Greeks had two letters transcribed in English with the letter E.In pronouncing transcriptions, it is pronounced identically with chi: both are pronounced K. (That is why “chaos” is pronounced “kay-oss” and not “chay-oss.”) Greek also had a real K: the letter kapa ( Κ κ). Greek did not have a sound corresponding to our CH, so whenever you see CH in a Greek word, pronounce it like K. It is always transcribed with a CH in English. The chi was a kind of very hard h-like sound.
The Greek letter that looks like X is named “chi” ( Χ χ), which is pronounced “kai” (as in the “chi-square” test in statistics).Similarly when X (pronounced KS) is initial, we pronounce only the S part (as in "xenophobia" or "xylophone" or Xenophon). Therefore in PS we write but do not pronounce the P when it is initial (as in “psychology”). However, in Greek psi and xi can occur as initial sounds of words, which would seem unpronounceable in English.(Caution: The letter that looks like our X is chi. This is the case with the letter psi ( Ψ ψ), which was pronounced PS, and with the letter xi ( Ξ ξ), corresponding to our X. Some Greek consonants correspond to two-letter combinations in English.Greek had an F ( Φ φ), but (following Roman usage) it is usually transcribed with the spelling PH, as in “philosophy.”.In English it is always spelled TH, just as you would imagine. In Greek it was written with the letter theta ( Θ θ). Like English (but unlike most languages), Greek had a TH sound.In general, if you remember that the spelling OE is pronounced like the EE in "see," you'll be fine (Oedipus = EE-duh-puss). For example, the region spelled Boeotia comes out "bee-OSH-a" even though that doesn't sound very Greek. Greek words used in English, including proper names, are usually anglicized in speech. If you get that right, people will forgive most other missteps. In transcribed Greek names, CH always comes out sounding like K. The single most important point to remember is that there is no CH (as in "cheese") in Greek. (Where Greek letters are given, they include both upper and lower case and are printed in blue.) That is convenient in certain ways, but some of the transcription conventions don't always use English letters the way they are used in other English words, and some Greek letters are not consistently differentiated in their English transcriptions. (You can also avoid embarrassing gaffes.)Įnglish transcriptions of ancient Greek words (or English words built on Greek roots -so-called "neo-Grecisms") tend to be based on the letters of written Greek, not the sounds of the language. Learn this stuff once, and you can impress people (or at least yourself) for the rest of your life. That should mean that it doesn't make much difference how you pronounce it, but there are conventions, and you are better off following them, if for no other reason than because everybody else does.
But normal people don't speak ancient Greek these days except to import a word or phrase into another language, such as English.