What is the correct pronunciation of the greek alphabet letter beta?
Remember that this is an old language that isn’t spoken fluently anymore. The American way to say it it Bayta, the English way is Beeta or Bayta depending on where you are from. The actual pronunciation is Beh-Ta. Ancient Greek letter beta was pronounced as [b] (as in English bit) probably until the 2nd century CE. Its pronunciation started shifting to fricative [v] in various places at different times. Evidence for this comes from the following: Cratinus (5th c. BC), in a surviving fragment of comedy (in Dionysalexandros) states the following: “o d’ hliqios wsper probaton bh bh legwn badizei” (and the fool goes about like a sheep saying “ba ba”). If beta is pronounced as [b] and eta as long [e], we get the sound attributed to the animal by contemporary Greeks (“beeh-beeh”). If the letters are pronounced as in Modern Greek, we get “vi-vi”, which does not sound like a sheep at all, by any stretch of the imagination. Aristophanes (ca. 450 – ca. 388 BC), in a similar fashion says: “quein
