Newsgroups: sci.lang
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news2.harvard.edu!oitnews.harvard.edu!purdue!ames!enews.sgi.com!ix.netcom.com!netcom13!alderson
From: alderson@netcom13.netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Subject: Re: Greek letter "Phi"
In-Reply-To: mhthorn@interserv.com's message of Sun, 26 Jan 1997 06:27:32 GMT
Message-ID: <ALDERSON.97Jan27001330@netcom13.netcom.com>
Sender: alderson@netcom13.netcom.com
Reply-To: alderson@netcom.com
Organization: NETCOM On-line services
References: <32eaf7da.38026005@news.spry.com>
Date: Mon, 27 Jan 1997 08:13:30 GMT
Lines: 18

In the names of fraternities, the names of the letters of the Greek alphabet
are given their traditional English readings, so that the 4th-from-last letter
is named to rhyme with American English "FIE" (phonetically, [faj]).

In Modern Greek, on the other hand, and in Koine Greek (post-Alexander), it is
pronounced to rhyme with American English "FEE" [fi].

In classical Athens, it did not represent a fricative but rather an aspirate,
as in American English "PAN", "POT", "PUN" ([phi] rhyming with American English
"PEA"--and earlier [phej] to rhyme with American English "PAY").

None of which has to do with gender, or phrase-initial position, or anything of
the sort.  Just different pronunciations in different times and places.
-- 
Rich Alderson   You know the sort of thing that you can find in any dictionary
                of a strange language, and which so excites the amateur philo-
                logists, itching to derive one tongue from another that they
                know better: a word that is nearly the same in form and meaning
                as the corresponding word in English, or Latin, or Hebrew, or
                what not.
                                                --J. R. R. Tolkien,
alderson@netcom.com                               _The Notion Club Papers_
