In physics, at least, many people pronounce φ as [fi] rather than [faɪ]. -- Delirium 04:37, 8 January 2007 (UTC) -- Yes, but I heard [fai] from US physicists as well. For me, as a non-native speaker, the english pronunciation of the greek letters is very confusing and it's hard to find out what people are actually saying, without living in the US.

Most letters in the Greek alphabet have an equivalent in the English language. The twenty-four letters (each in uppercase and lowercase forms) are: Α α, Β β, Γ γ, Δ δ, Ε ε, Ζ ζ, Η η, Θ θ, Ι ι, Κ κ, Λ λ, Μ μ, Ν ν, Ξ ξ, Ο ο, Π π, Ρ ρ, Σ σ or ς, Τ τ, Υ υ, Φ φ, Χ χ, Ψ ψ, and Ω ω. The Greek alphabet is thought to be where most European alphabets came from.

Greek let­ters are widely used in math­e­mat­ics and other fields of sci­ence. There are a cou­ple of dif­fer­ences in pro­nun­ci­a­tion of the names of the let­ters be­tween Eng­lish and most other Eu­ro­pean lan­guages, which is a com­mon source of mis­takes.

03/08/2013 · How to pronounce Greek letters in English. The Greek alphabet is used in many fields, including science (mostly physics and mathematics, where one often runs out of letters to use in equations), finance, and technology. Some of you may even use it on a post card from your holiday in Greece.

25/02/2021 · Greek letters in mathematics; Common arithmetic letters like alpha/beta (versions) or delta (military task force) Sounds that are not present in English. The only sound that is absent from the English alphabet is the hard Y (Γ). In Greek a soft Γ is easy to be pronounced by foreigners but corresponds to different writing.

24/02/2006 · There are no silent "e" type letters. If a letter is in the word, it is pronounced. And letters are always pronounced the same way, with the exception of a few diphthongs. The Greek alphabet has 24 letters, some of them representing sounds that …

So your question is actually about why the English pronunciation of Greek letters, and the answer is that it is based on (but not always actually very close to) the reconstruction of the Classical Greek pronunciation by Erasmus in 1528 and by John Cheke and Thomas Smith around 1540, which were adopted in schools.

Notes. In pronouncing the names of the letters, the is may be pronounced either as long English is, so that ˚would sound like \ e," or else as long English es, so that ˚would sound like \fee." The es are pronounced like English long as, so is pronounced \Ayta" and !is called \omayga." Note that many Greek capitals look identical to English capitals, although