# Pronunciation of Alpha



## BradleyFlood

Hello,

I am learning New Testament Greek (Koine?) and I have a question about the pronunciation of the letter Alpha

So we have two different pronunciations of the letter alpha,

*a* as in f*a*ther and *a* as in n*a*b.

What is the method of determining which one is to be used?

ΔΑΔ - which a do I pronounce this word with? (a in father or a in nab?) and why?

Thank you!
Bradley

PS: is it something to do with macrons?


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## Evi

Hello,

Can you explain what you mean with the word nab please.

*a* as in f*a*ther and *a* as in n*a*b.


A in greek is always an a and it's pronounced as a.
Like: Dasos (forest)
Pateras(father)
Lathos(mistake) etc

If you mean the ai which means e, then it's a diffrent case.


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## modus.irrealis

BradleyFlood said:


> I am learning New Testament Greek (Koine?) and I have a question about the pronunciation of the letter Alpha


There are all sorts of pronunciation schemes for Koine Greek, but avoiding all that, you seem to have learnt one which distinguishes between short alpha (pronouncing it like the a in nab) and long alpha (father), so it's a matter of learning when an alpha is short and when it's long.

The problem is the Greek alphabet doesn't distinguish between long and short alpha, so it's largely a matter of memorizing. There are some things that can help, e.g. since the circumflex accent can only occur over long vowels, if an alpha has the circumflex accent, it must be long. Also, the iota subscript (as in ᾳ) always indicates a long alpha.

As for the macrons, they are sometimes used to indicate a long vowel, but they're normally not used in actual texts.

About ΔΑΔ, I'm assuming you mean the abbreviation for Δαυίδ _David_? In that case you would read it out in full. I looked in a bunch of dictionaries and none of them indicated whether this alpha is long or short, but my Latin dictionary has _David_ as having a long _a_, so I would guess the same is true of Greek.


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## BradleyFlood

modus.irrealis and Evi.

Thanks guys.

Yeah I was looking to know how to distinguish the long *a* and the short *a* from a word.

Thanks for the information.

Cheers.
Bradley Flood

---Closed---


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## wonderment

modus.irrealis said:


> About ΔΑΔ, I'm assuming you mean the abbreviation for Δαυίδ _David_? In that case you would read it out in full. I looked in a bunch of dictionaries and none of them indicated whether this alpha is long or short, but my Latin dictionary has _David_ as having a long _a_, so I would guess the same is true of Greek.



In Koine Greek αυ is still a diphthong (pronounced like the –ow in ‘cow’), no?


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## modus.irrealis

wonderment said:


> In Koine Greek αυ is still a diphthong (pronounced like the –ow in ‘cow’), no?


I don't know. Most sources I've seen think it had become something like [aβ] (with β like Spanish _v_) fairly early on. For example this pdf file quotes the following:

"The progressive narrowing of the articulation of the second element of the
original diphthongs /au,eu/, beginning in the third century BC and leading via [aw,ew], to audible friction, i.e. […
aβw, … eβw], is first attested in the spellings a(u)ou/e(u)ou, which seem to reflect the consonantal character of the
second element. By the Roman period, after the loss of simultaneous lip rounding, we seem to be dealing simply
with a pronunciation […/aβ, …/eβ], or perhaps even [af/av, ef/ev] as in modern Greek. Spellings with β …, become
increasingly common in late Roman and early Byzantine documents."


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## wonderment

Thanks for the link!  These changes took place a lot earlier than I realized. It's strange that most New Testament Greek textbooks I've seen tend to stick with the classical reconstructed pronunciation, by habit I suppose.


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## Isidore Demsky

modus.irrealis said:


> There are all sorts of pronunciation schemes for Koine Greek, but avoiding all that, you seem to have learnt one which distinguishes between short alpha (pronouncing it like the a in nab) and long alpha (father), so it's a matter of learning when an alpha is short and when it's long.
> 
> The problem is the Greek alphabet doesn't distinguish between long and short alpha, so it's largely a matter of memorizing. There are some things that can help, e.g. since the circumflex accent can only occur over long vowels, if an alpha has the circumflex accent, it must be long. Also, the iota subscript (as in ᾳ) always indicates a long alpha.
> 
> As for the macrons, they are sometimes used to indicate a long vowel, but they're normally not used in actual texts.
> 
> About ΔΑΔ, I'm assuming you mean the abbreviation for Δαυίδ _David_? In that case you would read it out in full. I looked in a bunch of dictionaries and none of them indicated whether this alpha is long or short, but my Latin dictionary has _David_ as having a long _a_, so I would guess the same is true of Greek.


In English "David" is pronounced with a long A (as in "day"), would the alpha be pronounced the same way in greek?


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## bearded

Isidore Demsky said:


> In English "David" is pronounced with a long A (as in "day"), would the alpha be pronounced the same way in greek?


Hello
I really don't think so.  Both in Ancient and Modern Greek the pronunciation of alpha (A) rather resembles that of 'a' in the English word 'car' (ah in Engl. writing). Without altering that sound, Ancient Greek differentiated between long and short ah.  I hope that natives will confirm.


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## entangledbank

The "ay" sound for the English long A was created in a sound change in about the 1500s; before that it was the "ah" sound of 'car' in English, as well as in Greek and Latin. Nevertheless, English-speakers pronounced Greek and Latin with English vowel values until the late 1800s. This is why borrowed words such as _basis_ and names such as Plato have this sound in English. But it was never used in real Greek at any period.


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