# "ei" Pronunciation



## shannenms

Maybe it sounds stupid of me, but I am a little confused in pronounciating this diphthong, "ei", most of my books say that is pronounced like "ei" in "height" but one of them says something else.

Any help would be appreciated


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## Outsider

In modern Greek, it's pronounced like the "e" in English "be" (or like the "ei" in "deceit"). See here.


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## shannenms

Thank you

How about in Ancient Greek?


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## pulcinella

shannenms said:


> Thank you
> 
> How about in Ancient Greek?


For the ancient Greek there are various theories and, as there has been no audio data testimoning how ancient Greeks pronounced, it is not possible to say for sure which one is the precise one. I wouldn't know the exacte difference - professors and teachers of ancient Greek could maybe explain what the different theories suggest. In modern Greek several letters and dipthongs (ι, η, υ, οι, ει υι) all produce the same sound: /i/ - there is non distinction between them as far as pronounciation is concerned, there is one standard sound for all of them, that of /i/.


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## shannenms

So you pronounce "einai" like "inai"?


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## anthodocheio

Like "ine"!


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## shannenms

Don't you think it is not reasonable to believe that  ancients might have pronounced the same wasy as you do now when it seems they had assigned any sound a special letter?
If they wanted to pronounce that like "i" they could have used "i" in "einai".


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## pulcinella

Yes, as anthodocheio says, like "ine" - the diphthong "αι" is pronounced exactly like "ε".

Also ο ω are both pronounced /o/ in modern Greek.


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## shannenms

That is appicable to all instances of "ei"?


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## pulcinella

shannenms said:


> Don't you think it is not reasonable to believe that ancients might have pronounced the same wasy as you do now when it seems they had assigned any sound a special letter?
> If they wanted to pronounce that like "i" they could have used "i" in "einai".


I think that ancient Greeks pronounced every different letter and diphthong in different ways and this is obviously the reason why they used different letters. Now it is not possible to know how exactly they differed, there are some theories but there is no evidence for the reason that there are no recordings or sound transcriptions. But the language evolves together with the people and at this moment (well, for the last centuries) the fact is that in modern Greek different letters and diphthongs have been producing the same sound - there's nothing to do about it


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## pulcinella

shannenms said:


> That is appicable to all instances of "ei"?


As a rule yes. There are cases in which "ei" is pronounced /ei/ and in those cases this is indicated with a symbol placed above "i" - in the keyboard that I'm using I don't have that symbol in order to place it here and show it to you but it s 2 points, 2 fullstops, like the symbol that is used in some German letters. When this symbol is placed over the 2nd letter of a diphthong, this meand that you need to read the letters separately and not asa diphthong.


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## shannenms

I think there are still some scientific ways to find as closely as possible the way they pronounced


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## shannenms

pulcinella said:


> As a rule yes. There are cases in which "ei" is pronounced /ei/ and in those cases this is indicated with a symbol placed above "i" - in the keyboard that I'm using I don't have that symbol in order to place it here and show it to you but it s 2 points, 2 fullstops, like the symbol that is used in some German letters. When this symbol is placed over the 2nd letter of a diphthong, this meand that you need to read the letters separately and not asa diphthong.


 

That was also practiced by your ancient people
Read the first lines of Illiad


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## Outsider

Read the page I linked to above. By the classical period, "ei" had already become a monophthong, the long vowel /e:/. Later, length was lost, and the /e/ shifted to /i/.


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## shannenms

I checked the link, but problem is that I don't know how this /e:/  is pronounced.


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## modus.irrealis

For the reconstructed pronunciation (_Vox Graeca_ by Allen is a good source for this), I can tell you that the pronunciation of ει in Attic Greek is [e:], which is a long close e-vowel (like German _Beet_), but the evidence is that it became [i:] before 1 AD and then later on when the long vs. short vowel distinction was lost, it acquired its modern sound.

But it's slightly more complicated than that because ει represents two original sound: the [e:] sound above which occured because of lengthening of ε or from contraction, e.g. ποιειτε is from ποιεετε, and an actual diphthong [ei] as in English _weight_. In fact in the Old Attic alphabet these two sounds were written differently, the [e:] sound as Ε and the [ei] sound as ΕΙ (so λείπειν would have been ΛΕΙΠΕΝ), but presumably, by the time the current alphabet was adopted in Athens, the two sounds had merged so that ει could now be used to write the [e:] sound.

