The Greek Inflection

As anyone who has been in a hospital in the last few decades will tell you, they don't stop asking you your name and date of birth. This is to prevent errors of treating the wrong person with the right stuff.

When I had my recent spinal surgery and was walked into the operating room they of course wanted to know who I was. There was a new array of people who hadn't yet heard me declare my identity and my date of birth, even though I had just affirmed in the pre-op room.

In deference to one of the nurses who started to talk to me in Greek, I recited my full name in Greek with an authentic Greek accent. I wasn't so sure of my Greek numbers, and I didn't want to keep anyone waiting, so I did my date of birth in unaccented English.

I like to think I almost got applause. Telly Savalas couldn't have done better even if he were to have thrown in "Who loves ya baby." And of course Telly's no longer with us.

I have to admit I was a bit emboldened by my new audience that I started doing shtick when one of the OR nurses who was readying the hardware turned around to greet me who was the absolute double of Al Roker. This of course lead me to ask if this whole operation was going to be a special edition of the Today show.  There is little I remember after that.

Greeks and the Greek language are not often in the news. There aren't even many Greek jokes, other than the one about separating the men from the boys with a crowbar. They wear out fast.

But all that's changed with the latest variant of the Covid virus, Omicron, "O me krone." That's how a native Greek would pronounce it, but the rest of the world seems to be having a great deal of trouble.

Alpha and Delta have sailed through the gauntlet of pronunciation, but on reaching the 15th letter of the 25 letter of the Greek alphabet, newscasters seem to become a tongue-tied Demosthenes with a mouth full of acorns. You can't understand anything that's being said. 

The WSJ has spotlighted the trouble the world is having saying "O me krone" (think Julie Krone, the retired jockey) first with a story by their Ben Zimmer, who has become the William Safire of word origins. His analysis appears weekly in the weekend section as the tries to inform us about the latest word that has crept into news reports.

In the past weekend Review Section he takes on the pronunciation and the reason "O me krone" (Omicron) was chosen after skipping the prior two letters in the Greek alphabet, Nu and Xi.

A new variant called "Nu" was considered untenable, and wisely so. New "nu" wasn't going to fly, and might even have someone starting off with the Abbot and Costello routine of "Who's on first?"

And Xi just happens to be the spelling of the Chinese prime minister. Off limits. It's like trying to get a vanity license plate with SEX in it. The word police are out there.

And then we have a lively A-Hed piece in today's WSJ about trying to nail down the pronunciation. Usually these A-Hed pieces carry one byline. Today there are two: AnnaMaria Andriotis (clearly a Greek name) and Joanna Sugden. The subject just presents so many varieties that it's like herding cats. No one seems to be able to get all the variations in one place where there's a consensus.

The heading for the A-Hed piece offers examples of the wide disagreement on the pronunciation of Omicron.

Oh My Krone?

Omni-Kron?

It's All Wrong

The kerfuffle over the pronunciation has set many Greek and Greek-American teeth a gnashing. The A-Hed piece goes scholarly with quotes from linguistic professors far and wide. Of course one from Oxford, England is quoted: "There isn't one way of saying Omicron," declares Armand D'Angour professor of classical language and literature at the University of Oxford. (Well, that settles that.)

The A-Hed piece travels down one of my pet peeves on how to pronounce "gryo," that lamb dish served with vegetables wrapped in Pita bread. Any Greek-run diner in the Northeast has a "gyro" on their extensive menu.

The A-Hed piece tries to unravel some of the dissonance. "The English letter 'g' is replaced by the Greek letter gamma, which has a sound in modern Greek that's somewhere between a 'g' and a 'y'. For context, think 'gyros.' To Americans, they are 'JIroes.' To Greeks, the 'g' is softer and the sandwich is a 'YEE-ro.'

Right. To my Irish-American wife she's always ordering "Jiroes." I tell her it's "YEE-ro."

All I know is, growing up surrounded by Greeks and Greek-Americans in the family flower shop, and the occasional attendance at an after-school Greek school I was expected to attend, Omicron is pronounced "o me krone."

Of course you'd have to ask me.

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