Why do the math faculty at my college pronounce the Greek letter phi like "fee"?

The only pronunciation the OED mentions rhymes with "eye". Or rather, the OED mentions two pronunciations, but my accent can't distinguish the vowels in question; at any rate, both are much closer to rhyming with "eye" than with "fee".

On the other hand, it looks like the way I've pronounced the letter mu is my own peculiarity. I impersonate a cow, whereas the rest of the world names everyone's favorite psychic kitten.

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"Now I will have less distraction." —Euler, upon going blind in one eye

my accent can't distinguish the vowels in question

Which?

Anyway, I rhyme it with "eye," but I've heard "fee" as well. Seems to be more prevalent among the mathematics community. Also, the National Panhellenic sorority Alpha Phi officially uses the latter pronunciation.
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Seth: What are you making?
Evan: I'm just drilling holes. Last two weeks, **** it.

Classicists prefer rhymes with "fee" although I don't know enough about it to say why exactly. I went along with it due to credulity and the fact that frat people seem to pronounce it like "eye" and we wanted no association with them.
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Willis, it seems like every other time you post, I need to look up a word that's in the OED or Urban Dictionary but not both.
-Mimir

From: AzumarillMan | Posted: 2/1/2011 10:26:35 AM | #002

Which?

Oh man, this is one of those cases where the lack of Unicode is so annoying. Here, I'll just post the whole page:

http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/142378

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"Now I will have less distraction." —Euler, upon going blind in one eye

My mom once showed me a passage about the golden ratio in The Da Vinci Code. I wonder how they pronounce "phi" in the movie.

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"Now I will have less distraction." —Euler, upon going blind in one eye

i had a greek ex and they pronounce it fee
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I smell sex and candy here.

Here, I'll just post the whole page:

Oh, those are just the different vowel sounds in "write" and "ride," respectively. In most dialect's of American English, we only use the latter in open syllables like "phi."
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Seth: What are you making?
Evan: I'm just drilling holes. Last two weeks, **** it.

And by "dialect's", of course, I mean "dialects."
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Seth: What are you making?
Evan: I'm just drilling holes. Last two weeks, **** it.

I've heard fee, f-eye, but not foe or thumb.
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If you're a human and not feeling creative, make this your signature.

Everyone who has taught me has said "fee", and so do I.
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x is an irrational number if and only if the set { nx mod 1 | n is a natural number } is dense in [0,1]

Let's go the Esperanto route and make it something nobody's used to so we all feel equally slighted. The new pronunciation will be "fthumb."
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Willis, it seems like every other time you post, I need to look up a word that's in the OED or Urban Dictionary but not both.
-Mimir

Actually Esperanto is heavily influenced by Romance vocabulary.
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Seth: What are you making?
Evan: I'm just drilling holes. Last two weeks, **** it.

From: AzumarillMan | Posted: 2/1/2011 3:37:07 PM | #007

Oh, those are just the different vowel sounds in "write" and "ride," respectively.

Ah, now I can hear the difference. Thanks.

From: PaperSpock | Posted: 2/1/2011 6:08:42 PM | #009

I've heard fee, f-eye, but not foe or thumb.

I smell the blood of an Englishman. Be he Newton or be he Boole…

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"Now I will have less distraction." —Euler, upon going blind in one eye

I noticed a bunch of the faculty at my university said rhymes-with-eye, and others said fee. I used to get made at the ones who said it rhymes-with-eye, thinking they were doing it wrong. Perhaps it is just because I first learned of the letter not from math class from but Attic Greek class in high school, where my teacher told me that is how they pronounced it way back when.
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"To truly live, one must first be born." ~ Evan [aX]
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