Long story short, [e:] is probably what Plato said.



shannenms said:


> Maybe it sounds stupid of me, but I am a little confused in pronounciating this diphthong, "ei", most of my books say that is pronounced like "ei" in "height" but one of them says something else.


You often see pronunciations given on the basis of how those sounds are read in modern languages, and that pronunciation for ει seems German (like pronouncing ευ as in _Freud_).

Edit: It seems Outside beat me to it, and I missed it in his link as well.


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## shannenms

modus.irrealis said:


> You often see pronunciations given on the basis of how those sounds are read in modern languages, and that pronunciation for ει seems German (like pronouncing ευ as in _Freud_).


 
Are you sure? I think you have confused it with "eu".

I infer out of Smyth that there are kinds of "ei", one genuine, the other, spurious. The first one has a double sound, on that account that was denoted by two seperate letters. The latter is like French "e"(with accent aigu).

On the whole, Smyth suggests that "ei" is pronounced as in "vein".


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## modus.irrealis

shannenms said:


> Are you sure? I think you have confused it with "eu".


I'm not sure what you mean. I meant that _ei_ in German is pronounced [ai], like the _ei_ in _height_, and this has influenced the pronunciation of Greek ει, just as you'll sometimes see Greek ευ pronounced [oi], like the _oy_ in _boy_, on the basis of the German pronunciation of _eu_ as [oi]. Occasionally you'll see ευ pronounced as the _eu_ in English _feud_ which has even less to do with the historical pronunciation.



> I infer out of Smyth that there are kinds of "ei", one genuine, the other, spurious. The first one has a double sound, on that account that was denoted by two seperate letters. The latter is like French "e"(with accent aigu).


Yes. The genuine diphthongs are the ει that were originally pronounced as diphthongs, i.e. as [ei], while the spurious diphthongs were always pronounced as [e:] (which is the sound of French é except ει ιs a long vowel). I personally think the change from using Ε to ΕΙ for the [e:] sound is pretty good evidence that the genuine diphthongs had become simple sounds and merged with the spurious diphthongs by that time.



> On the whole, Smyth suggests that "ei" is pronounced as in "vein".


I've seen a number of sources recommend that pronunciation, but a large number, if not the majority, of ει never had the diphthongal pronunciation, so if you're concerned about historical accuracy, it's not the best choice.


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## pulcinella

shannenms said:


> I checked the link, but problem is that I don't know how this /e:/ is pronounced.


I tried to post some links for guide to the International Phonetic Alphabet but I wasn't allowed bec. I haven't made 30 posts on the forum yet.

Try to search on google, for ex the sites of stuff.co.uk or esl.about.com you can find the list of all these symbols and the sounds they correspond to. In the 1st site (stuff.co.uk) you can hear their sounds.


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## shannenms

pulcinella said:


> I tried to post some links for guide to the International Phonetic Alphabet but I wasn't allowed bec. I haven't made 30 posts on the forum yet.
> 
> Try to search on google, for ex the sites of stuff.co.uk or esl.about.com you can find the list of all these symbols and the sounds they correspond to. In the 1st site (stuff.co.uk) you can hear their sounds.


 
Thanks to "modus", I finally got that waht he meant by /e:/, but I have still some issues on what the books have written on this and what was presented here.

Thank you very much.


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## Vagabond

"Ει" will only be pronounced like "ei" in "vein" if the stress is on ε rather than on ι (έι). You'd probably find that in transcribed non-Greek words, I assume; eg.: λέι, Σεργκέι, ριπλέι, φωτογκρέι etc. Not sure if that's what Smyth is talking about.

If the stress is on "ι" (εί) or if there is no stress (ει), the sound is, as already suggested the same as ι, η, υ - ee in bee. If the stress is indeed on "ι" or there is no stress, but there are διαλυτικά over "ι" (εϊ, εΐ ), again the sound is similar to "ei" in "vein", though it should be pronounced stressed on the "ι" sound, rather than on the "ε" sound.

I hope this clarifies things.


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## shannenms

Yes, that clarifies well. Based on your account and those of above, It seems to me that "ei" sound has shifted so greatly that that makes it impossible to find the true, ot at least nearly close, pronunciation of "ei".


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## Vagabond

Not sure what you mean by "true" pronunciation. What I am describing (and people before me) is indeed the very true pronunciation nowadays. Languages and sounds change greatly throughout the time, and I suppose it is quite improbable to go back to one, original sound without getting to the point of "Ugh! Ugh!"


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