The importance of oeeconomy

[Athanasios55]

I think the oEEconomy of our countries is very important in life. It affects our diaEEts and also oEEcumenical and oEEcological matters. But my personal oEEconomics are fine, so I went for a trip yesterday, I visited an archaEEological site containing a coEEmetery and later a musaEEum of palaEEontology with deEEnosaurs. Nearby there was a seminar on the phaEEnomenon of global warming. As you all know the earth is not a perfect spaEEre.

But what you may not know is that the above weirdly written words are derived from (ancient) greek words that are written with dipthongs (oikonomia, oikologia, phainomenon, etc). You already know how to say economy in English I guess. It's not much more different in Greek: eekonomia. And then for some reason foreign speakers when reading ancient texts or names in Ancient Greek completely forget both the English AND the Greek pronounciation in favour of what some non greek speaking guys said 600 years ago. If the small paragraph above seems annoying to you, the same happens when modern Greeks hear the so called Erasmian Pronounciation. I call it the oEEkos pronounciation

In my opinion, if we are going to say oEEcos then we should change the english pronounciation of all the words whose source is ancient greek and start saying oEEconomy. Otherwise we can all embrace the fact that the modern Greek pronounciation (and the Latinised one) exists for a reason and while the ancient pronounciation was certainly a lot more complex (consider all the different vowels), I don't believe they ever said oEEkos. ESPECIALLY when you consider that the article is "o" (o oikos). Now I hope you understand how bad it sounds. o-oeekos

Unfortunately I am pretty sure the oEEkos pronounciation is the one taught in non greek schools when students try to speak the Ancient Greek. So I suppose it's ingrained in the foreign speaker's mind. Who am I to even attempt to change it? But this is my humble suggestion: Since we don't really know the truth, I think it's safer and nicer to use what we already know. "O oikos" with the modern pronounciation is such a prestigious and heartwarming word to describe the home. "O oeekos" is like someone punched you in the stomach while swallowing oysters.