The Sounds of Greek Four

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THE SOUNDS OF GREEK

How Greek Was and Is Pronounced

This is part 4 of a series of 4 posts to Metousia.

Τ τ 

Tau Tactics or Time or sTand

Υ υ 

 Upsilon The French U in Tu or the German ü or the Y in the form of Welsh that pronounces it as U. IPA [y] This sound tends to change to i and is pronounced as I in Modern Greek just as some Modern Welsh speakers use i for the sound spelt “Y” instead of the “u” and also explains Greek sun in sunthesis becoming sinthesis in English.

Φ φ 

 Phi The Aspirated P at the beginning of words like Phobos or English Pin or Pool or mop-handle.

Modern Greek however F as in Fat. Latin speakers lacked this sound and wrote Greek loan words starting with this sound with an F.

Χ χ 

 Chi An Aspirated K as in English Cat or Cool.

In Modern Greek it's a Fricative like the sound in the Gaelic (NOT the English) pronunciation of Loch or the ch in German words like Machen

This sound is also often transliterated as “h” as in Hue as it becomes ç before i and e but English speakers tend to hear it as a H so Classical Greek Metokhee is pronounced metohi in modern Greek.

Ψ ψ 

 Psi Ps Pi plus Sigma as in EcliPSe or English caPS

Ω ω 

 Omega the BIG O Ode Ocean like English sAW

There is NO H in Classical Greek. Aspirated letters have their own symbols.

Theta for Th Phi for Phi Chi for Kh. These are NOT Fricatives in Classical Greek!

However there is what scholars call a rough breathing.

Its not exactly the same as English H but is written as a h.

̒ ἁ ἑ ἡ ἱ ὁ ὑ ὡ

In classical Greek Ὀρος is oros but ὁρος is horos. Ῥήτωρ is rheetoor.

Although the historical rough breathing is used in written forms in many Modern Greek texts the “h” is NOT spoken and you will often see the breathing symbol omitted.

The dictionary form Holos ὅλος all becomes όλος olos.

(I am not going to explain Katherousa versus Dhemotika here!

That is a topic for a separate post)