Time to settle the Great Omicron Question. First, there is no word omikron (and no c) in ancient Greek. Second, the classical Greek (5th-4th centuries BC) name for omicron was an accented ou. In the 2nd century AD it was replaced by the name o mikron (‘little/short o’), when Greece was under Roman rule.
So how did Greeks pronounce o mikron? The little o was pronounced short, as in ‘lot’. The letter i (iôta, whence our ‘jot’) was pronounced either long (as in ‘purine’) or short (as in ‘tin’). In the case of mikron, it was pronounced long. The r was lightly trilled. Finally, the last o was stressed. So o mikron was pronounced ‘o meekrrón’.
So much for replicating ancient Greek. But our language is English, and in English ‘o’ can be pronounced short ‘o’ or ‘uh’, or long ‘oh’. Likewise, ‘i’ can be pronounced as in ‘hit’, ‘me’ or ‘my’.
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