Which is why I presented them both for comparison, between the “accepted math pronounciation” (which is global) and the current Greek language one (do note the word currect)
I remember (though this is more for the linguistic topic) an example presented by one of the teachers at school about the issue of ancient pronounciation and he was talking about the letter B … he mentioned that on a ceramic or a stone tablet there was an inscription talking about the bleating sounds of sheep describing them as “βε - βε” which in modern Greek would have been a “μπε - μπε” (beee - beee) sound.
The teacher pointed out that either our pronounciation of the letter B changed through the centuries, or we have to consider that sheep started bleating in different sounds
Disclaimer:
The story is true, meaning that it actually happened in class. Not sure if such inscription really exists though.
Oh, well, except maybe for those saxons who destroyed all of our nice vowels!
I have hard times trying to explain to my daughters that British say eeeii instead of a
iii instead of e
aaai instead of i
yuuu instead of u
Criminal, isn’t it?
Words which are used in English but which came from another language and are still thought of by speakers of English as foreign words are marked to show the language they came from:
I think it’s implying that there are many other words that were borrowed from other languages into English, but English speakers view those as simply “English” words, which is a snarky way of pointing out that English speakers draw an arbitrary distinction of what they consider to be “foreign” words.
I say something like “mew” or maybe “myoo”, like @KAOSkonfused suggested. I’m still not entirely sure about the umlaut.
I discussed the Greek math symbol pronunciation issue with a Greek colleague of mine (we’re both researchers that frequently work with mathematical notation). Of course, he knows the original Greek pronunciation of those characters, but he adopts the typical English pronunciation that is commonly used by American mathematicians. Interestingly, it’s kind of a mix here. Everyone says “pi” like “pie”, but mathematicians/engineers/scientists often say “phi” like “fee”.
The English pronunciation is also essential for the pun that is “Pi” day
English is very important for Indian people because
1 it was a colony 2 India has a bunch of different languages.
So business Indian people for example use English when moving inside their country.
I just didn’t think that the colonization was sufficient to create a new form of English. I always thought a country needed English as its first language to have its own way of speaking it. Its “officially recognized” way, I mean.
It’s from a dictionary (it’s I think an early 2000s edition, didn’t note the year, please don’t make me pull that brick down again). Many words inside that are unmistakably Greek are attributed “Latin” or even one of the other languages. I have observed the same choice made by editors in other dictionaries and online sources about languages (for example articles about linguistics from respectable online magazines). They basically consciously erase the Greek aspect.
I have raised the point with many people, even with people whose job is really close to writing that dictionary, and I get replies of “why does it matter”, “well, it’s actually Latin” (yep, I got my own language americasplained to me), “Greek was a different language back then”, “Greek doesn’t count, you weren’t part of the colonization” etcetcetc.
So, I might have somewhat strong feelings when I’m told what I’m not allowed to do with my hair and my makeup, my clothes and my food, lest I “offend” someone half a globe away because they have their own problems and they try to impose them on everyone else instead of solving them, but my identity is brushed off like it’s nothing (and I don’t mean Aristotle, who gives a f about Aristotle, I mean now and today).
Believe it or not, there’s a movement lately saying we shouldn’t be allowed to do cateye makeup, because it “appropriates” Asian eyes (the cat-like effect). I kid you not. I mean WTF.
(Disclaimer: This is not about the pronunciation thing, it just came up in continuation to that discussion.)
P.S. I understand the problem with the English categories, but I feel it’s not my place to have an opinion at this point.
There’s nothing officially recognized about any of the various forms of English.
English is very widely spoken in India and Pakistan, although most often as a fluent secondary language. They have the second and third largest population of English speakers. It is a sort of lingua franca that helps facilitate interaction between a large, diverse population that is split over many other first languages.
For country to develop its own identifiable way of doing something, it simply needs to have a large enough of population doing it. Clearly, India and Pakistan have more than large enough of a population to develop their own linguistic characteristics.
It’s not only colonisation as I said. I don’t have precise statistics but english is used in India a lot as soon as you cross languages boundaries inside India.
I’d doubt that, because that’s what we call φ already…
Ah, wait, I get what you’re saying now. I say phi like I say pi, or chi, or psi, which all rhyme with why.
It could be that those words were Greek in origin, but passed into English through Latin or one of the other languages? For example, the word telephone entered English through French, thus could be seen as an English adaption of a French word that got a name based on Greek.
I originally tried finding the etymology of telescope, but it turns out it was named by a Greek mathematician, with a Greek name. So that’s likely to have a directly Greek origin
I care, I spent quite some time studying Aristotle’s work on logic…
Then why include the other languages, when basically their words are Latin (yes, not all, but usually when it comes to the words we’re talking about)? Or Latin, and not only French/ Spanish etc, ie the latest vehicle? We either include the origin-origin (sic), or not.
In any case their actual reasoning has been along the lines of what I’ve mentioned.
LOL, I meant in the context of “why it matters”, as in “it’s not about our cultural heritage to the world and the usual blah blah”. But I can refresh my Aristotle readings, if it’s important.
And, if I may add, teaching people that telephone is French for example, omitting any discussion of the Greek origin, is IMHO one of the reasons those gaps in education exist that we all have noticed and discussed elsewhere.
Because Latin, French and German all were very important as the lingua franca of a huge amount of scientific literature, which Greek was not. It started out with Latin being the predominant language, then it became popular to use French and German, and English has only become the standard since the last 100 years or so.
Apart from that, French, Spanish and Italian also have a lot of influence on English through immigration (mainly to the Americas), which again, Greek does not have.
I’m not saying that this is something the writers of your dictionary considered, but it is not immediately obvious that words with roots in Greek also have a Greek origin, is what I’m trying to say. It could still be the case that you’re right, of course, I’m mostly speculating here.
I agree partially, it could at least be mentioned that the word has a Greek origin. But on the other hand, this is a dictionary, and not an etymology dictionary. Does it mention that the word cookie has a Dutch origin?
There’s more variation in English pronunciation of these letters than represented in the video. Especially, I think this video lists typically American pronunciations whereas the variants I mention may be more British in character.
-eta names can have e as /i:/ instead of as /eɪ/.
mu, nu can be pronounced /mju:/, /nju:/.
tau can be pronounced /tɔː/.
upsilon can begin with /u/ or some similar vowel.
omega can stress on the first vowel, the second being reduced: /ˈəʊmiːɡə/.
I’m talking about a dictionary. I understand scientific literature is the norm for you, but not for everyone.
This exactly is the problem. You can’t disregard a language because it’s not about America. Not everything is about America. And if they were taught a bit more about the rest of the world, then maybe, just maybe, they wouldn’t have all those problems and we wouldn’t have to suffer because of them, as collateral damage.
Especially when I am, ALL the TIME, being pushed to adhere to norms that have nothing to do with me. Either we gatekeep cultures or we don’t (I vote we don’t, but I find it highly pretentious of the people who do, and then turn around and don’t, when it’s not about them.)
It is literally their job to know. People who write linguistic articles as well. And when I point it out to them, it is very unscientific of them to answer me as mentioned above.
I’ll have you know that many learned societies here in the United States have even adopted Greek letters, names, and phrases as part of their words and symbolism as inspired by the pedagogical tradition established by the Greeks.
And if they were taught a bit more about the rest of the world, then maybe, just maybe, they wouldn’t have all those problems and we wouldn’t have to suffer because of them, as collateral damage.