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Help[Facts] Re: Pronunciation of Thecla
in reply to a message by overtheclouds
In both biblical and modern Greek, TH is pronounced just as it is in English. So Thecla should be pronounced with the same beginning as the word "thing."
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Personally, I don't know any Theclas who were born to English-speaking parents. It's a very rare name in English. Naturally a Thecla or Thekla who was from Germany, Poland or another European country where the name is more common, would pronounce it with a /T/ sound, as almost no languages in that region have the /TH/ (Greek theta, Θ ) phoneme. It's not surprising that most of the world's Theclas do indeed say their names with /T/.
That doesn't mean the T pronunciation is proper in English. The original Greek name, Θέκλα, begins with theta, and since in English we do have that sound, it is more correct to maintain it. It would be very strange for English-speakers to pronounce names of Greek origin such as Theodore (Θεοδωρος) or Agatha (Αγαθη) with T, just because that is how the theta sound is manifested in most of the world's languages. (Thomas is not a parallel case, as it is not Greek, but Aramaic, and apparently originally began with /T/).
That doesn't mean the T pronunciation is proper in English. The original Greek name, Θέκλα, begins with theta, and since in English we do have that sound, it is more correct to maintain it. It would be very strange for English-speakers to pronounce names of Greek origin such as Theodore (Θεοδωρος) or Agatha (Αγαθη) with T, just because that is how the theta sound is manifested in most of the world's languages. (Thomas is not a parallel case, as it is not Greek, but Aramaic, and apparently originally began with /T/).
This message was edited 7/24/2012, 7:09 AM
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