I’ve been learning greek for about three weeks now, and I’ve come upon a problem- how do you pronounce χ? I’ve seen many articles and textbooks saying it’s ‘kh’ as in backhand, but I’ve also seen it being pronounced as ‘ks’ or ‘x’ as in coax. Is this because there are different dialects, or am I confusing modern and ancient greek?
With all respect, the question was “How do YOU…?”, intended perhaps to get a practical answer to the student’s question to himself, “How do I?”. So, “How do YOU…?”, specifically…
Pronouncing it like x in coax would just be a mistake. That sound is spelled using the letter ξ.
Greek has had many dialects and has gone through thousands of years of changes. There is no standard way to pronounce ancient Greek.
For χ, the two main options would be back-hand and Bach. The former is hypothesized to be the ancient pronunciation. The latter is the modern pronunciation, and is also used in most versions of the Erasmian pronunciation system.
In attempts to reconstruct the ancient pronunciation, you have stuff like φ being pronounced like “top hat,” i.e., an aspirated “p.” The problem for English speakers is that we tend to find it very hard to produce and hear the distinction between some of these aspirated and unaspirated sounds. That’s why I personally prefer the Erasmian system, in which the sounds match up pretty well with the categories that my brain can handle.