These lessons in Greek pronunciation were presented by
Father Anthony Moschonas. And here are his tips:
1) Try to learn the Greek alphabet.
Even the best ear cannot render the Greek into English
without a certain amount of distortion.
2) Using a dipththong because that is what we see
in English is a BIG mistake.
For instance, the word
kairos
is the transliterated form of the kairos. What we hear
as 'ai' or ay-ee is simply an 'eh' sound to the Greeks.
Many apparent dipththongs in English are single sounds
in Greek.
3) The accent on kairos is on the last syllable: keh-ROS.
There is a slight rolling of the 'r', so make that: keh-RROS. I
adopted the tactic of placing accented syllables in CAPITAL
LETTERS, because this is the most graphic way to make the
difference visible.
4) Another important thing to remember is that the
delta letter is often pronounced as voiced 'th' sound.
I will be designating this in my phonetic column by
marking the delta sound TH.
Thus the word paideia will be phonetically rendered as
peh-THEE-ah.
Here is a chart of 29 words from rhetoric, using the
standard English spelling, phonetic rendering, and Greek
spelling: