive as well. I shared this with a class
recently and it caused some hilarity.
In fact it matters more that the pronuciation and the notation be consistent
than it be pronounced/written the same. I still recall the feeling of dread
when I realized (in a different class) that the lecturer had switched from one
way of writing a 'zed'/'zee' to the other at different times to when he had
switched the meanings of the symbol.... so the same meaning had different
symbols and different symbols had the same meaning... all in one lecture.
--
EMail: di...@csci.csusb.edu=rbot...@wiley.csusb.edu.
ftp://ftp.csci.csusb.edu/dick
<a href="http://www.csci.csusb.edu/dick/">WWW</a>
Disclaimer::=`CSUSB may or may not agree with this message`.
Copyright(1994)::=`Copy as long as you include this copyright and signature`.
Matthew P Wiener
>One of my teachers pronounced \xi as squiggle-eetah which was easier
>to say, and descriptive as well.
I know of one well-known mathematician who pronounces $\xi$ as "zeta".
--
-Matthew P Wiener (wee...@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu)
T.M...@massey.ac.nz
(Matthew P Wiener) wrote:
>
> In article <3bub0n$f...@news.csus.edu>, dick@silicon (Dr. Richard Botting) writes:
> >One of my teachers pronounced \xi as squiggle-eetah which was easier
> >to say, and descriptive as well.
>
> I know of one well-known mathematician who pronounces $\xi$ as "zeta".
Surely it's not too much to ask that even a mathematician
should have enough intelligence to learn the names of 24
letters. I know that pronunciations vary a bit, but a degree
of consistency is much easier for students taking more
than one course.
BTW, Americans seem to say bay-ta and zay-ta, whereas
Britons sat bee-ta and zee-ta. That amount of variation
doesn't cause trouble.
While I'm at it, those who use Gothic script ought
to learn those letters too. Most seem unable to
distinguish A from U. So the book says, let "A be
an algebra", and the teacher says "let U be ..." thus
destroying the mnemonic value of the notation.
I'm not saying we should learn all the strange
alphabets in existence, but if you use them, use them
consistently with others.
Terry Moore, Statistics Department, Massey University, New Zealand.
Imagine a person with a gift of ridicule [He might say] First that a
negative quantity has no logarithm; secondly that a negative quantity has
no square root; thirdly that the first non-existent is to the second as the
circumference of a circle is to the diameter. Augustus de Morgan
kal...@nso.uchc.edu
>Subject: [Q] How to pronounce greek letters?
>Date: Mon, 28 Nov 1994 15:16:47 GMT
>Hello,
>Would anybody please tell me how to pronounce the following greak
>letters (The English transliterations are provided) ?
Has anyone ever considered the idea that there is no math anxiety? It's
really Greek letter anxiety!
symb...@gmail.com
1. iota : eye-o-tah
2. xi : zz-eye
3. chi : k-eye
4. psi : sigh
I found this valuable information https://www.greekalphabetletters.com/greek-alphabet-pronunciations.html