Important Philosophical Questions + POLLS

I am not sure about that at all, but I always thought that all the words ended in -ae, where pronounced with a hard A and distinct E at the end.
Minutia-e
sunda-e
larva-e
alga-e
and so forth…

Maybe it’s this song’s fault :

1 Like

Here’s how I would pronounce those:

Word Rhyme
minutiae /ɪaɪ/
sundae /eɪ/
larvae /i:/
algae /i:/
reggae /eɪ/

I’m not sure I could even produce the sound you’re describing.

2 Likes

Oho, this is going to be “funny accent time” for all of you then :stuck_out_tongue:

2 Likes

I would pronounce all of them ending with the sound of “Tevere” (Rome’s river).
It has three “e” and all of them have the same sound.

2 Likes
π in English
  • pee
  • pie

0 voters

I heard a song: 100 digits of Pi, and I was surprised by the pronunciation

1 Like

It definitely rhymes with sky. Consider that the other pronunciation would get confused with P / p, common symbols in maths, science, and programming.

2 Likes

Well… in Italy we say “pee” just like P/p.
Often we say “pi greco” which means “Greek p” and I believed that it would sound that way in Greece too.
@Gia or @JethOrensin, could you confirm that?

I was really astonished hearing “pie”. :smile:

4 Likes

It’s just a short pi, it doesn’t have a long ee sound. :woman_shrugging:

5 Likes

π has the same sound of a short p like in “EpiPen”.

2 Likes
What about μ?
  • Me
  • Moo
  • Other

0 voters

I always said “me” (like pi) but at the university many pronounced it like a short “moo”.

1 Like

I had found that exact same idea in a TIE fighter game actually … where the squadrons T, M and N where named Mu and Nu and Tau … so it wasn’t just a weird idea they had. It really is a thing!?!

3 Likes

Mü.

Not kidding, that’s how German’s say it. ^ ^ In English, I would probably say something like “Myoo”.

5 Likes

Italian wikipedia says “diffusa come mu in ambito scientifico e tecnico”.
It’s an engineer thing! :wink:

It seems like it is a matter of “accepted math pronounciation” somehow:

O_O

You can compare it to this:

4 Likes

That first video… I guess they pronounce everything like they do sororities. :roll_eyes:

1 Like

What does it mean to stress part of a word?

Also woulda pronounced that me/moo word like “you” or “ooo” cause I didn’t know it had an m sound in it

1 Like

There is a song that would have killed that kind of non-sense :stuck_out_tongue:

For the foreigners that might click on it, yes, as you can see in the description, almost all the lyrics are acronyms of Greek public services or private organizations :rofl:

1 Like

Italian pronunciation of Greek letters is more similar but isn’t really accurate.
That was nice to hear. The g-w thing is puzzling me though :smile:

1 Like

I’m not sure I agree with the video that it is the correct pronunciation. It’s the Greek pronunciation, but as these letters are indeed ubiquitous in maths, physics, science and engineering, there is also a more or less standardised international pronunciation of those same letters (or local pronunciation, like the Dutch pronunciation that I learnt in high school). I could pronounce the τ like “tav” or the μ like “mi”, but if the people I’m talking to wouldn’t understand me, it makes no sense to do so.

When I discuss math in English, I pronounce the Greek alphabet in English, when I discuss it in Dutch, I pronounce the letters in Dutch. Unless I’m using them to discuss modern Greek, then there is a case to be made to use the modern Greek pronunciation.


After all, we don’t have any problems with the Latin alphabet being pronounced differently in different languages, either.

5 Likes

I’d argue that different languages adopted the same alphabet to express their own, pre-existing sounds.

Same way Chinese characters are pronounced completely differently in Korean.

In the Greek alphabet case, it’s the Greek letters that are mispronounced (and I can understand why, but it’s still the wrong one, technically).

EDIT: Yes, we probably borrowed from the Phoenicians, too. :stuck_out_tongue:

3 Likes