I promise this is the last Pi post until Pi Day next year… The Octopi tshirt to the left is available here.
One thought on “Octopi”
I’m all for eating pie – March 14 or any day. But there seems to be a general assumption that the name of the Greek letter ‘pi’ is sounded as a homophone of the English word ‘pie’ (see Wiki article on Pi Day). That pronunciation only holds if you are a mathematician, physicist, or some such scientist, and take your pronunciation cue from the Latin. Among Greek scholars you will find the name of the letter sounded as a homophone of ‘pee’. It all depends on how one pronounces the iota in the Greek name — either like a short i as in the French word ‘vite’, or a long i as in the French word ‘vive’ (as found in American textbooks) or like the ‘ea’ in ‘bread’, or the i in ‘hit’ (as found in British textbooks). Either way it comes out more like an ‘ee’ sound or shorter, and certainly not an ‘eye’ sound. And so with the pronunciation of the name of iota itself — ‘ee-ota’ rather than ‘eye-ota’, and at the end of the Greek alphabet, ‘fee’ rather than ‘f-eye’, ‘kee’ than ‘k-eye’, and ‘psee’ than ‘ps-eye’. This is not unlike the the ‘i’ in ‘Iraq’. While a certain president of the United States might say ‘EYE-RAK’, with the accent on the first syllable; a citizen of that country, speaking English, might say ‘ear-AK’ — a short ‘i’ and the accent on the second syllable (or at least something close to that).
I promise this is the last Pi post until Pi Day next year… The Octopi tshirt to the left is available here.
I’m all for eating pie – March 14 or any day. But there seems to be a general assumption that the name of the Greek letter ‘pi’ is sounded as a homophone of the English word ‘pie’ (see Wiki article on Pi Day). That pronunciation only holds if you are a mathematician, physicist, or some such scientist, and take your pronunciation cue from the Latin. Among Greek scholars you will find the name of the letter sounded as a homophone of ‘pee’. It all depends on how one pronounces the iota in the Greek name — either like a short i as in the French word ‘vite’, or a long i as in the French word ‘vive’ (as found in American textbooks) or like the ‘ea’ in ‘bread’, or the i in ‘hit’ (as found in British textbooks). Either way it comes out more like an ‘ee’ sound or shorter, and certainly not an ‘eye’ sound. And so with the pronunciation of the name of iota itself — ‘ee-ota’ rather than ‘eye-ota’, and at the end of the Greek alphabet, ‘fee’ rather than ‘f-eye’, ‘kee’ than ‘k-eye’, and ‘psee’ than ‘ps-eye’. This is not unlike the the ‘i’ in ‘Iraq’. While a certain president of the United States might say ‘EYE-RAK’, with the accent on the first syllable; a citizen of that country, speaking English, might say ‘ear-AK’ — a short ‘i’ and the accent on the second syllable (or at least something close to that).