I’m just starting out on my journey through the Greek Language. I’ve spent most of my time learning to recognize all the characters of the Greek alphabet (Ελληνικος Γ?αμματα), typing in greek, writing by hand, and learning the pronounciation of each of the letters.
One thing that has been vexing is trying to get a handle on the pronunciation. There’s a lot of variation out there. Nonetheless, I really want to get this right and have confidence - otherwise, I tend to hesitate while I read. Lacking confidence affects my fluency in reading. I’ve gone through this “pain” in my Latin studies as well. Once I obtained the confidence in my pronuciation of Latin, my reading improved vastly!
I have settled for now on using SORGLL’s Guide from S.G. Daitz, The Pronunciation and Reading of Ancient Greek.
http://www.rhapsodes.fll.vt.edu/Greek.htm
However, I am stilled “vexed” with Upsilon (Υ/υ). I have had some French so pronouncing Upsilon as /y/ is easy enough. What bugs me is that it “appears” that you can also pronounce Upsilon as you would with the diphthong αι /ai/.
For example, the Greek words ψυχη (mind) and γυνη (woman) which in English we get the derivatives Psychologist and Gynecologist. In my English trained mind, I want to pronounce these words as an American would tend to pronounce Psyche and Gynecology.
So the question is this: Should I pronounce the upsilon in ψυχη and γυνη as /y/ or /ai/?
Thanks,
Mark