My math professor keeps calling the Greek letter theta "sith" or "sid"
[or something like that].  I'm really stumped and can't figure out
why.  He speaks with a Cantonese accent, and I'm too polite to ask him
myself.
Please provide a logical explanation for this.  I will not accept "he
was mispronouncing it" as an answer because his pronunciation does not
even remotely resemble "theta."  Back up your explanation with at
least one (1) link from an educational institution (i.e. .edu site).

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Clarification of Question by secret901-ga on 28 Aug 2002 16:35 PDT

Just a standard clarification.  Don't mind this.

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Clarification of Question by secret901-ga on 28 Aug 2002 16:54 PDT

To clarify, I am not sure that he speaks with a Cantonese accent.  It
might be Mandarin, but he doesn't pronounce the "r" sound, and
somebody told me that Mandarin has the "r" sound.

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Request for Question Clarification by blader-ga on 28 Aug 2002 17:16 PDT

This is a guess, but if you look here:
http://agrino.org/greeklang/alphabet.html

The Latin equivalent of theta is "th".

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Request for Question Clarification by blader-ga on 28 Aug 2002 17:21 PDT

Does he pronounce is it "sida" or "seeda" or "siduh?"

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Clarification of Question by secret901-ga on 28 Aug 2002 18:09 PDT

I don't think so, blader.  He pronounces it in a way that stresses the
last syllable, which I sometimes recognize as "th" but sometimes I
hear "d."

I'm assuming when you say he speaks with a Cantonese accent that he is
really of a Chinese, Mandarin ethnicity...

I've noticed people (I'm Chinese) having trouble with 'th'. For
example, 'thief' becomes 'teeth'. 'thigh' becomes 'tie'. Although
'Thailand' is correctly pronounced as 'tieland', and the river Thames
is correctly pronounced as 'tams'...How nice, the English
language...:)

I can really see how 'theta' gets pronounced as 'seeta' or its short
form 'sith' or 'sid'. The first involves changing 'th' into 'si' or
'see'. This is perfectly understandable because in Mandarin, I don't
recall a 'th' usage in words. However, 'see' is very common indeed. A
'thing' is called 'dong see'. I mean, if I hear someone pronounce
'theeta', it's not unreasonable to pronounce it as 'see dur' or 'see
tuh'.

I'm sorry I can't get a link to justify his pronunciation, I can see
how you might think this is incredulous since you mention that it
can't be a mispronounciation. But it really can be. For example, in
Singapore, lots of people pronounce 'chart' as 'charge'. And I mean,
lots of people. To me, it's totally off base and I don't understand
how it can happen. But the truth is that, it does! I've realised that
whenever a significant number of people start pronouncing it
differently, we just don't question it. It's really not a right or
wrong thing, it's just the way it is...it becomes colloquialised...

And oh btw, the 'thief' and the 'teeth' thing? I know that because my
primary school English teachers pronounce it like that!

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Request for Answer Clarification by secret901-ga on 28 Aug 2002 18:52 PDT

Hello jeffyen,
Welcome aboard!  I assume that you're a new researcher, as this is the
first question that you answered.  This question was an experiment for
me to see the process an asker goes through.  I have noticed that when
I ask the question, the text says "Click once and then wait for the
question to show up."  It took about 1 minute for the question to show
up, so I was getting impatient myself.  I can see how some askers
would become impatient and would repost their questions, resulting in
duplicate questions.  Once the question is answered, a red message
tells me to rate the answer...hmm.
Have you joined the Researcher forum?  It's an excellent place to
discuss topics with other researchers.  Check the Google Answers
newsletter for the link.  Please reply to this with a generic
clarification so that I can test its functionalities.
secret901-ga

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Request for Answer Clarification by secret901-ga on 28 Aug 2002 18:57 PDT

How can a two-syllable word become one syllable?  Did he drop one syllable?

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Clarification of Answer by jeffyen-ga on 28 Aug 2002 20:54 PDT

Thanks for the welcome secret, yes, this is the first question I'm
answering. :) I've also asked a question before, but haven't used the
'clarify question' function before. Strange that it takes so long to
display the question, by right it should happen almost
immediately...maybe the ga database was overloaded at that time...
I'll check out the researcher forum...

Yes, mandarin does have both the 'l' and 'r' sound. For me, I have no
idea what it should be sometimes because both works! (And I speak
Chinese exclusively at home!) You see where I'm getting at? Folks
don't really care how they pronounce stuff unless 1)someone points out
to them that they can't be understood or 2)one day they look up the
dictionary and discover they have been 'wrong' all along. If there are
no complaints, anything goes. That's one reason how we get phonetic
variations across different geographical regions...

Regarding two-syllable word becoming one-syllable word, I suspect that
he might think that the second syllable is a silent sound (because of
some circumstances he encountered while learning that symbol
initially). Another reason might be that the Greek symbol for theta
does not consist of 2 characters. It consists of only one! So he might
think that he's supposed to say only one syllable instead of two. (I
can't think of any English, Chinese, Japanese
single-character/alphabet needing 2 'sounds' to pronounce.)
Interesting...

Although the answerer did not meet both of my requirements, he shows
his expertise in the topic.  Great first try.

This is an intriguing question. It is most difficult to search with
the keyword "sith" and not turn up thousands of Star Wars references.
;-)

This is an intriguing question. It is most difficult to search with
the keyword "seth" and not turn up thousands of Emmerdale Farm
references.
;-) 
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&as_qdr=all&q=+%22seth%22+emmerdale&btnG=Google+Search

This is an intriguing question. It is most difficult to search with
the keyword "sath" and not turn up thousands of references to the
"Society for Accessible Travel and Hospitality", "Scottish Association
of Teachers of History", "Shop at Home Inc.", etc., plus lots of web
sites from India.
;-)

This is fun!  Wonder what will happen with "soth", "suth", and "syth"?

This isn't quoting an academic site, which is why I'm posting it as a
comment -- but according to my Greek (born & raised) friend, there is
absolutely no symbol that is ever pronounced sith.  Her guess, as well
as what mine was (but I wanted to double check), is that he is trying
to say the Greek Letter "Psi" which is pronounced "Sy" (rhymes with
Bye) or sometimes, incorrectly, "Sih"

Since you're too polite to ask him "hey, I can't understand your
accent, say it again"... why don't you ask him "Can you draw this
symbol on the board so that I can see it, I'm a visual learner".  If
it's truly Psi, the symbol will look like a Y with a line through the
middle, or a pitchfork.



Hope that helps,

-Rebekah

AhHA,

   Here's another possiblity.  I think your professor may be trying to
say "SIN" -  Here's an academic website even, to back this up:

"ODD FUNCTION is found in 1849 in Trigonometry and Double Algebra by
Augustus De Morgan: "But the sine is what is called an odd function;
that is, it changes sign when [theta] is changed into -[theta]; or sin
(-[theta] = -sin [theta]" [University of Michigan Historical Math
Collection]."

Let me know if that seems feasable,

-Rebekah

starrebekah:
He was calling the symbol theta "sith."  I know that he is referrring
to theta because that's what he WRITES everytime he says it.  And no,
he wasn't referrign to the sin function.