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up vote 14 down vote favorite

There appear to be two ways to pronounce the last syllable based on deeply held beliefs and cultural divides and assumptions:

  1. Phi fi fo fum
  2. Fee phi fo fum?

I've heard that (2) is the American pronunciation (as in the motor parts corp Delphi), although it's not how we pronounce it in my office in America, which is probably largely the result of the Russian programmer who introduced us to Delphi.

I'd say, I'd never pronounce the Greek "Phi" as as "fee", but I don't speak Greek and if I did, I would probably pronounce it wrong.

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Phi fi fo fum = Delphi? – TheLQ Sep 29 '10 at 14:55
1  
yeah, just the last syllable – Peter Turner Sep 29 '10 at 14:57
I guess I'll have to turn this to community wiki if no one can substantiate their claims. Maybe I should have asked it on the english usage SE? – Peter Turner Sep 29 '10 at 15:01
The best answer would go into the history of why Delphi is called Delphi (started as the code name, but caught on) while giving a little Greek lesson (oracle at Delphi) and explaining that there are a lot of non-american Delphi programmers (Marco Cantu calls it Del fee. It might even touch on motorsports. But sheesch, you can't be good moderators if you close questions because you don't understand them. – Peter Turner Sep 29 '10 at 22:01

migrated from programmers.stackexchange.com Jun 30 '11 at 17:11

3 Answers

up vote 14 down vote accepted

I've always said Dell fee.

In further support of this, the name was chosen (cite) by one of Delphi's developers, Danny Thorpe, who has a decidedly non-Greek name.

If you look into it further, you'll see the name is a reference to the Oracle at Delphi, which was pronounced in ancient Greek as /ðelˈfi/, using the Ancient Greek IPA. (i refers to the "hard e" sound, whereas ai would refer to "hard i"). And according to this footnote, dell fi is actually the English corruption.

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9  
Yes, the name was taken from the Oracle at Delphi, a classical Greek reference, but I really don't see how my non-Greek name has anything to do with it. In the USA, we say "delf-eye", and everywhere else in the world we say "del-fee". – dthorpe Oct 12 '10 at 16:16
[ðelˈfi] is the Modern Greek pronunciation, not Ancient Greek. According to Wiktionary, the correct Classical Greek pronunciation would have been [delpʰo͝ɪ̗]. – Mechanical snail Oct 11 '11 at 23:14
up vote 7 down vote

For what it's worth. The place/oracle it is named after in Greece is pronounced by the locals as "Dell-Fee". So that is probably the most correct, but I've never heard an American call it anything other than "Dell-Fi"

FYI: That is a truly awesome place to visit, I highly recommend it.

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up vote 2 down vote

Apparently it is a country thing. Gasp! (for us Americans) The majority of the world pronounces it with a long E sound according to this article. (I've always pronounced it with a long I sound, like the Phi in the first letter of my fraternity name.)

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